“Everybody in America has access to health care, and we even have many many organizations that make sure they fill those holes,” King explained. “The effort was to increase the number of insured in America and that number does not look like it will increase under Obamacare”:

KING: We’re actually going to get more people uninsured under Obamacare and this creates the foundation for a one-size-fits-all federally-run socialized medicine system. We’re not completely there and I think we are a lot better off to let the free markets do this and encourage people to be personally responsible.

Watch it:

King’s analysis of health policy couldn’t be more wrong. While organizations and hospitals do provide emergency services to uninsured Americans, the cost of that uncompensated care is shifted to private premium payers, resulting in higher health care spending system-wide. Obamacare accepts King’s premise of encouraging personal responsibility and will require able-bodied citizens to pay for their own health care expenses beginning in 2014.

During the interview, King also reiterated his opposition to requiring insurers to provide health care coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and said that Republicans should repeal the health care law in its entirety without preserving its popular provisions. This position puts him at odds with Republican leaders, who are drafting a plan to maintain aspects of the law that allow young people to stay on their parents health care plans and outlaw discrimination against sick people.

The Senate killed the same proposal in October after the House passed it as part of an agriculture bill, so it is likely the same thing will happen again.

When he introduced the measure on Thursday, King said his proposal was about stopping Planned Parenthood from providing what he has called “robo-Skype abortions“:

King said these “telemedicine abortions” help Planned Parenthood save costs by getting the same result as a surgical abortion, but “without the overhead costs.” But King said evidence is mounting that the morning-after pill, RU-486, is dangerous to women.

“Eight percent of women who take the abortion drug known as RU-486 require surgical intervention to complete their abortion,” he said. “This new practice leaves those women at grave risk and should never be supported with taxpayer dollars.”

The problem is that King’s view of telemedicine abortion services as a way to lower overhead costs is completely inaccurate. For one, Planned Parenthood officials have confirmed that abortion medication is a very small part of the telemedicine services the organization offers.

And studies have shown that medication abortions with a doctor connected by teleconference is safe, and it expands health care options for rural women who otherwise would find it difficult to terminate their pregnancies. And as states like Wisconsin block these procedures, researchers have found that there is no reason to restrict medication abortion services via telemedicine. Once again, King is using scare tactics to push for unnecessary policies that would hurt women’s access to health care.

King made the remarks during a town hall meeting on April 6 in Jefferson, Iowa. Pressed by a constituent about the impact of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, King claimed he had “not dug into” the decision yet, but conceded that he’s “not comfortable with the result.” Still, he claimed that his own campaign was free from the influence of corporate contributions.

CONSTITUENT: The whole question of what’s wrong with our country here is corruption. Money buying elections. Money buying corporate messages.

KING: That’s another thing. I will listen to him. I just want to tell you. I don’t have any corporate contributions into my campaign.

Watch it (relevant section begins at 1:25):

A cursory glance at King’s fundraising reports this year shows maxed-out contributions from the PACs of many corporations, including Koch Industries, American Crystal Sugar, AT&T, Berkshire Hathaway, Exxon, First American Bank, Kirke Financial Services, Mail Services LLC, Mobren Biological, Silverstone Group, Sukup Manufacturing, and a wide array of corporate trade associations.

King is technically correct that corporations haven’t contributed directly to his campaign. Federal election law prohibits corporations from making such contributions to any candidate. However, corporations establish their own PACs precisely so that their leadership and investors can donate to candidates. King’s campaign has benefited immensely from these corporate PACs, receiving more than $100,000 for his reelection bid.

The Colbert segment also included mention of another story first reported by ThinkProgress, specifically of King claiming some Americans never end up using “a dollar worth of health care.” (HT: Towleroad)

An elderly woman from central Iowa had harsh words for Rep. Steve King (R-IA) at a town hall meeting Tuesday, reprimanding the congressman for his attacks on the women’s health provider Planned Parenthood. During his time in Congress, King has been one of the most outspoken critics of Planned Parenthood for providing abortion services. The vast majority of Planned Parenthood’s services — 97 percent — don’t involve abortion, but other women’s health needs like mammograms, cervical cancer screenings, and STI tests.

The constituent, Shirley Grant, assailed King for wanting to defund Planned Parenthood and make it harder for women to get health care and “take charge of their destiny.” Said Grant, “I find it very offensive that men think they can tell women what to do with their own life.”

GRANT: When women want pro-choice and want to take charge of their destiny, you and your cohorts want to take funding away from Planned Parenthood. My daughter says, “throw out the word ‘birth control,’ Mom. Planned Parenthood isn’t that.” She says it’s for hormone replacement and that means you use those pills for many, many, many different areas of women’s lives. I find it very offensive that men think they can tell women what to do with their own life.

Watch the exchange, as well as Grant’s reaction afterwards:

ThinkProgress spoke with King on Monday about whether right-wing rhetoric may have played any part in motivating the bombing this week of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Wisconsin. Though King wasn’t familiar with the incident, he shrugged off the idea that Republican attacks bore any responsibility, saying his main concern was for the “unborn babies. That’s where our focus needs to be.”

Republican women like Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) are stepping in to defend the vital services provided by Planned Parenthood. “The preventive health care [that] they’re doing, we need to provide those services, absolutely,” she told MSNBC last month.

As we know, King enjoys touting his carnivorous habits while beating up on people who don’t eat meat. But meat producers have also been major financial backers of King, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, throughout his political career. A cursory glance at King’s fundraising records shows more than $45,000 in campaign contributions from the meat industry during his time in Congress. This cycle alone, two prominent PACs, the National Beef Cattleman’s Association and the National Council of Pork Producers, as well as Lynch Livestock, have already maxed out their contributions to King’s reelection campaign.

That money appears to have been well-spent. All this week, King has been defending pink slime — or “lean finely textured beef” as he calls it — to his constituents. Indeed, in every one of the half dozen town halls that ThinkProgress attended, King talked up pink slime unprompted. In Emmetsburg, for instance, he said pink slime was actually a “supplement” and an “enhancement.” In Algona, he pledged to hold congressional hearings not into pink slime, but into the “smear campaign” against pink slime.

Watch a short clip of King defending pink slime:

KING: I’m on the phone today and throughout the weekend and into last week trying to establish a congressional hearing before the Ag Committee for Beef Products, Incorporated, so that we can put into the congressional record the nutritional value and the safety and the tastiness of their product which is an enhancement to hamburger. I’m working with Governor Branstad on that. At this point, there will be a decision made today I think on whether we’re able to get a hearing.

The meat industry is engaged in an all-too-common practice: making campaign contributions to politicians, who in turn go to bat for the industry in the public sphere, whether that’s defending it to constituents or holding hearings into opponents.

Rep. Steve King did just that in a town hall meeting in Le Mars, Iowa on Monday. King, who opposes even some of the most popular provisions of the law, claimed that its requirement for all Americans to obtain insurance is unconstitutional because some Americans never, ever pay for health care:

Most advocates for Obamacare are arguing that, whether or not you have health insurance, you’re engaging in interstate commerce, because sooner or later, whether you actually go to the doctor or not, somebody’s gonna haul you to the emergency room and then somebody else is going to have to pay for it. So that’s the argument that compels you to buy insurance? I’d say that doesn’t fit the interstate commerce definition that I know. And that argument came before the Supreme Court.

What i’ve said is that, in every decade, in every state, there have always been babies that were born, lived, and died, and some of them a long and healthy life, without ever using a dollar worth [sic] of health care expenditures. That would mean that they didn’t engage in interstate commerce with regard to health care.

Watch:

King has made this argument before to attack the health care law, and it has been rejected. In an opinion upholding the law, conservative Sixth Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote, “Even dramatic attempts to protect one’s health and minimize the need for health care will not always be successful, and the health care market is characterized by unpredictable and unavoidable needs for care. The ubiquity and unpredictability of the need for medical care is born out by the statistics. More than eighty percent of adults nationwide visited a doctor or other health care professional one or more times in 2009.”

-Zachary Bernstein

ThinkProgress spoke with the Iowa congressman Monday about whether it should be legal for businesses to discriminate in their hiring and firing decisions. King said that “they shouldn’t be able to do that [to] a private business” because “they need to have freedom to operate.”

We asked if this meant that he opposed the idea of forbidding businesses from firing an employee because of her sexual orientation. “How do you know someone’s sexual orientation?” he countered, before proposing an idea similar to the recently repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays in the military. “I would think that unless someone makes their sexuality public, it’s not anybody’s business, so neither is it our business to tell an employer who to hire.”

KEYES: Would that encompass, for instance, the government being able to tell businesses who they can hire and fire?

KING: Yeah, they shouldn’t be able to do that [to] a private business.

KEYES: Even if those were to be regulations say on a matter of sexual orientation or gender or other stuff like that?

KING: How do you know someone’s sexual orientation? I don’t know how you discriminate against someone because of their sexual orientation. That’s their business.

KEYES: I guess if it became public knowledge that an employee were lesbian or gay.

KING: You have private sector businesses here and they need to have freedom to operate. In the first place, I would think that unless someone makes their sexuality public, it’s not anybody’s business, so neither is it our business to tell an employer who to hire. He won’t know who to discriminate against in the first place.

Watch it:

Nobody should have to hide who they are for fear of losing their job. Gay and lesbian people, like everyone, ought to be able to be themselves and be free from employment discrimination. Unfortunately, in King’s world, it’s an either-or proposition.

King was pressed by Algona resident Blair Redenius on why Congress continues to give tax breaks for the wealthy during a time of war. Redenius’ son served three tours in Iraq. After King defended the Bush tax cuts, Redenius noted that the Iowa congressman had signed Norquist’s pledge.

Though nobody’s idea of a moderate, King showed surprising sensibility on the issue of taxes. “I signed this pledge, but what do we do when we get taxes down to where they need to be?” King asked. “At some point we’re going to cut taxes too much. What’s the answer then?”

REDENIUS: One I know you signed is the Norquist pledge, no new taxes. If President Bush would have raised effort for the war effort, would you have voted for that?

KING: [...] I don’t know if I would have or not. I would have to look at the configuration of it and see what it would have been. But I talk to Grover Norquist and I told him this: I signed this pledge, but what do we do when we get taxes down to where they need to be? At some point we’re going to cut taxes too much. What’s the answer then? I’m thinking about that. I haven’t made a public statement on that. That’s as far as I’m willing to go on that.

Watch it:

Still, Redenius remained unconvinced that King would actually break his pledge to Norquist. “I felt he wouldn’t have voted for it because he signed that pledge,” Redenius told ThinkProgress. “The only pledge he should take is the one when he takes office.”

King is just the latest Republican to waver on Norquist’s anti-tax pledge. Others include Reps. Timothy Johnson (R-IL), Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), Charles Boustany (R-LA), Mike Simpson (R-ID), Frank Wolf (R-VA), and Pennsylvania state Rep. John Bear.

One of the photos of abuse shown by Rep. Lofgren (D-CA) at the hearing.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the conditions of detention centers for immigrants who are facing deportation. The hearing was meant as a follow-up to new health and safety standards put in place by the Obama Administration, but Republicans were there to argue that detained immigrants — who include victims of human trafficking and asylum-seekers– had it too good at the facilities.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, titled the hearing “Holidays on ICE,” alleging that the detention centers are like vacations for those brought there by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Smith said in a press release that “the Obama administration’s new detention manual is more like a hospitality guideline for illegal immigrants.”

Other House Republicans and their experts piled on Smith’s suggestion that detainees enjoy hotel-like accomodations:

• Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said that 110 deaths since 2003 was not alarming to him. King said he felt it reflects the general population, though those kept in ICE detention centers otherwise do not (PDF), and there is ample evidence of abuse and human rights violations.
• King followed up, inquiring “Is it true that some of the inmates control the keys to their own cells?” The expert responded that he was not aware of that.
• One witness said that detainees had access to move around within the facility. But images of the facilities paint a different picture.
• As part of the new rules, detainees have a hotline to report abuse, During the hearing, the committee’s Republicans painted this as a bad thing. But previous experts have concluded that many facilities do not “meet the threshold of basic human rights standards.” Those standards include permitting detainees access to medical care and allowing women who are being held to give birth without being shackled.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, however, actually had photographic evidence of some of the conditions in these facilities, and they offered up a very different view of the detention centers. Many of her pictures depicted the results of brutal abuse, and one detainee Lofgren discussed died of cancer after being denied access to a doctor for two months.

Immigration advocates in the House have come out strong against Rep. Smith’s hearing. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), who wrote legislation pushing for detention center oversight, said that the hearing showed Republicans were seeking “cheap political points” and were unconcerned about the rights of people in the detention centers.

Watch highlights from the hearing below:

KING: Why should I care about the conclusions that have been brought forward by the Supreme Court if we can race from 1965, Connecticut having a Tenth Amendment right to establish a policy, a Supreme Court that creates a right to privacy that’s the foundation for mandated abortion, and here were are discussing whether we’re going to mandate everybody in America fund and provide that contraceptives. … Why should I care?

Watch it:

The Griswold decision overturned a law in Connecticut that prohibited the use of birth control, even for married couples, but King apparently thinks the state had a right to enforce that ban.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos raised this very issue during a GOP presidential debate in January and was roundly pilloried by conservatives. “George, this is an unusual question you’re asking,” Mitt Romney replied and suggested that nobody was seriously considering outlawing contraceptives. King’s answer, however, would suggest otherwise.

Last week’s ruling by the Ninth Circuit that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional was a frequent subject throughout the weekend, but not with any concern for the couples seeking to marry. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) teamed up with retired game show host Chuck Woolery to dismiss the decision, promoting the idea that the people’s vote is all that matters and “Majority rules.” Woolery even went as far as to reject all civil rights, claiming he’s discriminated against because he’s old and “a one percenter.” National Organization for Marriage Chairman John Eastman also claimed the Prop 8 ruling will have “catastrophic consequences for civil society.”

Others at the conference expressed that bullying and violence against LGBT people should persist. The President of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) attacked the United Nations for urging countries to protect LGBT people from persecution and execution, suggesting that “their theory of international law is done by lying, coercion, and trickery.” Focus on the Family’s Candi Cusman, meanwhile, continued her crusade against anti-bullying efforts, suggesting that “sexual advocacy” groups were hijacking the safe school message to indoctrinate young people. At no point did they express concern for the actual victims of harassment or acknowledge that the harassment was even taking place. Tea Party activist Kevin Jackson didn’t hesitate to further demonize LGBT people by claiming the Left has ”changed the definition of pedophilia.”

All of this rhetoric fed into the weekend’s  condemnation of America’s diversity. For example, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and a panel of white nationalists discussed how “the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American identity.” It’s no wonder conservatives are so unsympathetic to the plight of LGBT people — they refuse to admit we even exist.

So I got this green bag right here. And I filled it up with the black market light bulbs. And I brought them back to my office here in the Capitol. Whenever I need to put a bulb in the lamp, I reach in this green bag and I screw it in there and smile. A little bit of my liberty back. A little bit of our freedom back. And I want to challenge you to do the same thing. Bring back some of that liberty, some of that freedom.

Following his attack on energy-efficient light bulbs, Rep. King took on the water-saving showerhead in his shower, before bringing his tirade to a close with the declaration, “I want my liberty back!”

Watch it:

The new light bulb efficiency standards have faced strong opposition from members of the GOP, who consider the rules not only a ban on light bulbs, but as another example of unneccessary federal regulation. Environmentalists and energy-efficiency business groups disagree and are quick to point out that the standards do not ban incandescent light bulbs, but requires them to be more efficient. Despite the GOP’s best efforts to pass measures that would block funding for the standards’ enforcement, The Energy Department rules went into effect at the beginning of the year.

– Fatima Najiy

King at a Paul campaign event in August (courtesy Gage Skidmore)

“Iowa Rep. Steve King’s assessment on Ron Paul, one of the two co-frontrunners going into his state’s caucuses next week: “He’s not dangerous unless he’s president.” [...]

“I don’t think that the Paul supporters have really stepped back and thought about what would happen if Ron Paul were operating out of the Oval Office and the commander-in-chief of our armed forces,” King said.

Paul’s campaign has soared in recent days, leading the field in Iowa in some polls. Finally taking his candidacy seriously, a number of high profile Republicans and conservative leaders have publicly condemned the unorthodox Texas congressman.

King has previously been somewhat bullish on Paul, telling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that people shouldn’t underestimate Paul. “He has a group of solid core, very dedicated supporters that will be there,” King told CNN in July of the Ames Straw Poll. King even appeared at a campaign event in Ames with Paul in August.

Upon discovering the tweet several hours later, Jackson Lee took a moment of personal privilege during the hearing to respond to King’s snark, which quickly turned into a verbal sparing match with two Republicans on the committee:

JACKSON LEE: I have no reason to think that anybody cares about my words, but I would offer to say that Mr. King owes the committee an apology… I’ve never known Mr. King to have a multi-task capacity, but if that is his ability, I do think it’s inappropriate while we’re talking about serious issues to have a member of the Judiciary Committee be so offensive.

So I’m putting on the record — he is not here — I…

REP. F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): Chairman I demand the gentlewoman’s words be taken down.

JACKSON LEE: Well I’m not taking them down. So you can break this hearing, because I’m not.

[CROSS TALK]

Excuse me, I’m in the middle of my dialogue and I will continue.

REP. LAMAR SMITH (R-TX): No, the gentlewoman will suspend.

JACKSON LEE: I have a personal privilege at this point.

Watch it (the exchange begins at 1:30):

It seems Rep. Sensenbrenner concluded that King’s use of “boring” did not fall afoul of House rules against “unparliamentary language,” but Jackson Lee’s taking offense did. When she refused, Rep. Smith — the committee’s current chairman — went at it again, saying he was attempting to “avoid making an official ruling” that Jackson Lee had “impugned the integrity of a member of this committee.”

Jackson Lee again refused, and demanded King “give the committee an apology.” But by this point, unfortunately, King was no longer at the hearing and could not respond. After further back and forth, Jackson Lee consulted with a parliamentarian and eventually relented, agreeing to have her use of “offensive” altered to “impolitic and unkind” in the Congressional record. The hearing then returned to its official business.

Later, an apparently undaunted King took to Twitter once again to comment on the dust-up:

Rep. King, it would appear, does not lack for self-assurance.

Portions of the nation’s most harmful immigration law went into effect last month in Alabama, causing widespread fear and panic among the state’s Latino population. It requires school officials to verify students’ immigration status, prompting thousands of frightened Latino students not to show up for school. The new law even makes it a felony for utility companies to provide water in undocumented immigrants’ homes.

ThinkProgress spoke with one of the leading anti-immigration voices in the House GOP, Rep. Steve King (R-IA), yesterday in Iowa to get his take on Alabama’s law. King brushed aside concern that the law may go too far, arguing instead that police officers ought to “see somebody on the street and say, ‘Why are you here? What are you doing? Who are you? I don’t know who you are.’” When we asked whether forcing hospital patients to prove their immigration status would cross the line, King disagreed, stating, “I don’t know why that would be too far.”

KEYES: Do you think that Alabama went too far in terms of asking schoolchildren their immigration status or having utility companies be able to shut off water to families if they don’t provide their immigration status?

KING: [...] Going too far to ask someone about their status? Whether they can be legally or illegally in the United States? Not in the world I grew up in. In the world I grew up in, a police officer would see somebody on the street and say, “Why are you here? What are you doing? Who are you? I don’t know who you are.” [...]

KEYES: Is there anything you think that could be too far, like asking people in the hospital about their immigration status?

KING: I don’t know why that would be too far. It depends on who is doing the asking. But I have walked through the hospitals down along the border, and I know what goes on. Tucson University Hospital, for example, is the most southerly trauma center in Arizona. The reason for that is all the rest of them had to close because they’ve been required to provide free medical care to people who are in the United States illegally.

Watch it:

In his eight years in Congress, King has amassed a long record of castigating immigrants and Latinos in general. Last year, he declared that Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s (D-AZ) southern Arizona district may have been “ceded…to Mexico.” Prior to that, King called immigration a “slow-motion Holocaust.” And while discussing a border fence on the House floor in 2006, King proposed electrifying it, noting that “we do this with livestock all the time.”

KING: Could you reverse engineer the United States of America and come up with a better result that what we have here? Could you go back through history and turn us in history in any way where our mortal wisdom could supersede the actual history that we’ve experienced as a country? I say not.

I believe that the Bible was written with divine inspiration. I believe that the declaration was written with divine guidance. I believe that God moved the Founding Fathers around this country and the globe like men on a chess board.

Watch it:

King’s affirmation of the entirety of U.S. history ignores, of course, the country’s dark chapter of legalized slavery. Many of the Founding Fathers, who King believes God micromanaged, were slave owners themselves and enshrined protections for slavery in the original Constitution. Would King really want to repeat this history?

In 2009, King was the only member of Congress to vote against a House resolution to acknowledge the role that slave labor had in constructing the U.S. Capitol building. The resolution would merely authorize the placement of a marker inside the new Capitol Visitor Center, but King opposed it because he said it would not present “a balanced depiction of history.”

Last year, King’s good friend Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) caught flack for erroneously claiming that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly” to end slavery.