[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 72 (Friday, April 28, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H2114-H2116]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  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 think the next 2\1/2\ months of this 
institution are going to be consumed with the budget and the amount of 
spending. I don't think the press has done an adequate job of alerting 
the public to the crisis we currently have.
  As we have talked before, we are headed towards the Federal debt of 
$31 trillion being 100 percent of GDP. Of course, over time as the 
value of the dollar changes, it sometimes makes it difficult to see 
exactly how bad that is. The last time the debt was as great as the 
Gross National Product was the end of World War II.
  Now, at the end of World War II, America was very economically strong 
because Japan and Europe were flattened by the end of World War II, but 
even more, we knew at the end of World War II that we were going to lay 
off hundreds of thousands of military personnel. We knew the factories 
would stop building the ships, the planes, and the tanks that were 
necessary for World War II, and therefore, we knew we were heading into 
a time of dramatically decreased spending.
  That is exactly what happened. At the end of World War II, slowly we 
dropped from 100 percent of GDP debt ratio down to a little over 20 
percent. Things were really getting under control. We were a little bit 
over 20 percent during the Presidency of Richard Nixon. Then things 
began to slowly rise again. Recently, in part with COVID and in part 
the completely reckless spending under President Biden, we are headed 
back to 100 percent again.
  The American public has to stop and think. While we knew at the end 
of World War II spending was inevitably going to drop, we live during a 
time of an aging population in which the amount of money we are 
spending on Medicare and Social Security is going to continue to go up 
if we do nothing else.
  Now, we sure should never, ever cut Social Security. I will not do 
that. We should not be reducing any Medicare benefits. That means we 
have to look at the rest of the budget.
  What do we see is President Biden's vision for America?
  Let's look at the budget that he has already proposed for the 
calendar year beginning October 1. Line after line after line does not 
show the cuts that are necessary that the Republican Party is prepared 
to make.
  The Department of Agriculture is up 14 percent. The Department of 
Commerce is up 11 percent. The Department of Education is up 13\1/2\ 
percent. The Department of Energy is up 13\1/2\ percent. The Department 
of Interior is up over 9 percent. The Department of Labor is up 11 
percent. The Department of State, which is wasteful, is up 11 percent. 
The Department of the Treasury is up 15 percent. The Department of the 
Treasury, of course, includes a nice equity advisory board. The 
Environmental Protection Agency is up 19 percent. The National Science 
Foundation is up 18 percent.
  Wherever you look, President Biden has responded to the greatest 
debt-to-GDP ratio in my lifetime by raising spending 8, 9, 10 percent. 
The only areas without significant increases are the military, despite 
President Biden, as far as I can see, doing very little to

[[Page H2115]]

try to end the war in Ukraine, and the southern border.
  By the way, I want to repeat an anecdote to let the Chair know 
exactly the mindset of the Biden administration when it comes to 
Homeland Security.

                              {time}  1230

  I was down on that border 2 weeks ago. I have been a fan of drug 
dogs, which are so necessary, given that the majority of drugs that 
flow across the border, killing 107,000 Americans, are very handy for 
the Border Patrol and ICE.
  I asked a member of the Border Patrol union down there what he 
thought of the dogs, figuring he would, of course, want more. He said, 
no, they don't need more dogs because the last time the Border Patrol 
got more dogs, under President Biden--they bought 38 new dogs, not to 
sniff out drugs, not to prevent the killing of over 100,000 Americans a 
year. What did they do with the new dogs? They got therapy dogs because 
they heard the Border Patrol was stressed.
  Of course, the Border Patrol is stressed. You have so many people 
coming across the border, and the administration is not acting or 
making the policy changes necessary to control the border.
  What can you say for an administration when, presented with the 
possibility of new dogs at the border, it feels the priority is therapy 
dogs? If the Border Patrol agents feel stressed, they have a dog to 
pet.
  That is a true story of the priorities of the Biden administration at 
the border.
  In any event, you can see virtually many agencies with over 10 
percent increases, with the major outlier there being defense and 
homeland security.
  We should comment a little bit more on the equity advisory board at 
Treasury. Not only does the Department of the Treasury have new 
bureaucrats designed to determine how we are going to treat people--by 
race, sex, or sexual preference--these new boards or commissions are 
put throughout the new budget. The function of these boards, I feel, is 
to divide America.
  Rather than being the America that is the meritocracy that our 
forefathers envisioned in which everybody is being treated equally, the 
Biden administration, in the name of diversity, is including 
bureaucrats everywhere to determine who gets hired, who gets promoted, 
and who gets the relevant grants.
  This is something that people are afraid to talk about, and I don't 
like to talk about it, but do we want to head into being a country--
other countries have gone down this path--in which they say X number of 
people of this background have to be government employees here or 
grants have to go there.
  It always results in very hard feelings. When you begin to hire 
people by that, you are not always hiring the best people.
  I think Americans have to ask themselves, as we train the new 
generation of doctors, as we train the new generation of air traffic 
controllers, as we train the new generation of engineers, which 
determine the viability of our manufacturing as we compete with 
companies abroad, are we going to continue to hire the best and allow 
the best to be promoted? Or are we going to fall back into some sort of 
Third World country in which we divide our Nation by what other 
countries would call tribes? They might be religious or whatever.
  I will repeat an anecdote I talked about last week, which I don't 
think the national press corps has picked up on, but they should pick 
up on.
  Not long after President Biden took office, two Democratic Senators, 
Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono, one from Illinois and one from 
Hawaii, said that they would not vote for any more of President Biden's 
appointees if they were White men, unless they were gay.
  Now, that is an awkward thing to talk about. It is kind of scary that 
we had two U.S. Senators taking such a divisive position.
  Then, we had a legal journal that did a little bit of research a 
couple of months ago on the judicial appointments by President Biden. 
Ninety-seven judicial appointments--the author of this article, I 
talked to her, was not even for or against it. She really had no 
opinions on what she found. Of the 97 new judges, only five were White 
men, and at least two of those five--might be more--were gay.
  At least when it comes to judicial appointments, President Biden is 
following the path of a kind of dislike, almost hatred, for people who 
used to make up the majority of this country.
  I hope more studies are done along those lines, and I hope there is a 
little bit of outrage because I have a feeling President Biden may be 
following down the same path when it comes to other appointees and, 
quite frankly, doing all he can to get the same sort of ratios when it 
comes to government spending, or trying to do this when it comes to 
businesses that do business with the government.
  We recently heard, as well, that the Biden administration is doing 
what they can to penalize frugal borrowers. What they want to do is, if 
you want to borrow money from a bank and you are a good credit risk 
because you are not a spendthrift, they feel that you ought to have to 
pay a higher interest rate because they want to subsidize people who 
spend all their money and don't save money. They feel those people 
should get a lower interest rate.
  I think this diversity has gotten out of control. There is a huge 
cost related to it. We have heard in the committee that I am on that 
there are bureaucratic diversity professionals who are making $200,000 
a year in our universities. More of these people are going to have to 
be hired by private business.
  It is, first of all, at a time when we have a labor shortage insofar 
as there are people looking for new jobs. Those jobs should be in 
manufacturing, construction, agriculture, and even tourism. Wherever 
you look, we need more people, not more highly paid bureaucrats who, 
when they look at people, solely view people by race, gender, or sexual 
preference.
  In any event, I hope the press does a better job of going through 
President Biden's recommendations line by line in the budget and see 
where there are the types of things we would look to see for a country 
that is in deep danger by the overall amount of debt we have. 
Particularly, I hope the press corps homes in on these new bureaucrats 
as to exactly what they are doing since their job is not to do anything 
productive but just make sure that everybody in the Federal Government 
looks at people as a token of race, gender, or sexual preference.

  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington).
  Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Wisconsin, my 
fellow Budget Committee member, for his passion to save this country 
from a sovereign debt crisis and protect our Nation's next generation 
from reaping the whirlwind of this reckless spending and unsustainable 
debt path that we are on.
  We must fight for the future of our country. All the things that are 
talked about in this great Chamber, all the great ideas, and all the 
threats that are posed to this country of ours and its future will all 
be undermined and jeopardized because we will have failed to simply 
steward the taxpayers' resources and our children's future.
  I thank the gentleman for his leadership and his passion.


          Celebrating the Life of General Bernhard Mittemeyer

  Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life of a 
true American hero and a very dear friend, General Bernhard Mittemeyer, 
who passed away this January after 92 rich, full, extraordinary years. 
He was a first-generation immigrant from South America who really lived 
the American Dream.
  After 28 years in the military, he rose to the rank of general. He 
served as surgeon general of the Army under President Reagan, and he 
received a number of awards and recognitions, including the 
Distinguished Flying Cross, which is the highest peacetime award in the 
military.
  I worked with him at Texas Tech, where he was a physician. He was the 
dean of the medical school, and he was the president of the Health 
Sciences Center.
  He had an indomitable spirit. He had an infectious optimism. All of 
those things helped culminate in his leadership efforts to create the 
super-clinic for treating and servicing our wounded warriors in west 
Texas, in partnership

[[Page H2116]]

with Texas Tech. It has been a phenomenal asset for veterans in the 
western part of Texas. That is going to be one of many, but, I am sure, 
for him, it was the most special legacy that he left for the people of 
west Texas.
  Mr. Speaker, it was an honor to know him. I am a better man for 
having come alongside him in my time at Texas Tech.
  I also want to say of his wife, Marie Beth, that we love her and the 
Mittemeyer family. We are praying for them. We know that the general 
has gone to the great commander in chief in Heaven, and he is in a 
great place. He is alive as he has ever been.
  We will be with General Mittemeyer once again. I take great hope and 
joy in that.
  Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the gentleman from Wisconsin for his 
indulgence.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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