Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, before talking about the main event of three issues, it occurs to me it has been a while since we really have addressed what should be the end to the Ukraine-Russian war.

In the past I have expressed frustration, and I still have this frustration as to why the Biden administration is not trying to work towards an end to the war? Eventually every war ends. The longer the war drags on, the worst it is for all involved.

Ukraine has the second lowest birth rate in the world. It is a tragedy for any country to lose its young people, but particularly for a country that has so few young people in the first place. Likewise, Russia has a low birth rate, and they also have a high emigration rate, in which people are coming to this country. I ran into one in my district.

Mr. Speaker, I know from spending time in the San Diego sector along the Mexican border, a lot of Russians have come across there. So you have two countries with a shortage of young people, and they are dying in a war. For humanitarian reasons we ought to end that war.

Furthermore, the war is very costly. Buildings are being damaged in Ukraine to a huge extent, and geopolitically, the Biden policy of letting this war drag on without sticking their nose in there at all for well over a year now drives China and Russia together.

It wasn't that long ago that we had over 1,000 McDonald's in Russia. I recently toured a factory in my district. They owned a similar factory in Russia which they had to sell off. What I took from that, there was a time in the relatively recent past when the United States and Russia had very good relations, the United States and Ukraine had very good relations, and I don't know why we couldn't get back there if this war ended quickly. It seems when you talk to the Biden people they don't care if it goes on for years.

Again, I make a plea to the Biden administration: See if you can look into doing what you can do to end that war.

Now we will look at three issues that I think all have the potential to destroy the country, and I think we need some clear thinking on all three.

First of all, let's look at the border. There has been a change in the way some people are entering the country. They are able to sign on to get entry to the United States, an app apparently, if they are coming in from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. It is because more people are coming in that way that it makes it more difficult to see how many people are coming in each month, and because it is now in two different places, we begin to lose track of the number of people coming into this country compared to where we were historically.

Let's look at, for example, where we were in May. In the most recent May, 227,000 people came across the border as what we refer to as illegally; a year ago it was 166,000; 2 years ago it was 74,000; and 3 years ago, under President Trump, it was 6,000. We have gone from 6,000 a month crossing in May three years ago to 227,000 crossing in this past May.

It is kind of a dramatic increase and something that should remain on the front page of our newspapers every day until this crisis abates.

Mr. Speaker, it is the same thing if you look at April. Now that we have the other numbers, in April most recently 211,000 people crossing the border; a year ago 187,000; 2 years ago 66,000; and 3 years ago under 6,000.

Again, we have gone from under 6,000 to 211,000. A dramatic increase in the number of people crossing the border. This is not a problem we can't deal with because we have to be bipartisan. It is always nice to be bipartisan, but this problem was solved 3 years ago, and now we have gone up by a factor of over 30.

As we have an increasing number of people crossing the border, we also have more unaccompanied minors crossing the border. People ought to be especially concerned when people who are 13 or 14 years old are crossing the border without parents or even say an aunt or an uncle. Now we are having about 6,000 to 8,000 unaccompanied minors crossing every month. Under the prior administration it was 500 to 1,000. There are a lot more young people.

There was a time when people on the other side of the aisle would be concerned about people crossing the border separately from their families. That was people who were separated for maybe 2 weeks because their parents had broken the law. Now we have 6,000 to 8,000 people every month being separated from their parents.

Who knows if they will ever see them again?

For minors, the lack of concern is stunning.

Recently there was an article in The New York Times that I think the administration to a degree has disavowed, but no matter whose numbers you look at, Mr. Speaker, the administration has lost track of tens of thousands of minors. They don't know where they are after they gave them to people to take care of them. We have lost track of tens of thousands of kids.

Particularly, we have a crisis in this country of human trafficking and sex trafficking that should be of particular concern to the administration. It should be of particular concern because people rarely come over here without the Mexican drug cartels signing off. We can only imagine that when these young kids work, sometimes third shifts in factories illegally, that they were sending money not only back home but to the drug cartels as well.

I talked to the Acting Labor Secretary about what she should do if minors who are coming are found crossing illegally or if minors are found working illegally. She refused to say how often they contact the parents. Which, again, I thought was horrible. If you were an inspector of a factory, Mr. Speaker, and found 15-year-old immigrants working there who shouldn't, wouldn't the first thing you would do would be to contact the parents?

Obviously.

The Biden administration doesn't do that. The Secretary of Labor will not be drawn into even commenting that we ever contact the parents of young people who are found here. We should always try to unite children with their parents.

Quite frankly, I even feel at the border if children come across with one parent that we should hold them up and look for the other parent. In the United States if parents are dealing with a divorce situation, in an effort to keep that family together, they sometimes try and say that one parent cannot move to another part of the country because we want both parents to participate in raising the children. I don't know why we don't do the same thing at our southern border.

On the flip side of letting everyone in, we are also taking our eye off of criminals who are not kicked out. Without a lot of hoopla in the newspapers, the Biden administration in their budget guesses that for the next 2 years we can anticipate about 29,000 people being deported. I think they might have computed it in a different way, but in his final 2 years under Barack Obama, we deported about 460,000 people. In one 2-year period under Obama, 460,000 were deported. Under President Biden, we have only 29,000 who were deported in a 2-year period. It is just like saying that we absolutely don't care what is going on here.

Of course, many deportations are caused by people here who are breaking the law. People who are for open borders at least say: They are all such wonderful people. They are all so hardworking. What an asset to America.

The Biden administration is doing a pretty pathetic job even compared to his predecessors, including President Obama. He is doing a bad job of deporting people who break the law.

Of course, along with being soft on the border and letting everybody across, it inevitably means more people are bringing drugs across the border. In this country right now we have about 108,000 people every year dying of illegal drug overdoses. That is a crisis that America is not paying careful enough attention to.

As I have pointed before, we have about 57,000 Americans who died in the Vietnam war over 12 years. I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war. There were articles all the time about American troops dying. People were protesting about how many Americans were dying, and 57,000 people died in 12 years. It was a true tragedy.

We now have 108,000 Americans dying every year from illegal drug overdoses in this country largely because illegal drugs are flying across the southern border. Virtually nothing is being done in this budget to tighten up the border. Nothing is being done to prevent more people from coming here. The inevitable result is a further change in America as the people who come here may not have the traditional American values that we need to keep our Republic going. Not to mention, we will have people coming here who are taking advantage of our generous welfare system and people coming who are breaking the law and are not going to be deported.

That is the first issue that I feel that we really have to address.

The second horrible policy concerns the bizarre demands of this new transgender lobby. This past week I had quite an experience. I met with an 18-year-old who had doctors prescribe from 12 years old on testosterone and puberty blockers. At age 15, the wonderful medical establishment in our United States of America--I think primarily from the psychiatry wing of the medical establishment--decided to remove her breasts at age 15.

I don't care if someone went to medical school. Anybody with an ounce of common sense knows people change dramatically between when they are 15, 20, 30, and 40 years of age. The idea that we have people going to medical school--I guess that is why they talk about people with book smarts and common sense. Nobody with common sense, unless they are absolutely obsessed with greed and just will do anything to make money in a surgery would possibly remove the breasts of a 15-year-old girl. They are doing it at two hospitals in Wisconsin which is horrible. This gal happened to have it done in California. Now this poor woman wants to undo the damage, and she can't.

In Europe they are finding that puberty blockers may affect bones and brain health. Sweden found that 10 years after reassignment surgery the suicide rate was 20 times that of their peers.

Is that even really a surprise?

I could almost guess it on my own without reading the study.

That is what they are finding in Europe, which went down this path before this. In European countries, even their liberal, let's worship the doctor societies know that they made a mistake.

I think someone has to look at the psychiatric industry and give them some more supervision because they are doing horrible things that anybody with any common sense would know.

The other thing the Europeans found is something we should realize in this country, too. This is a much bigger problem than when I was a child, and nobody ever seemed to know about it. How is that possible? Well, it is possible because the more they talk about it in the press, the more they talk about it in the entertainment medium, the more self- righteous politicians talk about it, the more young people begin to play in their mind with the idea that maybe if they are a boy, they should be a girl, and maybe if they are a girl, they should be a boy.

This is what happened to the poor gal I met with. She was 10 or 11 years old, 12 years old. She was unhappy. Given all that is out there on the internet, she thought, well, maybe I am unhappy because I should be a boy, which is perfectly understandable if you are inundated with this option on television and the computer constantly.

This is what we have. We have a gender dysphoria crisis, and the crisis has been caused by all these doctors claiming it is a common thing. The more kids hear about other people going through it--they may read articles about it, as this gal did, or read about it on the internet. It sounds interesting. ``There are these experts saying I am unhappy because maybe I want to be a boy.'' That is what happens.

I hope the press is a little bit more responsible in the future about pushing this as an everyday thing. When the press begins to push it, when it gets out there on computer screens, people begin to read it and begin to say maybe it is them.

There are at least two Congressmen out there with great bills on this, one from Georgia and one from California. I hope we see these bills on the floor of the Congress here in the very near future.

My one criticism of the bills is they only ban this type of risky surgery under age 18. I don't know why we don't try to knock that up a little bit higher.

I know in this country, as a practical matter, we bar the sale of beer until age 21. I think this surgery seems a little bit crazy even for a 30-year-old.

I hope we see these bills on the floor soon. I hope before they get to the floor, the authors make an adjustment to the bills and knock up the age to at least age 21.

One other comment I learned reading about this situation and talking to someone who went through it is that part of the problem is we have these well-meaning, progressive people who egg on these people. They get on their Facebook page or whatever. They tell people who they don't even know how proud they are of them for doing these surgeries, how happy they should be now that they did these surgeries.

By popular culture acting as cheerleaders for these surgeries, what do you think you get? A bunch of young, unhappy people who want to be happier.

Every time someone sends you an email, sends you whatever comments, ``You are so brave, and I am so happy for you,'' you are encouraging these people to get these horrific surgeries.

A lot of the blame, I think, goes on the people who are not familiar with this, not familiar with the study showing a dramatic increase in suicides, not to mention people without any common sense. They egg these poor boys and girls on to get these surgeries.

I beg people who consider encouraging these people or flattering these people for what they are doing to please stop it. Familiarize yourself with the information and stop to think that by flattering and encouraging these people, you may be the one responsible for making these life-changing decisions.

I will wind up by saying I think we need more people looking at the qualifications of some of these psychiatrists who push this and why this whole profession has allowed this to careen out of control. I think we have to look at the role that profession is playing in our society.

I will blame President Biden a little for this. His administration is all-in on this transgender, sexual confusion agenda, which is leading so many people to be unhappy.

The fourth area that I would like to address tonight, I don't like to address it. I really don't like to address it because it is such an awkward area, but it has to be addressed because the President of the United States is obsessed with it, so I have to address it.

The final issue is the issue of racism. It is Joe Biden's favorite issue, as far as I can tell. Joe Biden talked about racism four times in his inaugural speech and white supremacy once.

He keeps bringing it up in his State of the Union speeches. Again this year, he inferred that policemen are racist, and we have to warn particularly little Black children about racist police.

The studies don't show it. The studies show, adjusted for crimes committed, if anything, it is the other way around.

Joe Biden, a White guy--I wonder what other people think of him-- keeps getting up there and saying how racist we all are, that we have a racism problem with police. Like I said, the studies show that that is not true.

What you can do, and I think people like Joe Biden have done, is intimidate the police into being afraid to act because they are in fear of being charged with racism. That is what you can do. You can make the police timid.

Of course, ever since we had this massive antipolice feeling in the aftermath of the events in Minneapolis a couple of years ago, we have had a dramatic increase in the number of murders. I think a lot of these murders have to be blamed on the timidity of the police, which is caused by this strong antipolice feeling that you are getting out of Joe Biden and his allies and the mainstream media, which I think also creates this antipolice feeling and causes the police to feel that they have to back off for fear they will be called racists or whatever.

Joe Biden again talked about white supremacy at Howard University, at their graduation. It was kind of a weird speech because I think normally in graduation speeches, you are dealing with the best and brightest in America. I know Howard has a very good reputation. You should have people leaving that stage with smiles on their faces, anxious to change the world and do wonderful things in the United States. Instead, we get President Biden showing up and saying what a racist society we have and creating, I think, a defeatist attitude for the people graduating there. I hope they got over Joe Biden's speech.

Joe Biden's Secretary of Labor--designated; she hasn't been confirmed yet--believes the country was built on white supremacy. She will not back off that statement, despite me asking her a couple of times to do so. The Secretary of Labor, who has something to do with all sorts of laws in this country, apparently believes our country was built on white supremacy.

The proposed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff feels we should be capping the number of White officers in the military at 42 percent. I mean, I would think he would be primarily concerned about getting the best people in there. It is important we have the best military in the world.

Instead, we are going to have a bean counter who it sounds like is more concerned about where people's great-great-great-grandparents were born than what their qualifications are today.

A study found, I mentioned before, in Joe Biden's first 2 years, of 97 judges he appointed, only 5 were White men. Two of those were gay. This was in the aftermath of two Democratic Senators telling President Biden they were not going to confirm any more of his appointees if they were White men unless they were gay.

To what degree are our judges being picked as the best, or to what degree are they being picked with Joe Biden feeling there is something wrong with appointing a White guy for the job?

Those are kind of amazing numbers, aren't they? I am not a big fan of President Biden, and I would have guessed, if you would have asked me how many White men were in his first 97 judges, I would say, well, he is probably doing all he can to find people who aren't White guys, so it is only 25 or 30. Well, it is only five.

In his budget, he is asking that all of his agencies--Department of Defense, Department of the Interior, wherever--have new equity action teams. These pernicious new employees, I think, are going to run around and judge people solely by race or gender. Their goal is supposedly to look at diversity, which we will talk about in a second. Again, their goal is to follow down this path of all Americans are supposed to view themselves as a subgroup.

He tried to discharge debt of only farmers of color until the courts shot him down there. He is trying to add a new preferred class. All these topics are recent topics. We ought to discuss this issue before it goes any further.

Right now, there are a variety of classes when you fill out your Census form, when you fill out your EEO-1, which is a form that you have to fill out if you do business with the government. They break out if you are Asian, Pacific Islander, African American, Latin American, Native American.

They want a new class--and I think with a class comes preferences-- for Middle Eastern and North African people. Again, I think we should have a public discussion here. I don't think Middle Eastern and North African people have been discriminated against or mistreated in America.

I assume most of the people, if there are benefits from this program, will come to people who just came here or are coming in the future. I haven't seen a lot of articles on that, but there should be a public discussion.

If somebody comes here from Syria, if somebody comes here from Algeria, should they get preferences in hiring? Should they get preferences if they found a business and are looking for a government contract? Should they get preferences if they want to get into medical school? That is what President Biden apparently wants, but I think we should have a public discussion on whether he gets away with it.

As an aside, I am not sure how Joe Biden feels the country is such a white supremacist country. I don't believe you can really judge people that are worth their happiness by the amount of income, but it is a number that is easy to judge. If you look online, most of the successful groups in America today are not of European heritage. The most successful are from India. Most Indians that I know came here and are wildly successful, although they came here without even knowing English--people from Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan, Cuba.

Thomas Sowell wrote a book 40 years ago--so it is a bit out of date, but I can't find any more recent information--in which he claims that people coming from the Caribbean, the children of people who come here from the Caribbean, make more money than the average American. I guess he would be talking about people from Jamaica.

I suppose you would think of people, therefore, like Kamala Harris' dad, who came here from Jamaica and wound up being a professor at Stanford. He did very well. I don't think he had a huge amount of experience with racism, becoming a professor at Stanford. I would think most professors would love to have a job like that.

Before we go that much further, I do think we should look at individual questions that should be answered. The first question is, right now, for the purpose of these government forms and who you hire, you kind of self-identify. We will pick Peru because I talked to someone from Peru the other day. If you came here directly from Peru, you are Peruvian and Latin American. If you have one of four grandchildren, they are also called Peruvian and are considered to bring a diverse attitude toward a job, or America supposedly should make up for past discrimination even though their ancestors may never even have been in America.

Is it 25 percent? Is it 12\1/2\ percent? The Senator from Massachusetts had one of these DNA tests, and she found out she was like 1/64th Native American or less than 1/64th, but she apparently felt that was enough to put on her forms and apparently add diversity to the Harvard Law School faculty. I don't know if she really thought that, but I guess she allowed herself to be labeled as Native American based on whatever that would be, one great-great-great-grandparent.

Is that the way we should go? Or should it be one out of eight? Like, if one of your eight great-grandparents is a certain type, is that enough to identify with that type? Now we have DNA tests, so we can look at these things.

I know in my district, there was a rumor. People questioned whether one person who owned a construction company was really a person of color like he claimed he was. He could have been because he could say he was one-eighth, and under the current law, that would be enough to get preferences. I think we ought to have that discussion.

The next question is, since affirmative action really began in the 1960s, the idea was to make up, I think, for America's past sins, so should you have to have ancestors in America who can at least claim to have been hurt, or can you get what amounts to special preferences if you just immigrated to this country, say, a year ago?

Right now, you don't even have to be a citizen. You can count on the government forms in which I think they view you more favorably if you have people from certain backgrounds, even if you were not in America for more than a couple of years. Should we require beneficiaries of these programs to be in America?

Were your ancestors slaves in America, or can you be like Kamala Harris' dad and just have moved here from Jamaica, whether you had preferences or not? I don't know.

The next issue that we should talk about is how long this should happen. We began to have affirmative action in the early 1960s. I think it really kicked into effect in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. There was a lesser program under John Kennedy.

We have had this program going for about 50 years. Obviously, they have added new groups that weren't included in the original number of groups. We have women in the mix now, too. How long should this program last with its government bureaucracy, with, in essence, government looking over people's shoulders, telling them who they have to hire for their company, that sort of thing? Another 10 years, another 100 years?

Thomas Sowell has written about affirmative action, so that is another issue that we will have to look at. We will return and talk about other issues after this evening. Not the least of which I think we should talk about is how certain people think since you are supposed to be bringing diversity to the table.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source