Brief Summary of Issues

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, we are back here after 3 weeks in our districts, and I think our minds should probably be on the border and the thousands of people--tens of thousands of people streaming across every month, or perhaps on the economic problems caused by higher inflation. But, instead, there was a few brief statements made by one of our prominent TV anchors that causes me to feel I have to speak tonight.

While we were gone, we celebrated both Memorial Day and the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who have died for our freedoms. We celebrated another anniversary of D-day, the landing in Europe. And when we think about Memorial Day, we can't help but remember other names of battles during World War II: Okinawa, Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Midway, the Battle of the Bulge, as well as all the soldiers who died fighting the communists in Vietnam and Korea.

It is a time for superlatives talking about the heroic efforts of these great men and women.

Unfortunately, on a formerly major network, NBC or MSNBC, Brian Williams decided to compare or supposedly compliment all of our brave troops by comparing them to people who fight under the most evil banner I think that has existed, or one of the two most evil banners that has existed in the last 100 years, and that is the banner of antifa.

Antifa is an organization. If we had their flag here before us, it is virtually identical to the flag used by the communists in the early 1920s in Nazi Germany. The socialist flag at the time, the communist flag, allied with the Soviet Union, which at the time millions of people were dying as they adjusted to life without the czar and life under communism.

The Soviet armies were soon responsible for killing millions and millions of Ukrainians as they guarded the food so the kulaks would starve to death, the communist armies that in Red China caused tens of millions of deaths, the communist armies in Cambodia, these countries with their anti-God philosophy, proud in Red China when the final Christian churches were closed.

Of all things, to compare our troops at D-day with antifa, I cannot imagine a greater insult to give these soldiers. I wish more of them were still alive so they could respond to seeing on television a TV anchor trying to compare them--these brave men to keep the world free-- to compare them to antifa, a group whose flag is almost identical to the communist flag.

By the way, it is not surprising that we have a red flag for Nazi Germany and a red flag for the Soviet Union. Red at the time stood for socialism.

Our young children should be educated on the comparisons between the two. During the 1920s, there were times when both ideologies entered into joint strikes because they both wanted to get rid of what existed of a free country in Germany at the time.

We would like to hear from NBC. Shame on you, NBC, the once-proud network. Would you respond to the statements by Brian Williams comparing the men who died at D-day, the men who landed on European soil to free Europe? Will you respond to your anchor implying they were the equivalent of antifa, a group connected with communism? Shame on that once-proud number one network in America. What do you think of what you have done?

The next issue I would like to comment on that I heard about again and again when I was back is an issue that is not surprising. To a certain extent, some of the policies of the past are responsible for this, but recently, we have had a new round of checks go out, a greater increase in the money supply, both M1 and M2.

Not surprising, when the government prints money, we see an increase in the amount of gasoline, an increase in food prices led by an increase in soybeans, an increase in lumber, and massive increases in homebuilding.

I am scared to death for the younger generation as a new economic ideology seems to have taken over in which there is a feeling that you can spend yourself into prosperity. When I look at the degree to which housing costs have skyrocketed within the last year, it is perhaps not surprising, given the degree to which money is being printed. But it is going to be much more difficult for a young couple to buy that first house today compared to 12 years ago.

It is important that everybody in this Chamber sit back and question the idea that is being approved by the Federal Reserve that America can become wealthier just by printing money. America will not become wealthier by printing money. America will have inflation, and that inflation will strike hardest at commodity prices and hardest at housing.

So everybody in this Chamber, before we vote for any more spending bills, ought to look at the rather boring charts of M1 and M2 as we analyze the money supply and look at the cost of all commodities over the last year as this Chamber has decided that the way to create prosperity is to print more money.

I do feel it is also important to address one more time the crisis at the border and the variety of bad things happening because of that crisis and not caring like we did only a few months ago as to who crosses the border.

I don't think we have spent enough time addressing the drug crisis in America. It has been around so long, it becomes boring even to think about it. Except recently, we hit the point at which 90,000 Americans had died of drug overdoses in a 12-month period.

When I talk to people at the border or my local drug enforcement administration, they both agree that this is in part happening because more drugs are coming across the border. In part, it is predictable that more drugs are coming across the border because it is easier to get across the border. More people are crossing the border. But even more so, as marijuana becomes legalized in the country, it is no longer profitable to bring marijuana across the southern border.

I heard an anecdote of a significant amount of marijuana coming across the border, and the people who owned it couldn't sell it. Because the marijuana produced by the now-legalized agriculture operations in the United States--not surprisingly, because we now do genetic engineering, that sort of thing--the marijuana produced in the United States in States like Colorado and Washington is superior to the marijuana brought across the Mexican border.

Well, if the Mexican drug cartels cannot make money selling marijuana or bringing marijuana across the border, how are they going to make it up? They are going to make it up by bringing more and more dangerous drugs--meth, cocaine, heroin, but above all, fentanyl. They are going to bring more and more fentanyl across the southern border. Now, we have 90,000 deaths in this country in 1 year.

A little bit of my district touches Milwaukee County, not a huge county, by nationwide standards, about a million people. Last year, 540 people died of drug overdoses in Milwaukee County. There were about 200 murders, which is the all-time record, and everybody couldn't believe 200 murders. There were over 500 illegal overdoses.

Now, what do we do about that? Well, clearly, one of the things we have to do is we have to prevent these drugs from coming into the country in the first place. It is disappointing that we put the security of the border on the back burner and think of excuses not to deal with it.

But in addition to thinking of all the people running across the border, take a minute to think about the 90,000 people, many very young people, dying primarily of fentanyl but also other illegal drug overdoses, and ask yourself: What is this body going to do to stop it?

Of course, other problems are at the border. We have gone from checking in or touching about 17,000 people a month to 180,000 people a month. As far as got-aways, people who aren't even checked in, our Border Patrol estimates we have gone from about 6,000 this time last year to about 30,000 now--just massive increases.

I would guess between got-aways and people who are checked into the country, we are looking at 60,000 or 70,000 a month instead of under 10,000 a month at this time last year. It is truly a crisis.

Quite frankly, this body ought to be doing nothing else but dealing with that crisis until it is solved. The fact that we had under 10,000 people crossing the border only 4 or 5 months ago shows it is not something we don't know how to solve or that it is impossible to solve. It is that we are willingly allowing a massive increase across the border.

Of course, that massive increase, since the drug cartels charge people to come here, also increases the power of those drug cartels, both in the United States and their country. It, to a degree, results in separation of children from their families, as unaccompanied children come here, as well as a given number of children are probably rented by people to come here because they know supposed intact families have a better chance of being allowed in this country than single people, who are still frequently turned around.

In any event, there is a brief summary of issues. I hope I was enjoyable. And I hope NBC will let us know what they were thinking when Brian Williams decided to say that our soldiers landing on D-day were like antifa.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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