- Iowa
Freedom
Summit « Rep.
Steve King Transcript
Rep. Steve King (R-IA)
Introductory Remarks
Iowa Freedom Summit
Hoyt-Sherman Place
Des Moines, Iowa
January 24, 2015
[DEMOCRACY IN ACTION
TRANSCRIPT | C-SPAN
Video]
...This is the Iowa Freedom Summit. The Iowa
Freedom Summit. And you know I wanted to put up a ship's bow up
here and get out a bottle of champagne and just break that over that
bow so that we can launch the next era of American exceptionalism
together.
That is what we're doing; it is what we must
do. It's what we must do after we've watched the degradation of
that American exceptionalism over the last six years and two long years
yet to go. They're going to go a lot slower than that State of
the Union Address last Tuesday night and that was tedious.
But four years ago we held and event in Des
Moines, and it was called the Conservative Principles Conference.
We had a number of presidential candidates, we had a lot of opinion
leaders there, and the place was jammed all day long. And the
reward for that was great and the idea for this grew from the success
of then.
But David Bossie and I sat down about six months
ago and we decided we need to do this. And so let's just imagine
that all the possible likely or possible presidential candidates would
come. Now that would be a big event. And that was too big
of an imagination, so we looked at that, okay we're going to dial it
down. So we dialed it down to practical application, began to go
to work, and his planning and his organization is excellent, and his
staff is excellent, and I, hats off to David Bossie, his team and
Citizens United. They've done the lion's share of the work.
And so we took reality and went to work on that
and then it grew and it snowballed into what we have here today.
Do you believe that the next president of the
United States is going to be speaking from this stage to you
today?
[Audience cheers]
As do I.
And I'm hopeful that as this process goes along
here in Iowa, New
Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond we're able to have our
conversations with these potential candidates and the candidates, and
I'd like to hear them take that pledge. Are you ready to, on
January 20th, 2017 from the podium at the West Portico of the United
States Capitol, are you ready to take your oath of office and do so
with pen in hand, ready to sign the full 100-percent repeal,
rip-it-out-by- the roots Obamacare? That is what's ahead for
us. That is what's at stake.
We elect a president with that conviction and we
lay the foundation--that's one of the planks for the platform that we
want to offer every one of these potential candidates--here's the plank
for the full repeal of Obamacare, it's real simple, it's forty
words. I wrote the bill and introduced it again in this Congress
and it ends with "as if it had never been enacted." That's, now,
so we can rip out twenty seven hundred pages of legislation and tens of
thousands of pages of regulation with forty words. That will be
sweet when that comes.
And now we have a president that as an adjunct
professor at the University of Chicago for ten years lectured on the
Constitution--and I'd want my money back if I'd paid tuition for any of
my kids to learn that--but as president he lectured to us on the
Constitution, the appropriate and right way too. He said I don't
have the constitutional authority to make law; Congress does
that. The courts decide what the law says; they interpret it and
his job is to execute it, to take care that the laws be faithfully
executed.
Now I think he must have misinterpreted
that. Did he want to execute the law, or did he want to carry out
the law as it was designed? And we know what he's done.
Through Obamacare some, I'll say this, in several dozen times, two or
maybe three dozen times he has just decided that he can change the law
that has his name on top and his signature on the bottom. The
starkest of which was when he decided he would delay the employer
mandate when it says shall commence in each month after December of
2013, he just decided I'm going to change that to 2014. And
America was not nearly enough outraged. We didn't rise up enough
to defend our Constitution and he stepped across a line into Article I
and took on legislative authority. That's happened multiple
times. It's happened on recess appointments, it's happened on
enforcement issues, and we must defend this Constitution and we must
restore the rule of law.
By the way, that's another potential plank for the
platform for the next president of the United States. Take that
ple--we need to elect a full-spectrum constitutional conservative who
makes the pledge to America and posterity that from the Oval Office his
task will be to restore that separation of powers between the
legislative, executive and judicial branch of government, and in doing
so our next president can unleash the greatness of America. We're
a great people. We are, we have a vitality that's unequaled on
the planet.
We come from every possible planet, or every
possible continent-- They're across the street those people that
come from the other planet. [laughs] Every donor civilization
that sent people here, legal people, to come to America, we got the
vitality of their civilization. The people that had an
imagination, the people that wanted to take this God-given American
liberty and turn it into the development of their potential and
contribute to this country came here, and they got God-given liberty
and they got the foundation that was laid down by our Founding
Fathers. They got the pillars of American exceptionalism to build
on and strengthen and refurbish and we got now a president who has
eroded them, and it's got to turn around; it's got to turn around.
One of the issues that does concern me is our
national defense. I've watched as around the world-- I challenged
some people, is there any country in the world that we have a stronger
relationship with today than we had six years ago? Yeah.
[Audience: No!]
I said that too but I was corrected.
Somebody said Iran. Somebody else said Cuba. So, it's that
bad. A while back I was in Egypt and they told me that 98-percent
of the threads that hold our relations together with Egypt have been
severed by this, by the foreign policy of this president. There
are good people there that we can work with; there are moderate
Muslims. General al-Sissi made the strongest statement from the
Muslim world that I have ever heard, and he's a man we can work with,
and we need to do so, and that's a piece of what we need to do to put
America back into safety and security.
And I will challenge the folks that speak from
here today and those that aspire to the Oval Office: lay out a plan for
us. Lay out a plan to defeat radical Islamic jihad. Lay out
that plan so that it isn't some kind of a struggle that we're going to
go on for the next hundred years. Let's say lay out a plan that
defeats them within the next four to eight years and defeats them for
the next hundred years. It can be done. I'm going to hold
my plan back on that and see what they have to say, but I do have a
plan.
I have another plan to move a balanced budget
amendment to the United States Constitution, get our spending back in
line. Perhaps it could be a plank in the next platform for the
next president of the United States.
Here's another one. Abolish the IRS.
Right now the federal government, Uncle Sam has the first lien on all
productivity in America. We can take that lien off of all
productivity in America and free everybody up to earn, save and invest
all they want to earn, save and invest. We have the policy to do
that. This is the election to lay the foundation.
And then, then as I look at this. You know
Ronald Reagan laid this out for us. He described the shining city
on the hill, and it was strong and it had pillars that went down into
the granite, and it never was a destination that we could arrive, bring
ourself into that shining city, wash our hands and put our feet
up. It always was a struggle to continue beyond. Ronald
Reagan envisaged an ascending destiny for America. That ascending
destiny for America is going to be determined by who emerges as
president of the United States, and how the culture here in Iowa, in
New Hampshire, South Carolina and across this great country, how we
support the planks, the policies and the presidential candidate that we
nominate. The destiny of America is in our hands. Let's get
to work and do this together.
And I will ask you to do what I do, that's on a
daily basis, I'd ask you to ask God to do this. To identify that
individual whom he will use to restore the soul of America. Will
you stand with me on that? Will you st-- Let's stand
together, we'll stand together and we're going to ask God, and I'm
going to inject this prayer right now.
Our gracious and
merciful Heavenly Father, you've watched this nation struggle, you've
lifted us to greatness, you've watched the suffering and the blood and
the treasure that's been spilled to defend this God-given liberty, and
I pray that out of this process you will identify and lift up the
individual whom you will use to restore the soul of this great
country. Thank you, Lord. God Bless America.