Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the House and talk about four issues that, per usual, I think have not been adequately covered by our mainstream press corps.

The first issue I would like to deal with is their treatment in their public statements by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which is the second biggest university in the State of Wisconsin, towards what is going on in Israel.

They, I think in part because of some Palestinian sympathizers who set up tents on their campus, felt compelled to make an issue on what American foreign policy or at least UWM's foreign policy is.

To my great concern and great embarrassment, they have decided to, in their statement, condemn Israel. Also, in addition, to condemning Israel, they called on Israel to begin a cease-fire in the Middle East.

If you read their statement, Mr. Speaker, it is apparent that there is some equivalence between Israel and what could be called Palestine, or even treating Palestine in a superior position there. This is completely unacceptable, and it is, sadly, something that is seen too much on university campuses.

The thing that makes this uniquely horrible is it is coming from the administration. It is bad enough if run-of-the-mill faculty members of universities around the country can't figure out the obvious difference between right and wrong here. It is particularly disturbing that the administration itself has a problem distinguishing that.

Israel was attacked, and over 1,000 people were killed in the most bloodthirsty and callous way possible. Israel responded to this declaration of war by trying to, as carefully as possible, get rid of the Hamas fighters who had tried to destroy them and recapture hostages that at least are claimed to be hidden probably in tunnels beneath the Gaza community.

There is a huge difference between the countries. Israel is a modern Western, humane country. It is a country with lots of mosques that has a very diverse population. Mr. Speaker, you will notice when the over 1,000 people were murdered and taken hostage, people from Thailand and the Phillipines were in Israel. They are trying to get people from Ecuador in Israel. People are coming from all around the globe for an opportunity to work in Israel.

Meanwhile, Gaza, like too many, sadly, Third World countries, is a corrupt state in which, despite receiving billions of dollars from foreign countries, primarily in Europe, is still stuck in the muck. It is a country that has no synagogues in it. There is not the appreciation for freedom of religion in Gaza like there is in Israel.

The people who run Gaza have been corrupt. The leaders have sometimes been in Qatar and sometimes been in Turkiye. The ancestors of Yasser Arafat, who ran Palestine during much of my life, wound up in Paris. The people who get the money here don't even stay in Gaza. It is a country, by the way, that would be well-run and would be prosperous. It is located on the Mediterranean Sea. It was formerly a place where people came to recreate and was a tourist spot. It was a place that used to have greenhouses that were left behind by the Jews when they had to go back to Israel and were destroyed by the people in Palestine.

In any event, we have to weigh in as a country and wake up as far as what is going on in our universities.

Why do we have universities?

Some of the American public will overwhelmingly figure out whom they should have sympathy for. Nonetheless, in the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, the administration clearly had more sympathy with Hamas than they did with Israel, which is something of great concern.

Another thing of great concern is when they had to deal with the apparent crisis of having tents in their university, they felt compelled to negotiate with the squeaky people who sympathized with the barbaric Hamas military and didn't even talk to people who have had a vested interest and apparently didn't talk to people who had a vested interest in looking out for Israel, which, after all, is fighting for its existence.

If Israel would immediately pull out of Gaza, what would happen?

It would allow the Hamas group to replenish their arms and to regroup and to someday attack Israel again 5 years, 10 years, 15 years down the line.

So, in any event, I realize the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is not as well-known academically as Harvard or MIT or Northwestern or some of these other universities that embarrass themselves, but I hope the public is paying attention to what is going on in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

I hope the taxpayers are paying attention, and I hope the chancellor who has made some admission that what he did was maybe not right, would take a bolder stance and say that his university is not going to weigh in or give any sympathy towards Hamas, particularly so soon after they so barbarically killed over 1,000 Israelis.

My second issue today is that within the last few weeks, we received, one more time, the monthly totals on the number of migrants who came across our southern border. One more time, it is true almost as far back as you can find, the numbers for April were a substantial increase over last April and a huge increase over the final April under Donald Trump.

During the final April under Donald Trump, April 2020, about 6,000 people crossed the border. Last April about 178,000 people crossed the border. We are now at 204,000. So it has been a huge increase, from 178,000 to 204,000 people. This is obviously unacceptable.

That increase is understated because what President Biden has done to hold down the numbers is he gives parole to people who are coming here from Cuba and Haiti, which probably would add another 30,000 people to this list, except for it is not included on the numbers released. So the American public and the American press should keep paying attention to what is going on at the border.

The biggest problem in our country, if our country goes under, our great country, I think is we anticipate a free press, but to have a free press and have it count for something, it has to be a competent press. When the numbers were released a couple weeks ago, I think it was within the last week, on the number of people who crossed the border from April, it should have been a banner headline in every newspaper in this country.

Every 10 o'clock news station around the country should have led with the story that we had another all-time record for an April as far as people coming across the southern border--instead, nothing. They should have pointed out that, one more time, we have just shy of 6,000 unaccompanied minors.

There was a time when the press corps cared a little bit about breaking apart families.

Now, when a 16- or 15-year-old shows up at the southern border, what does our administration do? Nothing. For all we know, that child is never going to see his parents again. Who knows what his motive is for showing up at the border, but nothing is done. Our administration is settling in where we expect if a young person crosses the border without their parents, we will find them a sponsor, and they will stay here.

Quite frankly, what our administration ought to be doing is, even if a child shows up at the border with one parent--in this country, in a divorce case, we will frequently try to keep both parents in touch with the child. So, at the southern border, even if a child shows up with one parent, they ought to be turned around unless we can document where the other parent is and that they are signing off on this situation.

Again, I strongly encourage the press corps to pay more attention to the border.

By the way, I want to make one more statement with regard to the situation with Israel. There are people who are horrified--and it is horrific--when people die in this war. The war could be ended by Hamas at any time. At any time, they could say they surrender, here are their arms, here are where you are going to find the tunnels, here are where the hostages are held. The war would be over tomorrow.

People do die in the explosions and bombings that take place there. I think that there should be a little more attention paid by the protesters before they condemn Israel to see how this country reacted when we felt it was necessary to bomb population centers when war was declared on the United States during World War II.

I suggest sympathizers with Hamas look a little bit at the Dresden firebombings and the bombings in Tokyo. That was before we got to the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even with traditional bombs in Dresden and Tokyo, you will find, I think, more horrific things happened than anything that is happening near Hamas. Not to mention, the Israelis had been incredibly careful--much more careful than we were in Tokyo and Dresden--about warning civilians and trying to keep them out of harm's way.

If anybody in this body wants more sympathy or wants to condemn Israel, I suggest they look at how we handled the situation when we were bombing Japan and Germany toward the end of World War II--by the way, at a time when the conclusion of the war was, to a certain extent, already determined.

The third issue that I believe has not been adequately addressed in the paper--and when I get back on the weekends, I try to talk to people about it; they have no clue--is the fact that we have recently begun collecting information regarding Middle Eastern people and people from North Africa for a variety of purposes.

I think people believe that by keeping track of these people, we will eventually give them the benefits of affirmative action-type programs or diversity sort of programs. Prior to this, which was only approved in the last few weeks, we gave potential preferences to Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Asians--quite frankly, we give preferences whether you are American or not, just Asians who are here--and Pacific Islanders.

The Biden administration, the most divisive administration in this country's history, felt that wasn't enough. I think even without showing a need, they have decided to add Middle Eastern and North African people to the mix.

If you look at a map of the world, right now, Pakistanis already have potential preference, but that ends at the Pakistan-Iran border.

What they have done is taken anybody who lives between the Pakistan- Iran border over to the Atlantic Ocean, over to Morocco, and said they have the potential for preferences.

My guess is it would mean that, right now, if you come here and open a business, and your ancestry is from these countries, you would, therefore, for example, get preferences in government contracting. You may get preferences for the purpose of government hiring. You may get preferences for government bidding.

In any event, I think there should have been a lot of discussion in the news media before we added another huge bloc of people who, as a practical matter, were going to get preferences over the native-born.

Making this decision even more bizarre, I think the two rationales for affirmative action--neither of which I agree with, by the way--were either because something bad happened to people in this country maybe 100 years ago or that this group maybe statistically was not doing as well when measured by economic metrics.

Here, people from the Middle East and North Africa largely have not immigrated to this country until the last 30 or 40 years, so you couldn't say that there has been historical discrimination here. Not only that, at least with regard to people from Iran, they are doing much better than the native-born.

If people from Iran who are doing a great job in this country and adding a lot to the United States are making more money than the native-born, why would the government go out of its way to say they are going to get preferences for government contracting?

Even more bizarre, like all preferences under these programs, is they don't care how wealthy you are. I can be here. We will say I am from Morocco. If I inherited $10 million from my parents, I still would be helped or given a preference because of my ethnicity, despite the fact that I am wildly wealthy. It doesn't really make any sense.

You self-identify, so you could have somebody who is three quarters Irish and one quarter Moroccan, and they would be able to identify as North African and get preferences.

The biggest problem is that it continues the Biden policy of trying to create division in Americans. They want people to view themselves forever as not just an American, as we did when I was a child, but for forever as: I am Hispanic American. I am an Asian American. I am picked on.

This is a way to, I believe, destroy America. I think that is why the Biden administration is going down this path.

I do think, coming back to the mainstream media, we should ask ourselves why I have a hard time finding anybody back in my district who is aware that we have recently given preferences to this whole new body of people, which is a significant policy change. If we had a competent press corps in this country, it is something everybody would be aware of, and we would have had a public discussion about.

The final topic, which I don't think has been discussed enough, is the goal to have two-thirds of our vehicles be electric vehicles by 2032.

I recently bought a car, a Ford Escape, and it occurs to me now that it is not impossible that this will be the final normal car I will ever own.

There are a lot of things that can be said about electric cars, but almost all of them are bad. My major concern--though there are others, as well--is that they are more expensive. When I talk to my insurance agent, he tells me the cost of auto insurance with an electric car could easily be up more than 50 percent. There are other sources who don't say it will be that high, but I think everybody would agree it will be at least a 20 or 30 percent increase in the cost of auto insurance.

This, at a time, where due to the excessive spending of the Biden administration, the cost of housing is through the roof and the cost of food is through the roof. Well, guess what? The cost of a car is about to go up. I am told the cost of a new pickup could go up $20,000 as we switch to electric cars. The cost of insurance is going up.

In addition to that, we have the problems that our infrastructure is not even remotely ready for electric vehicles and the problems you are going to have in which you are not able to drive as many miles. I happen to be from Wisconsin, where the huge problem will be trying to get these things charged when it is 10 degrees below outside.

In any event, it is something for this body to pay attention to and to warn our constituents about so they are aware that as they set aside money for a new car--I think it is a smart thing to set aside money so you don't go into debt--you are going to have to set aside extra money if you plan on buying a new car more than 8 years from now. It is just one more cost that is going to make it more difficult for young Americans to join the middle class and prepare for the American Dream.

In summary, I mentioned the four issues I wish the press would pay attention to.

In the Wisconsin area, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee came out with a ridiculous press release, which they have tried to modify, but nowhere near enough, in which they imply that Israel has to do something as far as ending the war in the Middle East, not, apparently, Hamas, the brutal people who killed many Israelis a little over half a year ago now.

The second issue to look at is that, one more time, we have a record number of people coming here for a month, a record number of people coming across the border in April, at a time, by the way, when we are hitting in 4-year increments records of people being sworn in as immigrants legally. It is not like nobody is coming in here, but I think the American public ought to be appalled that, one more time, in April 2024, we hit an all-time record for people coming here in April.

The third issue almost entirely unreported in the mainstream media is the fact that we apparently are going to give preferences to people from North Africa, Libya, Algeria, whatever, over to the Middle East, Syria, Iran, as far as government contracting and probably government employment. I don't know if it is something we can undo if we get a different President, but it is certainly very divisive.

With it comes the bureaucracy that will forever tell people from North Africa and the Middle East that they should identify not just as American but a Middle Eastern American or a North African American.

Finally, I hope the press, as the clock winds down to 2032, warns Americans what they are going to have to expect as far as driving a new electric vehicle.

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