Our Greatest Existential Threat Right Now is the Border Problem

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California. A week ago, I stood at this microphone and talked about five stories that I think the mainstream press has left uncovered or undercovered. I always felt that under our Constitution, we have three branches of government. Now we are in a lot of trouble. When I think of the three branches of government, I think which one would disappoint our forefathers the most. I think it would be the judiciary, which doesn't have an adequate respect for the U.S. Constitution.

Our Constitution also presupposed an active press corps doing a good job of informing the public of the issues of the day. I don't think these issues have been adequately covered. One more time, I would just like to touch upon what I believe are five key issues that have been in the news but undercovered by the press.

The first one is what is going on at our border. In December, we hit a new all-time high of the number of people crossing the border and staying in this country. That was 370,000. Sometimes the press and for whatever reason some of my colleagues talk about the number of contacts with Border Patrol. They do not talk about the number of people let in the country. The 370,000 is easily the highest amount we have had in a month. By point of reference under the prior administration, the number let in per month in the final year would vary from 5,000 to 20,000 people a month.

We are now increasing by a factor of about 18 to 1, and it creates the biggest threat to the future of our Republic that is out there.

In addition to the 370,000 people crossing the border, all of which will be schooled here, all of which, as promised in his election bid, will receive free medical care. By the way, I should point out that many Americans don't get free medical care. They are either uninsured or have $20,000 deductibles.

No, our President has promised the new immigrants here free, unlimited healthcare. With those people come, depending on the month, 8,000 to 10,000 unaccompanied minors.

We do not allow 7- or 8-year-olds to wander around the country if they are born here. We are now getting, depending on the month, 800 to 1,000 unaccompanied minors, obviously a recipe for human trafficking, obviously a recipe for being mistreated, being allowed to work in factories all hours.

The administration has not done anywhere near an adequate job of keeping track of these folks and where they are.

They have intentionally said they are not going to be giving out DNA tests so that if somebody wants to be a sponsor and claims to be an uncle for little Missy, we have no idea whether that is true or not.

Depending upon who is doing the counting, we have lost somewhere between 30,000 and 80,000 of these unaccompanied minors somewhere in the country.

For a press corps that in the past had concerns about families being broken up, that only happened for a couple of weeks at a time and only when it was absolutely necessary. Here we have tens of thousands of young children without either parent, possibly never seeing them again.

It is a story that ought to be talked about, and there ought to be graphs on the front page of every newspaper in the country that we are now letting in 370,000 people.

It should also be more accurately covered the number of people who are dying of preventable overdoses in narcotics. We are over 100,000 a year.

I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war, where there was great concern as we lost 57,000 American servicemen over 12 years. Madam Speaker, 57,000 American servicemen over 12 years--over 100,000 people killed every year by illegal drugs crossing our southern border.

I think the mainstream media ought to do more to point this out. If people die in a murder, if people die in a car accident, it always makes the local pages.

This is far more than the number of murders plus car accidents every year, and we ought to do a better job of educating the public about the number of people dying in any individual county. That is an underreported story and will result in the end of America.

We do report that there is currently a war going on between Hamas and Israel, and it has been reported that that war was started 100 percent by Hamas, which stormed across the border, raping women, cutting the heads off of little children, killing over a thousand people.

I think some members of the American public believe the reason this war began is that, in some fashion, Palestinians were being mistreated by being adjacent to Israel. This is not true at all, and it has been underreported what a potentially good situation one had prior to this war if one lived in Gaza.

During the initial horrific invasion, some people may have noticed that some of the people killed were from Thailand. Other people may have noticed that some of the people who were held hostage were from Thailand. I don't think the mainstream media has done a good job of explaining why that was. It is because if you lived in Gaza or near Gaza, there were all sorts of good jobs that were made available by being at or near Israel.

It recently appeared in the paper that up to 25,000 people from Ecuador wanted to move to Israel to take these jobs. These jobs are better jobs than almost anywhere else in the Arab world. Indeed, why would people from Ecuador or people from Thailand come from halfway around the world to live in Israel? Because it is a wonderful place to live; people are well paid; and even though you are leaving your family behind, it is a highly desirable life.

I think if one considers the number of people from other parts around the world who are coming to Israel to work, one would realize that the case that Hamas has made to society as a whole, that they were a put- upon minority, disappears. It shows 100 percent of the sympathy in the current conflict or the beginning of the conflict should stand with Israel.

Israel right now is looking to put forth agreements with other countries of people who want to come and take jobs, many of which used to be taken by Palestinians. People from the Philippines and people from Vietnam are also going to be coming to Israel because of the huge economic progress that is made by the Jews in Israel as they have taken a land that was considered almost entirely a wasteland 60 years ago and turned it into one of the most modern countries in the world.

I will also point out that Israel is a very tolerant country. In Gaza itself, run by the Palestinians, they would not have any Jewish temples. In Israel proper, there are over 400 Muslim mosques, which operate and are allowed to operate by the Israeli Government.

I think if we are going to educate the American public about what is going on in this Hamas-Israel war, we have to let the American public know how many people wish they could come to Israel to work.

The next issue--and I talk to people about this all the time when I go back home, and we will talk about it again--is the attitude of the new head of the Joint Chiefs, General Brown, toward his diversity initiative.

Now, traditionally, America has gotten where it is by being a meritocracy, and people advance whether they are good or bad. Of all the parts of society, the part of society that had better never cease to be number one is our American military.

Nevertheless, the head of the Joint Chiefs has publicly said he wants to reduce the number of White male officers from something in the 60 percents down to, I believe, 42 percent, 44 or 42 percent.

Again, this is a fundamental change in the way the military has naturally done things. They want to operate like a little second-rate community college in which they are more concerned about race or where people's great-great-grandparents were born than about making sure we have the right person for the job.

I think this is something that should be discussed more, even though General Brown has been confirmed, and finding out what exactly is being done in achieving this goal.

On a subcommittee that I am fortunate enough to chair, we had a hearing on this topic. We found out that there is a perception, which probably is true, that people who are White are treated poorly. As a result, we are not meeting our recruiting goals because White people are realizing, perhaps accurately, that they are going to have a hard time in the military.

When it comes time to be promoted, they are going to be viewed hostilely. I think that is something we must look at more.

The next thing to talk about is that we have tax credits that are benefiting the wealthiest developers in our society. We are expanding the use of those credits under the tax bill that I voted for because of other good provisions and the tax law passed a couple of weeks ago.

I personally think the low-income section 42 tax credits are the worst in the tax code. They give money to well-heeled developers. They are allowed to have 70 percent of their building paid for by the government, a lavish subsidy in which the already wealthy members of society become wealthier still.

Finally, I would mention the prayer breakfast we had a week ago, which is something else that has been understated. We will talk about that next week.

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