[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 27 (Thursday, February 9, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H806-H808]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           STATE OF OUR UNION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Grothman) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be able to be the last 
Congressman to speak in this historic State of the Union week here in 
Congress.
  There are several comments that have to be made about the State of 
the Union because if you are just going to listen to what President 
Biden had to say, you would have a very warped and distorted view of 
what is going on in America today.
  I think the most harmful thing he said is he one more time talked 
about the talk and implied that America's police force is a racist 
police force and a stain on America's reputation. That is a lie. It is 
a lie. It has been disproven year after year, study after study.
  Nevertheless, President Biden, I think in an effort to scare Black 
Americans into voting for him, claims that we have a horrible racist 
society in general and a racist police problem in particular.
  I will mention two articles which came out right after the 
unfortunate

[[Page H807]]

events, the tragic events, the horrific events that happened in 
Minneapolis 2 years ago, for those of you back home to google. One 
article is by a very perceptive gal by the name of Heather Mac Donald, 
appearing in The Wall Street Journal, and one is by a gentleman, who 
happens to be Black, appearing in the City Journal at that time.
  They both looked not at the number of people who died across the 
board but looked at a percent of people who committed felonies, a 
percent of people who committed crimes who wound up in a confrontation 
with police and wound up passing away. In both instances, they found 
that, if anything, Black Americans were less likely to die in a 
confrontation with police.
  Again, I will mention these articles, ``The Myth of Systemic Police 
Racism,'' Heather Mac Donald in The Wall Street Journal in June 2020, 
and ``Stories and Data,'' Coleman Hughes, in the City Journal of June 
2020.
  This is something that is a stain on America. Joe Biden is doing all 
he can to divide America by using his State of the Union Address to 
claim that the police are racists.
  Does this have an effect? It has an effect. It has an effect twice.
  First of all, I think it has an effect in that it causes some people 
to believe him. After all, we have a White President. Why would he be 
lying and telling us we have all these racist police if we don't? And 
the effect is that it is causing, sadly, some anger in the Black 
community, which is resulting in more and more deaths of police.
  I thought of this when, earlier this week, I think maybe on the exact 
day that we had the State of the Union, if not the day earlier, one 
more policeman, who happened to be White, was murdered in Milwaukee.
  Is this myth that is going out there, talking about racist police, 
racist police, racist police, causing more police to die? I don't know, 
but it is something to look at.
  I think it also causes the police, understandably, to be less 
aggressive and less effective because they are always afraid of being 
called out for being racist.
  If President Biden is lying and telling everybody that we have all 
these racist police, it is surprising that the police themselves are a 
little more afraid to be aggressive or engage in I guess what I will 
call traditional policing.
  Last year, in Milwaukee, a city which is just adjacent to my 
district, the number of murders went up I think about 25, to an all-
time high. It was the third year in a row that we had an all-time high 
number of murders in Milwaukee, and that is despite the fact that the 
population is drifting down. Why are we at an all-time high number of 
murders in Milwaukee?
  Generally, I think the police, first of all, are not adequately 
funded. To a certain extent, they are not adequately funded because 
politicians like Joe Biden get out there and tell us how horrible and 
racist the police are. Is it any surprise that the Milwaukee City 
Council would not want to hire many police?
  Secondly, the Milwaukee police are afraid to go into certain 
neighborhoods, sometimes high-crime neighborhoods where they are 
especially used because they are afraid if they do confront the 
criminal element, they will get labeled as racist. Rather than worry 
about some cheap politician like Joe Biden calling them racist over 
time, why not just stand back, not be aggressive, and not get labeled?
  In any event, I felt of all the lies of President Biden, his drumbeat 
of racism in society in general and racism with regard to police is the 
most damaging.
  Mr. Speaker, the next thing that I thought was very scary for the 
country as a whole, I think probably the biggest crisis that has 
developed in the last 2 years, is the crisis at the border. Admittedly, 
if you don't live in Arizona or don't live in Texas, you might not see 
the full import of the crisis.

  President Biden implied that this is, at best, something that just 
miraculously happened out of nowhere and, at worst, was happening 
because the Republicans aren't doing enough to help him close the 
border.
  I would like to leave America with some numbers. These are both 
numbers from December. In December 2020, a grand total of 21,000 people 
crossed the border. In December 2022, 2 years into the Biden 
Presidency, 238,000 people crossed the border, an increase of 11 times.
  This is not something that just happened. It was a problem when we 
had 28,000 people crossing the border under the Trump administration. 
When it goes up by a factor of 11, it is not because the Republicans 
aren't negotiating. There are all sorts of things we negotiate whenever 
we put together the annual budget, and a given number of Republicans 
vote for it.
  No, it is because Joe Biden changed the policy at the border. He is 
making it much easier for immigrants to cross the border. For whatever 
reason, he wants to apparently change America by entering in the people 
who receive no instruction, no education on our Constitution and the 
values that you are supposed to adapt if you are an American citizen. 
As a result, we are over 11 times as many people crossing the border as 
2 years ago.

                              {time}  1245

  He didn't mention at all the number of people that are deported for 
committing crimes. The number of people we are deporting right now is 
about one quarter the number of people who were deported when President 
Trump was in office, as well.
  Now, President Trump wasn't a perfect man, but I will tell you, even 
at the time, a lot of people were not being deported. What we have is, 
we have a President who, even after people prove themselves unfit to 
become Americans by committing crimes, they are not deported.
  I want the American public to ponder those numbers. We have gone from 
20,000 a month to 238,000 a month.
  I also want to point out the huge number of unaccompanied minors 
coming across the border. There was a time when the mainstream media 
felt it was horrific if, even for a few days while their parents were 
being processed, children were without their parents.
  We have gone in the last 2 years from around 2,000 to around 8,000 
every month of unaccompanied minors crossing into our border.
  Where are their parents?
  We apparently don't care. We are told: we find sponsors for these 
young people.
  I am told by the Border Patrol that particularly the Central American 
countries do not like the current policy of the United States of taking 
in unaccompanied minors here. After all, they believe that is the 
future of their countries. They do not like us grabbing all their 
minors.
  Where are the advocates?
  We let over 8,000 young children into the country every year and we 
may have no idea whatsoever where their parents are.
  Do their parents know where the new sponsors are?
  Do we know if these children are being human trafficked?
  What do we know? Nothing.
  There are 8,000 children, not without their parents for 2 or 3 days, 
but could be without their parents for the rest of their lives.
  I hope America takes away the moral stain on our Nation of allowing 
the separation of 8,000 or 9,000 minors every month from their parents. 
I hope the American public does not fawn to the idea that somehow the 
reason we have 230,000 people every month crossing the border is 
because of Republican inaction.
  Good grief, in the last 2 years, we didn't have the House, we didn't 
have the Senate, and we sure didn't have the Presidency. The reason for 
that is because he has changed policy from what it was 2 years ago.
  It is not rocket science to get back down to 20,000. You just have to 
go back to what the laws were 2 years ago, but President Biden clearly 
doesn't want to do that. He wants as many people coming here as 
possible. Like I said, the clearest evidence of that is not only 
letting everybody here, but he is not even deporting people who break 
the law.
  In any event, that is, I think, what we have to look at when we look 
at the southern border and the policies that are going on down there.
  The next thing that I don't think he spent anywhere near enough time 
on--but it should be required to be addressed by, quite frankly, every 
politician, in part, because of his inaction at

[[Page H808]]

the southern border and, in part, because of his hatred of the police 
or as labeling police as racist--we now have over 100,000 fentanyl 
deaths in this country every month. As I have said before, we have more 
people dying of illegal drug use in this country every month, twice as 
many people as died in the Vietnam war collectively.
  Now, I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war. I remember the 
media pounding, pounding, pounding that we had to get out of Vietnam 
because, by the time it was over, 57,000 Americans had lost their 
lives.
  We are now at 180,000 deaths from illegal drugs each year and what do 
we get?
  We get less focused on the border than ever before, we get attacks on 
the police for fear of being called racist, and, as a result, that 
number keeps going up and up and up.
  When I think of all the parents who have lost children, people who 
have lost their siblings, people who have lost their parents because of 
these drug overdoses--frequently people who are taking drugs don't know 
fentanyl is in the drugs--I think, why isn't the government doing 
anything?
  To be honest, it kind of stumps me.
  Why does the Biden administration not care that over 100,00 people 
are dying?
  Why doesn't the news media make that a banner headline? Wouldn't you 
think?
  Over 9,000 people are dying every month of illegal drug overdose, 
most of it fentanyl, the press doesn't report about it.
  I am more than appalled that President Biden didn't spend more time 
talking about the huge drug problems we have in America and the huge 
number of deaths rather than focusing on, what I would consider in some 
cases, rather minor issues.
  The final thing to talk about is President Biden mentioned Ukraine. 
He did not talk about what we are going to do to end that war. And as 
more people die over there, admittedly not Americans, but as more 
people die, one would hope that the Western nations, and the United 
States in particular--who didn't seem that concerned when the war 
began, after all, it was predicted that next month Russia is going to 
invade, blah, blah, blah--but President Biden didn't seem to care that 
the war was starting.
  Then the war started, and we really haven't made much of an effort to 
end the war. At the end of every war, unless there is complete victory 
on one side or the other, usually every side gets something and loses 
something, and has to sell the fact that all these people died for a 
reason or for a purpose.
  The United States is not, from what I can see, making an effort to 
end this war. Again, we are told thousands of soldiers are dying every 
month. We know Russia is a very powerful country with regard to 
nuclear weapons, but also tactical nuclear weapons, the ability to shut 
down electricity, the ability to use hypersonic missiles.

  Nevertheless, it seems as though the Biden administration would be 
perfectly happy if this war were going on another 2 years from now. 
That is just intolerable.
  As I said, it is a human disaster for Russia and Ukraine, and the 
possibility that this war will bleed into the United States--or, even 
more likely, bleed into Poland and bleed into Germany--is something 
that should concern us all.
  But for whatever motivation--and one can only guess at motivations, 
this is where conspiracy theories come in--the powers that be in the 
United States--the one-world-government types--don't seem to be 
bothered by this war at all.
  It is something that demands more speculation, and the next time 
President Biden wanders into some microphones, he should be asked a 
little bit more: Do you have a plan for wrapping this up?
  The answer to which appears to me right now is that, no, he does not.
  There are a few issues that I think we should have spent more time on 
addressing, or that President Biden should have spent more time on 
addressing. I hope just because it is not a State of the Union Address 
doesn't mean he can't give speeches. He runs around the country.
  First of all, I would call upon President Biden to apologize to the 
police of the country and admit that the studies that are out here in 
The Wall Street Journal and in the City Journal are accurate and the 
police are not racist.
  Please, President Biden, stop lying to the American public and tell 
the American public that Black people are not disproportionately being 
harmed by the police.
  I hope President Biden does something on the border. Above all, he 
has got to change his policy and send more people back to Mexico, 
although more Border Patrol agents wouldn't hurt. If he cared about 
drugs, more drug-sniffing dogs wouldn't hurt.
  But, please, President Biden, pay a little attention to what is going 
on at the border before we lose this country.
  I ask you to spend a little time seriously focusing on the fentanyl 
crisis. We should not be losing over 100,000 citizens every month.
  Please, I realize we can't do it, but you can allow Israel or Turkey 
or France--push them a little bit--to work towards some sort of final 
agreement with Russia. I think it is obvious Russia probably regrets 
invading Ukraine given the huge number of people whom they have had 
die. I can't help but think Ukraine, being the smaller country, the 
number of people who die is a bigger proportion of their population. 
Plus I believe they have had tens of millions--or at least they claim--
a significant number of civilians who have died in the war.
  I think economically it is going to take both Russia and, in 
particular, Ukraine quite a while to recover from this. It would be 
nice if President Biden displayed a little bit of humanity. He didn't 
try to stop the war right before it started. His intelligence agencies 
predicted it. There were things he could have done. He didn't do them, 
but I wish now he would step forward and display a little humanity 
there.
  Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for this time to speak, and I yield back 
the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President. Members are further 
reminded to direct their remarks to the Chair and not a perceived 
viewing audience.

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