Crisis At the Southern Border

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, there are a variety of topics that I think have not been discussed enough lately but I think should be addressed on the floor.

We have been gone for 2 weeks prior to reconvening this week, and in that time I took one more trip to the southern border. I took the trip to the border because other than arguably the threat of an absolute catastrophe over the Ukraine, it is easily the biggest cause for concern in this country at this time.

I went down to McAllen, Texas, with 11 other Congressmen. Rather than having a trip of twelve which, as I understand, is the biggest group that has been at the border since COVID, we should have had 80 or 90 people there to see what is going on.

Prior to talking about things that I saw on the trip, I will talk about the size of the problem, because the numbers tell the story. In the most recent April, we let 183,000 people in the country.

Frequently, the press, for whatever reason, and some politicians, talk about the number of people who have contact with the Border Patrol. 183,000 is the number who actually came in the country. A year ago in April, that number was 66,000. And 2 years ago it was 6,000. So we have gone from 6,000 let in the country in April of 2020, April of 2021, 66,000 and, most recently, 183,000.

These numbers are staggering. The press should be reporting every monthly number with banner headlines. Perhaps, because the story seems old, they get tired of reporting it. But it is a more significant story every month.

Of those 183,000, about 60,000 are what we refer to as gotaways; that is, not people who checked in at the Border Patrol and got a cursory review. They are people who did not touch the Border Patrol at all. We don't know whether they were sneaking in this country with drugs. We don't know whether they had diseases. We don't know whether they have criminal background problems. We don't know.

So from 6,000 to 66,000 to 183,000. Who knows what it is going to be by this time next year. Obviously, it is changing America dramatically.

We do have ways to come in this country legally. We like to make sure that the future America is people who have proved themselves, law- abiding, hardworking. Here we have no idea who we are getting.

I point out that one of the reasons more people are sneaking across the border is that, as we have approximately 120,000 people who check in with the Border Patrol, the Border Patrol has to spend more of their time doing paperwork and not doing what they want to do, which is guard the border. That is why we are having a much more significant number of people come here without any contact whatsoever.

The Biden administration says they inherited a mess. They inherited 6,000 a month; and now we are at 183,000 a month.

As far as other observations along the Rio Grande, the heartlessness of the Mexican drug cartels continues to be shown. When they want to get drugs here, because they know the Border Patrol is understaffed, what they do is they send a group of people across the river, and they know the Border Patrol will be obligated to deal with that group of people. And then they send another group of people, say, a mile or 2 miles further on down or further up river, where they know they can get across with their drugs.

They also know the cartels are so brutal and heartless that they will throw a young child overboard in the Rio Grande because they know our ethical Border Patrol will save that child, rather than deal with the people who are sneaking across, perhaps sneaking across with drugs.

For the first time since I have been at the border--I have been down there several times, in part, due to my subcommittee assignment, the fact that I am a ranking member. The people who showed me the Rio Grande pointed out at the bend of a river, here is where we have a lot of Chinese come across.

Again, I think people are under the impression these are largely Mexican, Central American folks. I was surprised to hear from my guide that they pointed out this is the bend where we see a lot of Chinese coming across; which is, by the way, typical of what I have seen in other regions. This is people from all around the world.

They also pointed out that one of the reasons so many people are coming here, they come here because the drug cartels are making money off them and advertising on social media all around the world, be it Central America, be it Brazil, be it Peru, be it India, or Pakistan, or Bangladesh, the drug cartels are making money on these folks.

The further you come, the more they make per person. Maybe they are getting six or $7,000 for Mexican, maybe 9 or 10,000 for Central American, maybe 15 or $20,000 from Asia.

One more time--and I repeat things up here I find almost hard to believe. But one more time, I was told by the Border Patrol that right now the Mexican drug cartels make more money smuggling people across the border than drugs, and that is really saying something.

So, in addition to the other problems, we are strengthening the financial hold the drug cartels have on Mexico and, to a lesser degree, on the United States.

It is not rocket science how to stop this. You stop it by going back to the migrant protection protocol in which people coming here were held in Mexico pending a hearing.

When I talk about the non getaways, about 120,000 a month, these folks are let in the United States and told to show up for a hearing at some time. They rarely show up.

When people are paying 10 or $15,000 to get this far, they would not come here in the first place if they were on the Mexican side of the border. People are not going to pay $15,000 to sit in Mexico and hope a hearing goes their way.

So we should go back to the common sense provisions we had just a year and a half ago, and we would quickly get back down to the six or 10 or 15,000 a month, rather than the massive amount that is coming across the border.

Another benefit of not having so many people cross the border, is we would decrease the number, the horrifically high number of drug overdoses we have in America. These numbers have been repeated, but it is another story that I think the press is dropping the ball on because they think because it is an old story it is not an important story.

When I was elected to this job 7 years ago, about 47,000 Americans were dying every year of drug overdoses. That is now over 110,000. By comparison, 57,000 American troops died in Vietnam. Over twice as many Americans die every year from drug overdoses in this country as died in 12 years in Vietnam.

The apathy of the Biden administration on these numbers and, quite frankly, the apathy from the people in this Chamber is stunning. 110,000 people are dying. Not only does that, by itself, mean we have to do a lot more at the border, we should greatly increase the penalties for people who smuggle fentanyl or sell fentanyl in this country.

Think about that. 110,000 people. Think about their parents. Think about their children. Think about their siblings as, for the rest of their life, they are going to carry that death with them.

And what do we get from this administration? Nothing. The border is not a priority. We don't care how much fentanyl comes here.

So again, my request to this body and the request from the Biden administration, show a little bit of sympathy for the families, where the people who use these drugs die, and care a little bit about the future of America.

In some years, over 800,000 people are sworn in as new citizens. Nobody complains. They have been in the country 5 or 6 years. They have proven they are not going to go on welfare. They have proven they are not going to commit crimes. I have attended their ceremonies. They make one feel very good about being an American. I don't know why we wouldn't want to have everybody come here under those circumstances, rather than this massive increase of people coming across the border.

The next topic which should be discussed, and every Congressman who didn't spend the last 2 weeks in their house heard about it, is the dramatic amount of inflation that is out here.

One thing that bothers me, and it bothers me about my own party, is I don't think we spend enough time talking about where the inflation came from. It came from excessive government spending and the need of the Federal Reserve to, in essence, print money to deal with that spending.

I point out that this was not a surprise. I personally--I could say who am I--personally pointed out at the time the original stimulus package that President Biden signed almost immediately upon getting-- coming into office, the $1.9 trillion stimulus package, predictably caused this dramatic increase in cost of food, cost of oil, certainly, cost of housing.

I remind people that Larry Summers, key economist, key economic adviser to Barack Obama, said at the time that this was the least responsible economic policy in 40 years. That is what Barack Obama's economic adviser said.

But, instead, we got from the other side of the aisle, they ignored Mr. Summers' concerns. They ignored the concerns of Republicans. And upon President Biden taking office, whoosh, a new $1.9 trillion stimulus package.

Soon thereafter, they added to that an over $1 trillion infrastructure bill which was bipartisan because they got a few irresponsible Republican Senators to vote for it. But, again, outside of regular budget process, these massive bills.

And predictably, what happened is what Larry Summers and, quite frankly, me and many Republicans said was going to happen, dramatic increase in inflation; huge increases in the money supply; increases in the money supply even greater than what we saw in the 1970s under the Carter inflation.

It is such a dangerous path we are taking. And I think, in the future, as President Biden continues to ask for more spending, and I think the level of spending he asked for in the regular budget is excessive in its own right; over 12 percent increase in nondefense spending there. It would be good if not just the Republicans, because we are in the minority, but the Democrats as well would stand up to President Biden and say no.

We cannot have any more inflation. Inflation used to be known--and what it is is a regressive tax on the public. The average person spends more on gas--the average middle-class person spends more on gas than the wildly well-off person. They spend more on housing. They spend more on food.

This is a policy that harms the middle class and harms the poor, quite frankly, far more than the billionaires which have such influence politically and get so involved in the last election.

I know there were times where Republicans stood up to President Trump when he wanted to issue new checks on some of this COVID bills and voted ``no.'' It would be refreshing in the future if we had some Democrats stand up and say, I voted for you President Biden, but this spending was just irresponsible and out of control, and I cannot stand with you.

I would love it, in the appropriation bills, if we pass--in the current fiscal year, had no increase at all. That is not a dramatic thing. They should be cut dramatically. But it would be good if both the Republicans and Democrats got together and said we are going to go back to sequester sort of increases; things that we saw under Barack Obama even, and try to hold the increases into under 1 percent, or perhaps nothing, because it is going to take quite a while to recover for the excessive COVID spending, as well as the huge stimulus package that President Biden led off with.

This is not something that was a surprise. It was not something that was caused by Ukraine. It was something that every middle schooler should know. You cannot just print money and not have a huge impact on inflation.

The next thing we are going to look at here tonight is, quite frankly, the reason I ran for the job, and what I thought was the major problem in America, and still believe, other than the border, which maybe is nudged by it, or the threat of some catastrophic war in Europe, and that is the role that the Federal government has played in the breakdown of the American family.

The number of children born without a father in the home was under 5 percent before World War II, and kind of in the golden age of America, that is what was the norm.

It is hard to believe anybody would not want the nuclear family to be the standard that American children grow up in.

However, we do know that Karl Marx--and there is this romance with socialism that permeates part of the Democrat Party, permeates a lot of our academic institutions. Karl Marx felt that we had to destroy the American family.

As I have said many times before, Black Lives Matter, on their website around the time of the last campaign, said that they wanted to get rid of the Western-proscribed nuclear family.

First of all, it is an insult to the rest of the world because families with mothers and fathers at home are common in Asia, common in Africa, common everywhere.

But in any event, it is apparent that the powerful Black Lives Matter at least said they wanted to get rid of the nuclear family. Karl Marx wanted to get rid of the nuclear family.

What happened in America that we went from very few children not having a mom and dad at home to working our way to 40 percent of the children born in America without mom and dad at home?

It didn't just happen. It happened because this institution, beginning with who I think is the worst President in the country's history until now, Lyndon Johnson, began a war on the family. I guess he called it a war on poverty. He really should have called it a war on the family.

He began to put the government in a position in which they would take care of the children instead of both parents--traditionally, the father. So, in other words, they substituted the government for the father in the home.

Quickly, we reached the point where it ramped up from the middle sixties to the nineties, then dipped a little with welfare reform in the sixties, and now is on the upward climb. Forty percent of children go home to one parent.

There are some parents who are able to swing it and do a good job, but let's face it: It is much more difficult to raise kids in that circumstance, and the statistics show it.

So, how has this body responded? It has responded by increasing the incentives to not form a nuclear family. Right now, all the government transfer payments, be it medical care, be it food stamps, be it low- income housing, be it the earned income tax payment, be it the TANF payments, are all conditioned upon families being in poverty.

A lot of people considered in poverty I don't think we would consider in poverty. They maybe have an air-conditioned apartment. They may have iPhones. They may have cars. But you are considered in poverty if you are not earning a great deal of money. And the bag of things you are getting can, in many cases, exceed that of what a working parent, frequently a father, in the home can provide.

The government says provided you don't get married to a guy with an income or much of an income, we are going to give you a free apartment, frequently a nicer apartment than people who are not in the system yet. We are going to give you free food.

When I talk to the clerks at the grocery stores and such, they frequently say the food one gets is more expensive than the clerks who work at the grocery stores can afford.

When you give free healthcare, when you give additional checks of some basis, TANF checks, you can quickly wind up in a situation in which, like I said, you are better off financially not getting married.

This was, I think, the biggest policy mistake we have seen in America, perhaps in hundreds of years, the decision in the 1960s to, in essence, have the government replace the husband.

I think so many of the problems in America today, including the crime problems that we addressed or tried to address in the gun bills that were passed earlier today, actually wouldn't be anywhere near the problem they are had we not done what we could to destroy the American family as Karl Marx wanted.

It is the bag of things one gets. Efforts have been made throughout the last year and a half, some successful, some not, to push more and more money in the system for people or for single parents--could be a man, could be a woman--who are not married to someone with much of an income, the efforts made to increase the earned income tax credit, the increases in the food stamps, the efforts made to put more low-income housing out there.

I remember, too, as I mentioned, I talked to some of the admittedly more liberal people who administer the low-income housing. I asked them: What about the program don't you like?

Well, it is a good program I am glad to be part of here, but these people are getting nicer housing than I am getting.

It kind of reminds me like when you talk to the clerk at the grocery store. The people in the system are getting nicer groceries than the people not. The people getting the low-income housing, once they get off the waiting list, are sometimes getting better accommodations than people who are off on their own, particularly couples starting out.

In any event, I think if there is one thing I would like to have the Republican Party do, if we ever do get both Houses and the Presidency again, is to make a concerted effort to change these welfare programs so never again will the United States be in the business of encouraging families without both parents, particularly encouraging families without a father at home.

The results of Lyndon Johnson's policies have been written about for 50 years now. Whether we are talking about Daniel Moynihan or George Gilder or Robert Rector, everybody points it out.

This breakdown in the family, which everybody knows is ruining America or is largely responsible for causing the moral decline in America, it didn't just happen. It happened because the U.S. Government and people in this body wanted to take money and give it to people living a certain lifestyle and take it from the tax dollars of people living the nuclear family lifestyle.

I strongly encourage people in this body, including Republican leadership, if we take control of this House 2 years from now with the Presidency, to make their number one priority flipping around these welfare programs which have done so much to lead to the moral decline that we have in America today.

I realize it means standing up to the media. It is standing up to--a former Democrat mayor of Milwaukee used to refer to the poverty pimps. I don't know whether they use that word anymore.

It will take standing up to the poverty pimps and finally getting the strength of the American family back where it was in the 1960s, back where it was in the 1950s where our schools seemed to be doing a better job, where it didn't seem like the crime was anywhere near as great as today.

By the way, things like the murder rate should be falling precipitously because of improved medical care, but we still have a higher murder rate today, last year, than we did in the fifties, which is just preposterous but one of the effects of Lyndon Johnson's war on the family.

I leave that goal for both the Republicans and Democrats, to stop and think what they can do to get the American family back where it was 60 years ago.

Those are some of what I consider the major issues in America, issues that should be talked about today and are, quite frankly, of more significance than some of the things that the media talks about.

I hope when we get done taking our break near the end of June that we do something to address the border, or President Biden would address it immediately, that we do something to address the huge number of drug overdoses and all the broken hearts out there of the people who died because of this problem.

I hope we begin to address the breakdown of the family that didn't just happen. It happened almost by design of the government. I hope we do something about the excessive spending, which results in this inflation that makes it difficult for people at all ages of life. But I think it must make it so difficult for the youngest people as they look forward: Can we buy a home? Can we have children?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source