United States is A Republic

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to highlight an underpublicized but important hearing that was held today.

First of all, however, I would like to make one more time the point to my colleagues--because I recently heard one of the Senators grotesquely abusing the word--what form of government we have here today.

The Senator--fortunately, it wasn't a Congressman, but sometimes they do it, too--twice, in two sentences in a row, referred to the form of government we have as a democracy. Of course, we all should know by now that we do not have a democracy. We have a Republic, and our forefathers had contempt for democracy.

Alexander Hamilton said: We are a republican form of government. Liberty is never found in the extremes of democracy.

John Adams: Democracy never lasts long.

Benjamin Franklin, upon the completion of the U.S. Constitution: We give you a Republic if you can keep it.

When we say the Pledge of Allegiance, what, again, do we say? We pledge allegiance to the flag and the Republic for which it stands.

Nevertheless, again and again around here, people misspeak and, I am afraid, miseducate the younger generation into thinking we have a democracy.

Why did our forefathers not like a democracy? Our Republic under our Constitution is designed to keep limited government and, therefore, liberty in the United States.

Democracy, or representative democracy, means a majority of people are free to take property from anybody in here or take freedoms from anybody in here. If a clear majority of people say it does not like a religion or, as is increasingly true in this country, does not like religion at all or some of the precepts of religion, they believe in a democracy that they can impose their will on other people.

One of the crises we are facing, which we are going to be talking about tomorrow night, is the huge debt we have. Why do we have such a huge debt? Under our Constitution, under our Republic, they were supposed to restrict the things that the Federal Government could spend money on. Instead, as we have gotten away from a Republic, and the arrogant people of this body think that we have a democracy--they think because they won an election or got 55 or 65 percent of the vote, they are free to either go into debt or spend other people's money until we are bankrupt.

If they had realized all along that we are just a Republic, they would be humble before our Constitution and say: We cannot spend money on such and such. Go to your State legislator.

I had a couple of groups from an educational institution in my office this week. Of course, they were asking for more Federal money. I didn't want to get angry with them or mad at them, but I just noticed that, one more time, a group of educators came before me and asked for more money. Because I won an election, they think I have the authority to give them other people's money. Well, I don't, and it is very irritating to see educators in particular say that we have a democracy when our forefathers disliked democracy and would have been terrified had they known.

Right now, we are almost 250 years down the road. I am sorry, we are 230 years down the road from the founding of our Republic under our Constitution. I am sure our forefathers would be terrified if they knew how many people were under the impression that we were a democracy. America's Welfare System

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, now, I am going to talk about the hearing we had earlier today and what I think is probably, next to the out-of- control immigration system, the biggest crisis that we face, and that is our welfare system and a huge marriage penalty associated with it.

When I talk about our welfare system, I talk of approximately 90 different programs that somebody who is almost broke is entitled to. Some you have to have children to be entitled to. All these programs, as you earned more money and went to work, you would lose eligibility.

There are two things we could say about these programs. I should point out the testimony in a hearing today from a guy by the name of Robert Rector from The Heritage Foundation. There are examples--and I know there are even greater examples than this--that we penalize a woman who marries the father of her children $28,000 a year if she makes too much money or, scarier, if she marries a man to support her or to support their family.

First of all, you might say: ``Well, that is hard to believe. Who wants to destroy the nuclear family?'' It is not hard to find people to destroy the nuclear family.

We have Karl Marx, of course, back from the 1860s, who felt the family was the root of so many horrible things.

We have Kate Millett, who I would describe as the mother of women's studies classes. Who knows how many of our poor college students have taken that drivel. She was very definite in the fact that she wanted to get rid of the American family and, in particular, wanted men outside the family.

We also have Angela Davis, a 1960s radical who was still powerful when she spoke into the 1980s and 1990s. She was clearly opposed to the American family.

Until they scrubbed their website, Black Lives Matter was against what they referred to as the Western-prescribed traditional nuclear family.

These people all were against having a mom and dad at home with their children.

You might say these people can't be that powerful, but you have to remember, the Democratic Party has proven that they can be led around by the nose by the most extreme elements of their coalition. That is why, even though they have to know better, they will vote for abortion at 8\1/2\ months. That is why the Democratic Party will vote for a boy pretending to be a girl going into the girls' restroom, because they will be led around by the most extreme group.

Therefore, I don't think it should be considered a surprise that the Democratic Party has supported programs that overwhelmingly favor and encourage an end to the nuclear family.

What type of programs are they? Almost any so-called antipoverty program you can think of. Certainly, food share would qualify. Even worse, any low-income housing credits in which if you are not married and don't have much of a salary, you get almost free rent. Of course, to somebody who is 19 or 20 years old, being able to get outside their parents' house and get free rent is something that is very tremendous, very desired. There is free healthcare, free daycare, Pell grants, which lead to free college tuition.

All of these things are inducements to, as an Indian friend of mine said, result in the American system in which the women don't marry the men; the women marry the government.

Another downside, of course, is not only that the children do not have a father at home, and they would be better off with a father at home, but the fathers don't have anything to do, which is a problem, as well.

Normally, in life, the purpose or the goal of a man is to support his family, to be the husband and father of children. Of course, in the system encouraged by our welfare system, the men have nothing to do.

If you look in areas of society in which we have maybe the worst results of the welfare system, most of the bad results happen not to the children--although the children are damaged--not to the women, but to the men. When you think of areas of the United States that are more associated with people taking advantage of these systems, these benefits, the men are the ones who are largely committing the crimes. The men are going to prison. The men are doing the drugs.

We talk about it like it is society's problem. It is society's problem, but it was caused by an out-of-control welfare system that left the men with nothing to do. This was well documented by George Gilder, the great sociologist of the 1970s who followed around a young couple when the young gal got pregnant. He noticed it was not cause for concern. It was cause for celebration because of all of the benefits that were available.

A thing that really brings this home is the fact that frequently these programs provide a more beneficial system than even a low-income married couple has. We all know that when you talk to the clerks at the grocery store, they will frequently tell you that the people on the government are buying food that they themselves don't feel they can afford. We know that many young couples starting out may live with their parents, which is probably a good thing because the grandmas and grandpas can teach the young couple ways to live.

Unfortunately, here, they are not only given their own apartment but an apartment that is superior to most other apartments. When I had a staffer get married and look for an apartment back in Wisconsin, they found the best apartments were the low-income housing.

Why were the best apartments low-income housing? It is because we have a tax provision called section 42 in which we give overly generous subsidies to property developers to build new low-income housing. Since the government pays up to 70 percent of the cost of the housing, the developers, of course, are able to make those new apartments, which already are better than the old apartments just by their age. The new apartments are particularly nice because the government is paying for 70 percent of them. You get better apartments than you would for your sister who is getting married and having a husband.

We know that, frequently, middle-class families either choose not to help their children out when they go to college or don't have the money to help them out, and they wonder why somebody who comes from a family which maybe was living off the government in the first place gets free Pell grants and close-to-free college tuition, whereas the middle-class family does not.

When you look at the medical--and we don't want to take away anybody's medical care, but when you look at the medical, frequently people who have a job in the private sector may have a $10,000 or $15,000 deductible. Instead, people on the system have no deductible or almost no deductible. It is usually no deductible. Again, the government sets one up in which you are in better shape if you don't get married and marry the government.

As I said, a lot of the problems wind up landing on the men who have no purpose in life since the government has bribed the mother to raise the children without a father in the home, but it results in a lot of problems that this institution debates separately.

Over 100,000 people die every year in this country from illegal drugs. They can come from any family.

I want to emphasize that there are single parents who do a fantastic job. I know so many single parents, and their children would make anybody proud.

Nevertheless, when I talk to law enforcement, disproportionately the number of people who die of drug overdoses come from a difficult family background. If we were serious about doing something about fentanyl, we would be addressing the family background.

Now, we have nice bills this week. Though, they may be technically flawed--increasing the penalties for people with fentanyl--but if we really want to go after the 100,000 deaths, you figure you would want to do something about the family, but we don't care that much.

Crime. When I talk to law enforcement about crime that is going on, again and again they will talk about the family being broken down as the reason we have so much more crime than we did 50 years ago. As we get away from the crime caused from the tragic events in Minnesota, they have dropped the last couple of years. However, nevertheless, crime is much greater than it was before we passed the Great Society in the mid-1960s.

If we were serious about doing all we could to fight the crime in this country, we would address the current welfare system, which discourages making up a traditional intact family. In other words, I would not say that this institution is being entirely sincere in saying all they can do to fight crime when we continue to allow this welfare system to ramble on, give the men no responsibility, and have the high crime.

Another thing we spend a great deal of time talking about here is education. I was talking with my school superintendents about a month ago, and we talked about special education and the children who were having special problems. My school superintendents agreed that disproportionately those problems were caused by people with a tough family background. In other words, it is caused by the actions of this body who have set up a welfare system that discourages intact families.

This is the primary reason I ran for this job several years ago. If you are in a city council, if you are in a State legislature, and you want to address these problems like drugs or crime or the education system, you quickly realize that a lot of the problems are caused by the breakdown in the family, and that the Federal Government, who caused the problem in the first place, is doing nothing to solve the problem.

I ask our leadership, and I ask President Trump, in this important bill we are going to pass sometime in the next 2 or 3 months, to address our welfare system, which is designed to bribe, usually mothers, to raise the child without a father providing the support, without a father in the home. It is hard to believe we are trying to make America great unless we revisit the horrible welfare system.

There is one more thing that I think the press has not covered enough that I would like to touch upon today, and that is one of Donald Trump's great executive orders. He is doing a good job here. One of the things that I would like to get rid of and I thought it would take maybe 10 or 12 years to do, Donald Trump--at least temporarily until we have a Democrat President--got rid of it with a stroke of a pen.

In 1965--and something I think should have been unconstitutional-- Lyndon Johnson, with the stroke of a pen, said he would no longer enforce Executive Order 11246, which was an order put into effect by Lyndon Johnson that--well, he would argue it wasn't requiring--as a practical matter, it created an affirmative action type system in which preferences were given to women over men and preferences were given to people based on racial background.

Now, there are absurdities in the order in the first place. You could be a very well-off, say, Asian American worth millions of dollars, but you would be considered a minority in need of help. You could be somebody who just came to America a week ago, and you would be considered a person who needed help, and, for diversity purposes, would be given preference over a person of European descent who was around here for 50 years.

I have told the story when I was first made aware of this before, and I will tell it again so you can see how it worked out as a practical matter.

I got a call from a human resources professional who worked for a company that had at least 50 employees and did at least $10,000 of business with the Federal Government. They hired out a firm to tell them how to negotiate this executive order.

I might have these numbers off by one, but they were told that when they had five engineers and wanted to hire a sixth engineer, that sixth engineer better be a woman. It didn't have to be a woman, but they had to prepare to show the Federal Government that they did all they could to find a woman.

They went from three to four members of management, and they were again told: If you are going to hire a fourth member of management, see if you can make it a minority. If you can't, that is fine, but you have got to prove that you went out of the way to find someone.

As a practical matter, we had the Government weighing in, giving preference to one person over the other person for different jobs in this company. Because I tried to do something with this when I was in the State legislature, people would come up to me with other examples. There were plenty of examples.

This applies not only to employees of Federal contractors, but the Federal contractors themselves. Recently, I had even heard stories of people in which the Federal Government is going to pay significantly more--which I think is illegal--for preferred contractors rather than men of European descent. It is not only costing the taxpayer money, but they were incredibly unfair to these people.

Sometimes you get around it by maybe it is a guy, maybe he puts his wife in charge of the company, and that way he can say we have got a woman-owned business, and they should get preferences.

In any event, Donald Trump, with the stroke of a pen, got rid of this ridiculous law. It could be challenged in court. I am sure the Supreme Court will uphold President Trump. I would hope this body would get rid of this law once and for all. It would be hard to get it out of the Senate. I think a lot of Americans don't know it exists. I didn't know it existed until 12 or 14 years into my political career.

I thank Donald Trump for making sure one more time we are hiring the most qualified people we can find. We are contracting with the best that we can find. In any event, there are three stories for you today, Mr. Speaker. Let me remind you one more time that we are a republic, not a democracy, and our forefathers were scared to death of having a democracy.

I, one more time, will point out the huge penalties that the welfare system has on a man and a woman who want to get married together and raise a child. I hope that this body takes up that problem. It is not an easy problem to take up, but if we care at all about the next generation or the generation after the next generation, we have to walk our way back from the insane policies put into place by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.

One more time, we thank Donald Trump for allowing the government and contractors of the government to hire or contract with the best they can find.

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