[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 22 (Thursday, February 2, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H663-H666]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMPORTANCE OF FREE SPEECH
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I don't intend to use the full 60 minutes,
but first, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx),
the wonderful chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.
Denouncing Socialism
Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I thank my great friend from Wisconsin, who
serves on the Education and the Workforce Committee, and is a very
valuable member of that committee, as well as the Oversight and
Accountability Committee.
Mr. Speaker, today, the House rightfully condemned and denounced
socialism in all forms and resolved to oppose socialist policies.
As the Bible says in Proverbs 14, ``All hard work brings a profit,
but mere talk leads only to poverty.''
Socialism is mere talk. Socialism is the idea that if you work hard,
your neighbor will enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Socialist regimes, in just the last 100 years, have impoverished,
enslaved, starved, and even killed over 100 million people. This is a
horrific cost borne by far, far too many.
Socialism, no matter its form, will never have a place in our
Republic.
Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I guess, after hearing the last speaker, I
should kind of readjust my remarks and comment about the importance of
free speech and the current flight from free speech which we have going
on in the United States.
I have here a little graph, which I viewed with total alarm when my
staff was able to come up with it. Of course, freedom of speech takes
many forms in our society: the ability to write books, the ability to
get on the radio, and now the ability to post things you want on the
internet.
I hope my good friend from Texas looks at this--he left the floor
right now--and sees how precarious the right to free speech is in
America today.
We look here, and there is a question: The U.S. Government should
take steps to protect false info online, even if it limits freedom of
information.
Of course, we all can disagree about a lot of things. We can disagree
on politics. We can disagree on elections. We can disagree on medical
facts. That is why when we have something wrong with us medically, we
sometimes get a second opinion, because one doctor thinks different
than the other.
Of course, we all know people, you know: Should I take the shot?
Should I not take the shot? Should I get surgery? Should I not get the
surgery? Should I get remdesivir? Should I not get remdesivir? A lot of
questions are up in the air.
There was a time when it could have had an effect on an election if
the people found out that Hunter Biden took a lot of money from people
in other countries and maybe had an underlying goal.
The question is, is free speech what this country is about or not?
With the Democratic Party--and this alarms me because I was a
Democrat until I was 20 years old, and I thought Democrats were out in
front on free speech and Republicans were the staid people.
We have a situation right now, over the last few years, in which 65
percent of the Democrats, a clear majority, almost 2 to 1: The U.S.
Government should take steps to restrict false info online even if this
restricts freedom of information.
Only 28 percent of Republicans do.
Now, this graph shocks me. This weekend, I am going to be speaking to
some Republicans back in the district. I will tell you, I am going to
tell them how disappointed I am that 28 percent of the Republicans
responding to the poll apparently don't want freedom of information.
I would hope my colleague from Texas goes back home and explodes at
the people back home that 65 percent of the Democrats, or people
leaning Democrats, want to restrict the free flow of information.
You could say they only want to prevent false things from being put
out there, but, of course, who determines what is false and what is
true?
If you look at the next one, another sign of if you believe in free
speech or not: Should tech companies take steps to restrict false info
online even if it limits freedom of information?
We all know things that some people agree with and some people don't
agree with, and sometimes things we once thought were false turn out to
be true.
Here again, it scares me. The Democrats when I was a Democrat and 20
years old, I will tell you, wouldn't have thought this way, but the
Democrat Party has changed a lot. Seventy-six percent think tech
companies should restrict false info even if it limits freedom of
information. Only 37 percent of the Republicans feel that way. That is
a very scary thing, scary for our country.
It comes down to what I think is the scariest thing of all: the way
people think. It is not even things that the governments do. I don't
know if we have bad schools out there or whatever, but the way people
think is kind of scary.
{time} 1445
We know in Canada, to the north of us, which we thought was kind of a
country like America, right now, they crack down on churches, if maybe
they disagree with the party line on sexual behavior.
We mentioned in the last election, things began to come out about
Hunter Biden taking money from foreign outfits, presumably just being
given money because of the access he had to his dad. Oops, better not
let that out there online, better not talk about that on TV. Oh, my
goodness, that might affect the way people think.
So we have this restriction going on right now, like I said, on the
COVID stuff. I don't know the degree to which it is influenced by
campaign contributions from companies like Pfizer. I don't know whether
it is the pride of the public health establishment.
But we are entering into an era in this country in which we are not
going to be able to say certain things unless the American public
realizes that the First Amendment is borderline absolute. The fact that
such a huge party,
[[Page H664]]
overwhelming majorities, have no problem with know-it-alls in the
government restricting what you can find online, is very scary.
I hope and pray that the American public wakes up on this dangerous
trend. I know we are late here on Thursday. I hope my friend who just
got done speaking weighs in here.
I will talk to Republicans this weekend, but I really hope that my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle come down strongly with their
rank and file that apparently is against free speech and tell them the
importance of free speech.
The Situation with Ukraine and Russia
Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, the next thing I am going to address is
Ukraine. Again, I don't think the American public or the American
press, the mainstream media, are asking the right questions on this
vitally important topic.
It would be better for Ukraine, it would be better for Russia,
certainly their young people, and better for the stability of the
world, if a peace agreement was reached. But there are too many people
in this Capitol who I don't think, for whatever reason, consider peace
a priority. Among those people, I will label the Biden administration.
Eventually this war is going to come to an end. All wars come to an
end eventually. The only question is: Will the war come to an end in
2023, 2024, 2027?
As the war goes on, obviously more and more people die, more and more
people are injured, more and more property is destroyed. You create
hard feelings such that more and more people in both Ukraine and Russia
will have anger toward each other for years and years in the future.
Nevertheless, the Biden administration, I get when I talk to them, is
not aggressively looking for peace. Now, the United States has
obviously weighed in very heavily on this war. It is hard for anybody
to believe that we would be an impartial broker. But there are
countries like Turkey, like France, like Israel that can be encouraged
to step in and put an end to the war going on here.
I have said before, war between any two countries, they should want
to look for peace. But between these two countries, that is
particularly so. It is not talked about enough.
Ukraine has the second lowest birthrate in the world. I mean, if you
have the second lowest birthrate in the world, you ought to be doing
all you can to protect the few young people you have for the next
generation. So among all countries, Ukraine especially should be saying
they want this war to end.
Russia also has a very low birth rate. If my district is any
indication, I think a lot of the young Russians that are there are
leaving Russia for other countries, I think in part because of the bad
economy they have in Russia and because we still, despite all our
foibles, have a free market economy in the United States and a much
more honest government.
I have no problem finding Russians in my district. Over a year ago
now, when I was in the San Diego sector on the southern border, during
that 2 or 3 weeks I was down there in just solely the San Diego sector,
the second most common nationality coming from Mexico were Russians.
Which means not only does Russia have a low birthrate, but they have a
lot of their younger people with their children coming to the United
States to get away from Russia.
So we have two countries that their number one priority really ought
to be making sure we have as many young people as possible and making
sure they have more children, or these two great cultures, Ukraine and
Russia, are going to end. Instead, this war goes on.
Like I said, for these two countries, it ought to be especially easy
to find some sort of compromise and stop the killing.
It is especially important, to not only just stop the killing right
now, but we have got to remember, Russia has hypersonic capability and
they have nuclear weapons. Maybe you can say things will go on for
years and years and they will never use the weapons. I am not sure that
is true. There are obviously people in this Chamber who hope that
Vladimir Putin is going to be forced to step aside. There is no
indication that his replacement will be more to our liking, and there
is some indication that it will be worse.
So I hope the American press corps, the comatose press corps of the
United States of America, spends more time asking all of the principals
in that war: Are you for peace or not?
Would you negotiate for peace or not before any more people die?
And I would hope people on all sides of the aisle would be in favor
of that.
There is another one that is kind of funny. When I was a Democrat,
before I was 20 years old, I thought the Republican Party was the party
of war. But now it is kind of the other way around. You talk to these
Democrats, and they have no desire to have this thing wrap up. I hope
maybe the Democrats who were around when I was in high school can step
forward and say: Hey, wait a minute here. The Democrats used to be the
party of peace, or at least they fancied themselves the party of peace.
Maybe they never sincerely were.
The Plight of Ahmadiyya Muslims
Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, the next thing I would like to talk about
is, in my district, I have a mosque of Ahmadiyya Muslims. They believe
things different than a lot of the mainstream Shiites and Sunni Muslims
believe. But that is not the major reason I bring them up today. I
bring up their plight because worldwide other Muslim groups are
persecuting them and sometimes killing them.
Recently, in Burkina Faso, nine men were murdered before the women
and children there. They are frequently persecuted in Pakistan. There
are probably about 15 million Ahmadiyya Muslims in the world. About 4
million of those are in Pakistan. Pakistan is not exactly the most
forgiving, tolerant country in the world, and it is no surprise that
Ahmadiyya Muslims are sometimes murdered there.
Algeria is another country in which we have mosques, and they are not
treated that well.
It is one of the wonderful traits of the United States that while we
not only believe in free speech--or at least we did until recently--
particularly speech is protected when it is religious in nature. It is
important for all Americans to learn the lesson of what goes on in
Algeria or Pakistan or Burkina Faso, that there are countries in which
not only is religious speech suppressed, but people are killed for
saying things that are disliked by other groups of people.
I wish my best for my friends who are Ahmadiyya Muslims. I wish the
best for the mosque that they currently have in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and
I hope the rest of the world is supportive of them in their plight.
The Topic of Immigration
Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I have spoken many times from this
platform about immigration, and I am going to speak about it again
today, because I think it is even more important, if that is possible,
than what is going on in Ukraine.
In the last month that we have information, we hit another all-time
record in the number of people coming in the country. I think whether
it is because they don't care or whether it is because they are for
unlimited people coming here, the American press has kind of fallen
asleep on this topic more than they should have.
More than a year ago, in kind of the final month, December of 2020,
the final month that we had a different administration, there were
about 21,000 people who came here. That was a big deal, 21,000 people
coming across the southern border who probably shouldn't be here. We
are now at 238,000. The all-time high, 238,000 people coming across the
border. Of that 238,000, 67,000 are got-aways.
So our listeners are aware, there are two groups of people, when you
hear about the number of people coming across the border. There are the
people who check in with the Border Patrol. They look for the Border
Patrol. ``We want asylum in the United States.'' They probably don't
have a valid asylum claim, but once we let them into the country, they
disappear into the country.
There are other people called got-aways that don't check in with the
Border Patrol. They are probably more dangerous, because they are more
likely to have drugs with them, since they aren't turning themselves in
to the Border Patrol. They are more likely to have criminal records
because we don't
[[Page H665]]
have an opportunity to do a background check on them and see whether
they have committed crimes in the U.S. or see if they have committed
crimes in Canada. The number of got-aways, more likely to have drugs
with them, has gone up from 21,000 2 years ago to 67,000. It tripled.
And what do we hear from the Biden administration? Nothing.
There is another subgroup called ``unaccompanied minors.'' There was
a time early on in the Trump administration when people were worried
about families being separated, even though they were trying to keep
them separated for a minimum amount of time and only when people broke
the law. We have now gone from 2,000 unaccompanied minors every month
to 8,000 unaccompanied minors.
Now, isn't that amazing? Minors are coming here without their
parents' protection, without their parents knowing where they are?
I mean, if our goal is to keep families together, isn't the first
thing we ought to do, if we find a child, is spin them around and send
them back to their country of origin rather than allow them to
negotiate the trip from wherever, El Salvador or Brazil or wherever, to
somewhere in the United States?
I hope the American public--somebody has got to look to find it on
the internet, because the mainstream media is not going to tell you--I
hope they familiarize themselves with the growing number of people who
are coming here who are not adequately vetted.
I want to point out something else. When we talk about the number of
people coming here that aren't vetted, the other side of that coin is,
once people come here and once we find out we made a mistake, once we
find out that they are perhaps committing crimes, how many of those
people are we kicking out of country?
That should be fairly automatic, right?
If we have people who aren't American citizens coming here and
committing crimes, out they go. I mean, really nobody should be let in
here illegally. But if they commit crimes, wow.
Well, what do we find? In the last year before COVID, 267,000
Americans were deported. A fair number, close to that, were deported
even under Barack Obama. But about a quarter million a year illegal
aliens were deported, primarily because they broke a law of some
nature.
In the most recent year--and this is well into COVID, so it shouldn't
have as big an effect--we are down to about 72,000. So at the same
time, the number of people coming here illegally has gone up by like a
factor of 10. The number of people that are being deported has dropped
by about 3 quarters, there we are dealing with people who broke the
law.
I was talking to a guy who was a U.S. attorney that I ran into, and
he was stunned. He was a U.S. attorney at the time. We have changed
administrations. He was stunned at the new guidelines from the Biden
administration, the degree to which people in the past would have been
deported. It is no big deal.
So this must be a priority. The American public should wake up. I am
going to blame my Republican friends, too, for a little bit.
In the last election, I think the Republicans should have spent more
time talking about illegal immigration, an area where there is such a
stark difference between the parties. But for whatever reason, I don't
think they talked about it enough.
Now, there are so many reasons I talked about people who are
criminals coming here. I am one more time going to talk about all of
the illegal drugs coming across the border. There are 108,000 Americans
a year dying from illegal drugs, primarily fentanyl, almost all of
those coming across the southern border. Sometimes big numbers glaze
over. The number of people who die of illegal drugs--I am old enough to
remember the Vietnam war. Every year, the number of people who die of
illegal drugs is twice the number of people who died in 12 years in
Vietnam. Think about that.
I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war. I am old enough to
remember all of the students protesting: Oh, too many people are dying,
too many people are dying. And too many people were dying. But now, of
illegal drugs, twice as many people die every year as died in the 12
years of the Vietnam war.
Those college students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison,
they ought to be marching up and down State Street, around Bascom Hall,
protesting the 108,000 people who are dying and wondering what in the
world their government is doing to prevent it.
Now, I think a lot of it is there is something wrong if you are
taking a drug that is so powerful you could die.
{time} 1500
But in any event, 108,000 deaths are too much. I suggest to all my
colleagues, over the weekend, if they run into their district
attorneys, if they run into their sheriffs, ask in each county how many
people died last year of illegal drug overdoses.
We are way over the number of people who die in car accidents and
homicides combined--way more. And if somebody dies in a car accident,
it makes the paper. If somebody dies in a homicide, of course, it makes
the paper. But way more people die every year of illegal drug
overdoses. You don't read about that at all.
To a certain extent, I blame these 100,000 deaths not just on the
politicians, and particularly President Biden who do nothing, but on
our comatose press corps who are not ringing the bell, saying it is
time to do something about this illegal immigration and time to do
something about these illegal drugs.
Now, my final little area that I am going to address today is a bill
I am introducing called the Responsible Borrowing Act.
One of the crises we have in this country is the huge number of
amount of student loan debt that is out there. It is much worse than it
used to be years ago. I guess a lot of the blame has to go on the
universities who are selling college degrees or maybe admitting people
who weren't going to get a college degree anyway, and they wind up with
these huge student debts.
If you plan on paying off your debt, maybe you delay having children,
maybe you never have children--what a tragedy--maybe you put off buying
a house or your student loan debt is so great that your credit rating
is such you can't get a loan given the amount of student debt.
I have what I would think is a minor bill, but I am shocked that it
is going to be considered controversial if we bring it to the floor.
There was a time in this country--in the 1990s, I don't know if it
was legal or they just weren't enforcing the law--if you were a student
loan officer at a university and a student was taking out a student
loan, that person was able to say, I think you are taking out too much
of a loan. Maybe they would say, I think you ought to get another job.
Maybe they might say, you are living too high on the hog. You are
spending too much money. You do not have to take out a $5,000 loan; you
should make a go on a $2,000 loan. Maybe they could say, given the
major you are getting, you cannot expect to make enough money to pay
off this loan.
Today, believe it or not, it is against the law for these loan
counselors or these financial aid counselors to say, you ought not take
out this loan. That is almost beyond belief. We began this little
lecture by talking about free speech, and now we have a situation in
which we bar loan counselors from saying you ought not take out a
bigger loan.
By the way, I think across the board way too many Americans are in
debt on a variety of things.
My bill will go back to the days in which financial aid
administrators are able to tell students, this is going to be too much
of a loan. It may feel good to get that big check in your hand when you
are 20 years old, but when you are 30 years old, that debt is not going
to be so great.
If you would not spend so lavishly in Congress, or would get a better
degree, or maybe delay going to college for a couple years to make sure
you are confident that you are going to complete a degree.
This was brought to my attention from somebody who runs a university.
They were appalled with it. They have been running the university since
the early 1990s and remember the good old days when they prevented
students from taking out excessive student
[[Page H666]]
loans by telling them, what a dumb financial decision. The good old
days are gone.
Now, when supposedly we are concerned about excessive student loan
debt, we tie the hands of the financial aid officers, and tell them,
you cannot discourage people from taking out debt. At a minimum,
shouldn't that bill just fly right through here?
I bet it won't fly right through here because, for whatever reason,
too many of the universities don't like to rain on the students'
parade, and tell them, oh, maybe you shouldn't go out on so many
Saturday nights or maybe you should get another job bartending or
waitressing or what have you. Some universities will fight this.
But I encourage my colleagues to pass the Responsible Borrowing Act
and go back to the days in which the colleges cared about their
students.
There are some colleges who aren't going to take advantage of this,
they don't care about their students' financial health at all once they
leave. It is sad to see, but I have come across it.
At least we want to give the responsible colleges the right to tell
their students, hey, wait a minute, you don't have to take out any more
debt.
I would like to thank you for listening to this. I hope you all
learned a little bit about Ahmadiyya Muslims and a little more about
the huge volume of people crossing the southern border.
I think you learned a little bit more about the huge number of people
in our country, and particularly Democrats--I can't believe I was once
a Democrat--who want to restrict free speech, and we have to be on the
lookout for that and educate our young ones.
We learned a little bit about the Responsible Borrowing Act and how
it is high time we let universities tell their students, you don't have
to take out any more. We also learned a little bit how our government
is not working for peace in the Ukraine.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________