[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 21 (Wednesday, February 2, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H912-H915]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1945
                            THE PRESS CORPS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the

[[Page H913]]

gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, President Biden and the progressives 
frequently talk about equity and prejudice, and they think we have a 
lot of discrimination in this country and that some people are treated 
better than others. I don't think that is a problem. I think his 
remarks are solely designed to tear down America and create 
resentments.
  I look at my own district of people of non-European descent, and 
whether I look at the Hmong from Laos or Sikhs from India, I see people 
who come here and grew up in lands in which their native tongue wasn't 
even English, mostly their religion was not Christianity, and they are 
thriving in America.
  But there is one group in the United States in general and Joe Biden 
in particular, if you look at his Build Back Better bill, Madam 
Speaker, seems to hate overtly, and there is discrimination against 
this group: married couples with children.
  Karl Marx was, of course, against the nuclear family because it was 
self-supporting and perhaps educated the children in morals and values 
that may be different from what the government wants. He wanted the 
government to raise the children.
  Black Lives Matter, which played a central role in retaining the 
majority for the Democrats last November, had on its website that its 
goal was to get rid of the Western-prescribed nuclear family until it 
was taken down.
  By the way, that is one of the most dishonest statements ever. 
Families with mom, dad, and kids are from all around the world. They 
are from Asia, from South America, and from Africa. The idea that an 
old-fashioned nuclear family is only European is preposterous, but 
nevertheless, that is what they say.
  But I get it. There are people in this world who don't want the 
father supporting the family.
  Now, let's look at what is going on in the Build Back Better bill. 
Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation has done a fine analysis of 
the effect of Build Back Better on nuclear families. Frequently, 
welfare programs disincentivize work and disincentivize marriage.
  How they do it is obvious. If you work harder, you don't get those 
benefits, be it low-income housing, be it SNAP, be it Medicaid. The 
harder you work, they begin to take away benefits.
  Furthermore, these programs discourage marriage because if a mother--
usually the mother--marries a man who has a decent income, then she is 
no longer considered in poverty. And, again, all the programs--the 
daycare, the earned income tax credit, and the SNAP--disappear.
  This is why I call what happens in the Build Back Better bill a part 
of the war on marriage. This began with Lyndon Johnson--for my money, 
the worst President this country has ever had, and not for the way he 
conducted the Vietnam war. I am old enough to remember when you talked 
about Lyndon Johnson, that was the horrible thing you said--but for 
what developed into a war on marriage.
  It is hard to believe, but when they started the welfare system in 
the 1960s, only 7 percent of children were born out of wedlock. That 
number is now 40 percent. It has stayed pretty static since the 1990s, 
but it is clear in the Build Back Better bill that President Biden is 
trying to push that number up above 40 percent.
  I recently heard of a young girl being advised by her mother to get 
pregnant, not to get pregnant and get married, but to get pregnant 
because it would open up a variety of government benefits, and mom felt 
this was the way to go through life.
  Build Back Better--and it depends which benefits we are looking at--
could increase the number of benefits, when put on everything else, to 
up to a $14,000 penalty for getting married. In other words, we do what 
we can to discourage marriage. SNAP, earned income tax credit, 
childcare, and low-income housing, as well as more narrowly tailored 
programs such as Pell grants or TANF, all carry marriage penalties with 
themselves.
  That is exactly what will happen if people come off the waiting list 
for the generous increases in low-income housing and take the benefit 
of that low-income housing together with an increase in the earned 
income tax credit and an increase in the SNAP.
  Madam Speaker, you can wind up getting $11,000 more for making this 
decision. Just like Karl Marx wanted: get the man out of the household.
  I know so much of the focus of the Build Back Better bill is just on 
the spending package and the effect it will have on inflation, and that 
is true. People like to focus on giving free college to illegal 
immigrants, which still amazes me, and that is bad, too. But I really 
think if the bill were to pass, what it will be remembered for is a big 
shot in the arm toward the type of people who do not want an old-
fashioned nuclear family.
  It is something that I haven't heard the press cover. Robert Rector's 
Heritage Foundation's study is something that we will make public 
within the next 2 or 3 days. When it is made public, I hope our press 
corps pays a little bit of attention to the shift that this bill will 
have toward making it more economically advantageous to not have two 
parents in the household.
  The next topic that I would like to address concerns the issue in the 
news involving Ukraine. I am not personally the most hawkish Member 
here regarding Ukraine, but what amazes me about this conflict is that 
more is not written about the Holodomor. I have talked to people in 
this building, talked to young people, and they don't even know what 
the Holodomor is.
  In the early 1930s, Joseph Stalin, the Communist dictator of the 
Soviet Union, had a problem in Ukraine. Some of the people in Ukraine 
wanted to go back and be an independent country, which it was for a 
while a few years before that. Some of the people in Ukraine, 
particularly the farmers, which were called kulaks, didn't like the 
idea of giving up their land and going to work for the government. Of 
course, one of the things that Communists like is they want everybody 
working for the government because they want to have total control over 
everybody.

  I am sure the problem in Ukraine in the early thirties is similar to 
what we have in Wisconsin. We have a lot of small dairy farmers. They 
own their own land and their own business, and they wouldn't take 
kindly to the idea of a Marxist government coming over and saying: This 
is no longer your land. These are no longer your cows. You are working 
for us, the government.
  So the way Joseph Stalin decided to deal with it is he decided to 
starve out the people in Ukraine. He decided to put troops around 
Ukraine so you couldn't escape. And he decided to take the crops and 
take the produce and put soldiers guarding it, and people began to 
starve to death.
  To this day, we don't have an exact figure in the early thirties of 
how many people starved to death in Ukraine because of decisions made 
by Joseph Stalin. When you look online, Madam Speaker, you get numbers 
from about 4 million on the low side to 15 million on the high side. I 
am no expert. I would guess it is more like 4 or 5 million. But 4 or 5 
million people starving to death is something every American 
schoolchild ought to be talking about. And when there is a possible 
conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it is something that the history 
channels and that the news stations ought to be talking about a whole 
lot.
  Instead, when I walk around here and talk to staffers or talk to all 
the other people who help us around here, again and again, I find 
people who don't even know that 4 to 5 million Ukrainians starved to 
death in the early thirties.
  One of the interesting things about this is that efforts were made to 
hide this almost immediately. The Soviet Union itself banned discussion 
of all the people who starved to death in Ukraine.
  It kind of reminds me of certain people in the United States who 
don't like everything to appear online and like to take things down so 
things that are inconvenient for the people in charge are not 
publicized.
  One of the things that everybody should know about--and I once talked 
to a New York Times reporter who himself didn't know about it--is that 
a guy by the name of Walter Duranty who worked for The New York Times 
was given a Pulitzer Prize as he sat over there and knew very well that 
this

[[Page H914]]

starvation was going on but didn't report it. He probably didn't report 
it because the cool kids from the liberal media like to think wonderful 
things about the Soviet Union. In a private letter, he said that the 
suffering is inflicted with a noble purpose.
  So, that is what the readers of The New York Times were getting back 
in the early thirties, and that man was given a Pulitzer Prize. I might 
be wrong, but I don't think The New York Times has given it back.
  Isn't it amazing that an American newspaper would be so horrible that 
if one of their reporters knew that millions of people were starving--
there is a letter that he wrote at the time in which he guessed it 
could be as high as 10 million people were starving. But because the 
Soviet Union was the darling of the leftist intellectuals, apparently, 
he didn't like to report it for the people back home. And to this day, 
I believe, The New York Times has yet to apologize or get rid of their 
Pulitzer.
  In any event, as long as Ukraine is in the news, I would hope that 
American schoolteachers of social studies would begin to educate the 
American people about the 4 or 5 or 7 or 10 million people who starved 
to death in the early thirties. After all, unless you know about that, 
Madam Speaker, you don't know about the reason for the animosity--or at 
least one of the reasons for the animosity--between the Ukrainians and 
the Russians.
  You don't know why people should be concerned when a Senator from 
Connecticut goes off and attends an anniversary ceremony for the U.S. 
Communist Party and is just let off the hook. You don't know why people 
like me are a little bit concerned when the founders of Black Lives 
Matter were avowed Marxists. Unless you know about what happened in 
Ukraine and communism in general, Madam Speaker, you don't know why so 
many people fought and died in Korea and Vietnam.
  Of course, the Holodomor is only one of the things that every 
American schoolchild should know about. There were plenty of other mass 
massacres from the Soviet Union. There were a couple of massacres in 
Red China. We have the horrible taking away of freedoms in Cuba or 
Venezuela. We talk about the 1 to 2 million people who were murdered in 
Cambodia.
  These are things that every American schoolchild should know because, 
as I said, right now, we have people kind of in this building and kind 
of in academia in America who I don't think really have a problem with 
Marxism. They think it is kind of a cool thing to flirt with.

  I do hope that our news stations and our educational institutions at 
least now do a little to educate the American public on the millions of 
people who died in Ukraine.
  There are two other issues to deal with today. I will follow up a 
little bit on what my colleagues said before because that is arguably 
the one area which--there are many areas--but on which the Biden 
administration is permanently damaging America.
  We recently got the numbers of people who came in this country in 
December. It took a while to get them. The total, including what they 
call got-aways, is about 90,000 people who didn't go through 
appropriate channels, people whom we sometimes refer to as illegal 
immigrants, 90,000 in December. The December before, it was a little 
over 20,000. So we have gone up from 20,000 to 90,000 in 1 year.
  I guess it is another thing that the press isn't really talking about 
like it should. I guess the COVID and the inability to get monoclonal 
antibodies out to people, which isn't talked about enough either, but 
that is something else we talk about. We can talk about Ukraine, and 
meanwhile, we aren't paying attention to just 1 more month in which the 
number of people coming here has shot up from 20,000 to 90,000.
  As my colleagues just pointed out, not only is that people coming 
across, when you have an open border, we recently hit an all-time 
record of 100,000 Americans dying of illegal drug overdoses in 1 year--
100,000.
  When I got this job, it was 45,000, and it was a scandal. Everybody 
in this House was supposed to have a plan to deal with the 45,000 
people who died every year of illegal drug overdoses. Well, Madam 
Speaker, in 7 years, it has gone up to 100,000. The biggest problem is 
fentanyl, and 100 percent of the fentanyl, I am told, is coming over 
the southern border.

                              {time}  2000

  But for some reason, our comatose press corps is not asking 
politicians, including the President, do you care?
  I mentioned the Vietnam war and the Korean war a second ago. When we 
talk about 100,000 people dying in 1 year, that is about as many 
American troops who died in Korea and Vietnam together. Every year 
people are dying, and all the heartbreak that that causes, we don't 
care anymore. Or at least our press corps or the people who determine 
what is on people's minds aren't caring anymore. If it was one of your 
loved ones who died you would care.
  So, I beg the American public and the comatose press corps to 
publicize the fact that we are now having 4\1/2\ times as many people a 
month come here as when Joe Biden took office and publicize the fact 
that 100,000 Americans are dying every year of illegal drug overdoses, 
largely fentanyl, which is frequently given to people who don't even 
know they have it.
  Now, we are going to address one final issue that has not received 
enough attention with regard to the Build Back Better bill.
  I will beg the Chair and anybody else who is listening to pay 
attention to this. The Build Back Better was a bill--one of these 
thousands, or at least well over 1,000-page bills--and to be honest, 
whenever you pass one of these massive bills up here, people who vote 
for it don't know all that is in it. It is impossible to know all that 
is in it.
  And I have talked to people about this provision that is in it and, 
quite frankly, most people don't know what is in it, to a certain 
extent, because there are sexier issues.
  But in Joe Biden's bill, we are giving grants designed, if they are 
accepted, to phase out 14(c) certificates. The listeners out there may 
or may not be familiar with work centers, or what used to be called 
sheltered workshops or CRPs, which are places--they do a lot of 
packaging in my district--places where people who have different 
abilities, sometimes are paid under minimum wage to do light 
manufacturing or packaging.
  It always is enjoyable for me to tour these facilities because you 
deal with people who, I would think, have been dealt a tough lot in 
life, and they are so overwhelmingly happy to have a job like everybody 
else; to have a job like their siblings where they go to work.
  And maybe, because of their different talents they are making $5 or 
$6 an hour. But they are getting other governmental assistance, and 
they are very proud every day to go to work and get a paycheck where 
they can buy some clothes for themselves, where they can buy gifts for 
their relatives. It is all so wonderful, and now they are under attack.
  There are two philosophical reasons, to give the other side its due, 
for shutting down the work centers and saying these people shouldn't be 
able to work there anymore.
  Some people feel that nobody should be able to work for minimum wage, 
and if you don't like the minimum wage of $7.50, you sure don't want 
people--or you claim you don't want people--working for $4 or $5 an 
hour. But again, these folks are getting other governmental benefits. 
It is not all they are living on.
  What you do when you get rid of 14(c) certificates, which is what you 
need to work for under minimum wage, you are telling these folks that 
you won't work at all.
  Secondly, there are people who don't like the fact that they feel 
these people are working in a segregated setting; in other words, they 
are working with other people with similar abilities to themselves.
  It is my experience, having toured or taken dozens of tours in places 
like this, that--and you can ask them as well--they are very happy to 
be working in these facilities. There are many people working in these 
facilities who have abilities similar to people in other facilities. 
And the people who work in these facilities, I think, like them so much 
because it is a chance to find lifelong friends.
  There was a time when people with different abilities had to stay at 
home and watch TV and just get to know their family members. But these 
jobs

[[Page H915]]

allow people to have--because frequently the turnover is not that 
great--they make friends who they will have for 30 or 40 years.
  It breaks my heart that there are people who think that we are going 
to shut these down because people will be so much better if they work 
in a facility without anybody with different abilities, and it will be 
so much better. We must be taking advantage of these people if somebody 
is making $5 an hour.
  I mean, I deal with the people who work in these facilities, 
including management. I don't think anybody is getting rich. They are 
probably, most of them, making a lot less money than a Congressman. But 
instead, they have to put up with these radicals--I will call them--
telling them that they are taking advantage of people because they are 
being paid 4 bucks an hour, 5 bucks an hour.
  So, in any event, I am going to ask people who care about people with 
different abilities; whether you have a relative in this position; 
whether you have a child in this position; whether you, yourself work 
in a work center, please contact your Congressman and say, don't shut 
down these facilities.
  It is what the life of so many of these folks is built around, and it 
would be crushing if you would try to just send them home or maybe find 
a business that will take them in for 3 or 4 hours a week, instead of 
34 hours a week.
  It would be crushing for these people if they lost the ability to 
work at the work centers or the CRPs.
  So I beg the majority party, you are in charge, that if you do get 
something through on that Build Back Better bill, that this provision 
which is the end of the work centers is not in it.
  Now, I would like to thank you for staying late and listening to my 
additional analysis.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President.

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