Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, as part of this en bloc, we have two separate amendments. I will address them separately.

The one amendment that was just addressed concerns DACA recipients and whether they should be hired here.

In 2018, we had 830,000 Americans sworn in to be new citizens. I don't think anybody can accuse the United States of being shy about letting other people in this country.

Obviously, if we make permanent the policy that any young person who is brought here automatically can work their way to be a United States citizen, we will have what we currently see at the southern border. We will have, again and again and again, parents coming here either asking for asylum or sending their children here by themselves, knowing that we are not going to enforce the immigration laws.

Now, I think everybody here knows that the day will probably come where something is done with some DACA recipients, but it shouldn't be all DACA recipients. The idea of establishing right now that if you came here, you automatically are--I think the inference is you are going to become a citizen by saying that you can work in the Capitol when these jobs are highly in demand for many of our own citizens is a little ridiculous.

One of my amendments removes the provision that says that people who are still in this country illegally can wind up working for the legislature.

The second amendment concerns the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. I think the gentleman from Ohio kind of mischaracterized the amendment. We are not cutting anything here. We are leaving things in the same place they were in the last budget.

We have spent money in the last 12, 14 months of this institution like never before. We went through trillions of dollars. That is one of the reasons why we have such high inflation, one of the reasons why young people are going to find it so difficult to buy a house compared to the older generation, one of the reasons why the cost of food is up.

We cannot, as we go line by line through this budget, create a situation in which we are doubling lines in the budget. That is what we are doing here.

The other things that are particularly irritating about this, if you go through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, almost all the things they purport to do are done somewhere else in the legislative branch. They are really not adding a lot.

Obviously, it is one of these groups that I think is going to train people to view themselves not as individuals but more as a group, which I don't think is helpful for America as a whole. But, again, after going so overwhelmingly in debt, we have a Legislative Branch budget that is up 13 percent.

It would be interesting to ask how many Americans out there, how many of their individual salaries or compensation went up by 13 percent in the last year. But for Congress, no big deal.

Legislative Branch is up 13 percent, House Office of Diversity and Inclusion doubled. On its face, preposterous. I bet if you polled the American public, I wonder if there are any lines in this budget they want doubled, but particularly in an agency that, like I said, their function can be dealt with by other groups.

Madam Speaker, in any event, I encourage passage of this en bloc and the two amendments.

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

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