[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
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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
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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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