Major Issues of the Day
Floor Speech
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Mr. GROTHMAN. Well, it has been about 6 weeks now since Congress last met, and I think it is time to review some of the major issues of the day that I do not feel the mainstream press is doing an adequate job of covering.
We continue to have people stream across our southern border. The Biden administration has made some changes after 3\1/2\ years mildly reducing the amount. Nevertheless, in the most recent month available, we still have an estimated 145,000 people crossing the southern border per month.
It is not difficult to go back to the prior administration and find monthly numbers 4 years ago of about 8,000 people a month. You can say that is due to COVID, but if you go back even before COVID, you would have monthly figures of about 11,000 people crossing the southern border, so we go from 11,000 to 145,000. That is despite the fact that we are pausing, waiting for another 30,000 a month to cross as they redo their parole program, so we will have an extra 30,000 from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. In addition to that, we have another 6,000 to 7,000 a month in another program coming across from Afghanistan.
Why do we not talk more about this, the scope of the problem that we have--even after the reduction--10 or 12 times as many people crossing the southern border compared to the last administration? And that is just the numbers coming here.
In addition to that, we have the human tragedy of people coming here, the people drowning in the Rio Grande which they don't report, the people drowning in the Pacific Ocean, which they don't report, the people dehydrating in the Arizona desert, which they don't report.
The last time I was down there I asked one more time the woman who was in charge of vetting, or meeting the new people crossing the southern border, and she admitted a high number of women were being sexually assaulted as they came north, north through the lands that are controlled by the Mexican drug cartels.
Where is the party that purports to be the party of women as these women are being sexually molested?
These are issues that should be covered daily in the newspapers in this country, but the scope of the problem is not covered. There is no reason why this 140,000 a month, 150,000 a month should not be reduced down to 10 or 11,000 a month as it was 4 years ago.
I would like to see a little bit more coverage about that in the newspapers.
The next thing that should be talked about is while we were out, Mark Zuckerberg talked about the degree to which he was leaned on to restrict speech in his business.
Freedom of speech is something a lot of us have taken for granted, although I am a little bit afraid that the average American is beginning to waver on their commitment to free speech. Nevertheless, it is something that should be brought up as we head toward the elections in November.
Is it appropriate that Mark Zuckerberg's huge company, one of the wealthiest people in America, should be leaned on by the Federal Government to restrict the free flow of information?
And, by the way, the more this happens, the more the American public begins to accept it, which is really scary. The share of U.S. adults that say the Federal Government should restrict false information--and, of course, who is going to determine what false information is?--has gone up from 40 percent to 55 percent. Over half of Americans think the Federal Government ought to weigh in on restricting false information.
I think this is particularly a problem, sadly, with the Democratic Party. When I was a child, the Democratic Party prided itself on unfettered free speech, and they got into things like pornography and that sort of thing. Now, it becomes the Democratic Party who is more in favor of restricting speech compared to Republicans, 70 percent to 40 percent.
Americans have to wonder: Do we want to turn this country into a country more similar to the Soviet Union or Maoist China in which the government decides what is truth and what is not truth?
This is one of the things that makes America unique, one of the reasons why we are proud to be Americans, and now people are beginning to say that this is perhaps not a good idea at all.
But now I will deal with the third issue that I think is incredibly important, maybe other than the southern border, the most important issue facing America today, and that is the breakdown of the family.
There have always been people--people that say mom and apple pie is everybody's favorite, they are profamily and wish they could have a mom and a dad at home. In fact, there have always been powerful people in history beginning with the radical leftists in the mid-1800s who felt the family was restricting and felt that it is something that we should break away from, destroy. This is one of the things that began to come out of the French Revolution in the 1780s, and to this day, some people view the French Revolution as something that should be looked upon favorably.
In 1848, Karl Marx--and many people read Karl Marx to this day-- believed there was a need to abolish the family. He put that in ``The Communist Manifesto.''
Mr. Speaker, 50 years later with the rise of the feminist movement, or 100 years later, radical feminist, Kate Millett, said that destroying the American family was necessary to bring about the cultural revolution that she wanted. Powerful feminists in the 1960s, a time of upheaval in America, a time when changes were made in America, the radical feminists wanted to weaken the American family.
A lot of times people aren't that outspoken about it because I believe the majority of Americans believe strong families are good, but there is a small minority, a very powerful minority, who wants to break down the family.
Angela Davis, a powerful radical, well respected by the hard left, in the sixties, seventies, and eighties came out against the traditional family.
Later on, Black Lives Matter, which exploded on the scene about 5 years ago, called for an end of the western-prescribed nuclear-family structure. Think about all the businesses that gave money to Black Lives Matter. Think of all the prominent politicians--many of them in this room. Now, they may say, oh, I wasn't for that part of their program. Think about that, people wanted to get rid of the ``western- prescribed nuclear family.'' Black Lives Matter were all on board and presented it to be a positive thing.
Now, to what degree has this institution, the American Government and the U.S. Congress played in weakening the American family?
Beginning in the 1960s with the Great Society, Lyndon Johnson--who I think was the worst President we ever had certainly until now--began a program in which an ever-expanding number of entitlements were doled out almost conditioned upon not having two parents, usually not a father, in the household.
George Gilder in the late seventies wrote a book ``Wealth and Poverty'' about this program. And what he pointed out is that certain segments of society felt it was great when somebody got pregnant out of wedlock because they would be eligible for all sorts of government benefits, be it food stamps, in particular; be it the low-income housing tax credits, which also benefited the very rich; be it the earned income tax credit, which is much easier to get if both parents are not living together; be it the TANF grants, which also seem to be disproportionately doled out to families in which they get the man out of the picture. If you add up all these programs--I am told there are over 70 programs which, in essence, penalize couples who decide to get married. It varies from person to person, obviously, how many different programs they take advantage of, but it certainly is not unusual to have people suffer a $20,000 penalty if a couple who have had a child get married rather than living apart. Perhaps in the first couple years of these programs people were not aware of the effect of them, but they have unquestionably, over the next 30 to 40 years, greatly reduced the number of children without a mother and father at home.
There was some progress made during the Clinton administration when Newt Gingrich forced Bill Clinton reluctantly to pare back some of these programs, but the programs are taking off again. Again, in his proposed budget, President Biden, and presumably, certainly Kamala Harris, have tried to grow these programs which are kind of conditioned upon not having two working adults in the home.
I hope the press talks about this marriage penalty and forces our candidates to take a side one way or the other as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. In any event, it has fundamentally changed the American family. I think in many ways it has made America a less livable place since these programs went into effect, since the Great Society went into effect, and the question is: Should Congress, when they return in January, consider the fact that we are spending so much money to try to destroy the nuclear family as the great feminists thought we should, as Karl Marx thought we should, as the French revolutionaries thought we should, or should we step back from these programs, try to tailor them a little bit more to not display the hate for the old-fashioned American, westernized, nuclear family?
I would hope that we would get some commitments that we are going to look at these programs.
One more thing I want to address here for the American public that I think we have not dealt with to the degree to which we should is a lot has been said about the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. For whatever reason, as we write the history of the last 4 years in this building, we have focused on the Inflation Reduction Act but not on other acts that also passed during that time period that are responsible for the huge amount of inflation that Americans are dealing with--inflation that I think is weakening American families because in an old- fashioned, American family you would have a house with backyard for the children to play in. Now it has become increasingly difficult to afford a house, much less even afford food.
So we have to remember there were actually three programs that were passed. Under normal circumstances every year in this institution we pass a regular appropriation bill or what people back home would refer to as a budget bill of about $1.7 trillion. That is really too much because we keep driving our country more and more into debt. But in addition to the regular $1.7 trillion program, there were three other bills that were passed: an American Rescue Plan of $1.8 trillion; an infrastructure bill--and a few irresponsible Republicans voted for that as well--of $1.2 trillion; and an Inflation Reduction Act of another $1.2 trillion.
What is not reported on and should be reported on is as outlandish as these spending bills were, the Inflation Reduction Act was originally called the Build Back Better Act, and that asked for $3.5 trillion. If it weren't for the Democrat Senator from West Virginia paring that $3.5 trillion down to $1.2 trillion, it would have been literally $2 trillion more.
I think our slumbering press corps ought to be asking the people in this building: Do you wish that that act which started out at $3.5 trillion and was reduced to $1.2 trillion, should we be adding another $2 trillion to that figure or not?
Do you think it was a good or bad thing that Senator Manchin wound up weighing in and reducing that act to a still irresponsible $1.2 trillion?
I think it is important for the American public to know there was not reticence among the Democrat Party in passing it. They wanted a significantly higher spending amount, and I can't imagine what the cost of a house or the cost of a dozen eggs or whatever would have been had they gotten that $3.5 trillion that they all seemed to want at that time.
In any event, we have covered five issues that all candidates should be asked to respond to, issues that the press corps should be bringing forth so that they force Congress here to deal with these issues.
I think when our forefathers wanted a free press, they anticipated the press doing a little bit of work on their own. So we hope when we return next week we read a little bit more on the difference in immigration laws for immigrants coming across our southern border between today and where we were at 4\1/2\ years ago.
I wish we would have more discussion as to whether penalizing people over $20,000 per couple for getting married is good public policy.
I think we should be asking people if they come back here next January: Are they going to want to add the other $2 trillion that Senator Manchin pulled out of the Inflation Reduction Act or Build Back Better Act?
Is there concern that a growing number of Americans, including, by the way, the Biden administration, have apparently leaned on Mark Zuckerberg to restrict free speech?
Additionally, are we going to see any more of this from those politicians who get re-elected and are returned here in January?
Hopefully, over the weekend some of these members of the press corps can wake up and cover these issues.
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