[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 108 (Wednesday, June 21, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H3065-H3068]
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, before talking about the main event of
three issues, it occurs to me it has been a while since we really have
addressed what should be the end to the Ukraine-Russian war.
In the past I have expressed frustration, and I still have this
frustration as to why the Biden administration is not trying to work
towards an end to the war? Eventually every war ends. The longer the
war drags on, the worst it is for all involved.
Ukraine has the second lowest birth rate in the world. It is a
tragedy for any country to lose its young people, but particularly for
a country that has so few young people in the first place. Likewise,
Russia has a low birth rate, and they also have a high emigration rate,
in which people are coming to this country. I ran into one in my
district.
Mr. Speaker, I know from spending time in the San Diego sector along
the Mexican border, a lot of Russians have come across there. So you
have two countries with a shortage of young people, and they are dying
in a war. For humanitarian reasons we ought to end that war.
{time} 2130
Furthermore, the war is very costly. Buildings are being damaged in
Ukraine to a huge extent, and geopolitically, the Biden policy of
letting this war drag on without sticking their nose in there at all
for well over a year now drives China and Russia together.
It wasn't that long ago that we had over 1,000 McDonald's in Russia.
I recently toured a factory in my district. They owned a similar
factory in Russia which they had to sell off. What I took from that,
there was a time in the relatively recent past when the United States
and Russia had very good relations, the United States and Ukraine had
very good relations, and I don't know why we couldn't get back there if
this war ended quickly. It seems when you talk to the Biden people they
don't care if it goes on for years.
Again, I make a plea to the Biden administration: See if you can look
into doing what you can do to end that war.
Now we will look at three issues that I think all have the potential
to destroy the country, and I think we need some clear thinking on all
three.
First of all, let's look at the border. There has been a change in
the way some people are entering the country. They are able to sign on
to get entry to the United States, an app apparently, if they are
coming in from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. It is because
more people are coming in that way that it makes it more difficult to
see how many people are coming in each month, and because it is now in
two different places, we begin to lose track of the number of people
coming into this country compared to where we were historically.
Let's look at, for example, where we were in May. In the most recent
May, 227,000 people came across the border as what we refer to as
illegally; a year ago it was 166,000; 2 years ago it was 74,000; and 3
years ago, under President Trump, it was 6,000. We have gone from 6,000
a month crossing in May three years ago to 227,000 crossing in this
past May.
It is kind of a dramatic increase and something that should remain on
the front page of our newspapers every day until this crisis abates.
Mr. Speaker, it is the same thing if you look at April. Now that we
have the other numbers, in April most recently 211,000 people crossing
the border; a year ago 187,000; 2 years ago 66,000; and 3 years ago
under 6,000.
Again, we have gone from under 6,000 to 211,000. A dramatic increase
in the number of people crossing the border. This is not a problem we
can't deal with because we have to be bipartisan. It is always nice to
be bipartisan, but this problem was solved 3 years ago, and now we have
gone up by a factor of over 30.
As we have an increasing number of people crossing the border, we
also have more unaccompanied minors crossing the border. People ought
to be especially concerned when people who are 13 or 14 years old are
crossing the border without parents or even say an aunt or an uncle.
Now we are having about 6,000 to 8,000 unaccompanied minors crossing
every month. Under the prior administration it was 500 to 1,000. There
are a lot more young people.
There was a time when people on the other side of the aisle would be
concerned about people crossing the border separately from their
families. That was people who were separated for maybe 2 weeks because
their parents had broken the law. Now we have 6,000 to 8,000 people
every month being separated from their parents.
Who knows if they will ever see them again?
For minors, the lack of concern is stunning.
Recently there was an article in The New York Times that I think the
administration to a degree has disavowed, but no matter whose numbers
you look at, Mr. Speaker, the administration has lost track of tens of
thousands of minors. They don't know where they are after they gave
them to people to take care of them. We have lost track of tens of
thousands of kids.
Particularly, we have a crisis in this country of human trafficking
and sex trafficking that should be of particular concern to the
administration. It should be of particular concern because people
rarely come over here without the Mexican drug cartels signing off. We
can only imagine that when these young kids work, sometimes third
shifts in factories illegally, that they were sending money not only
back home but to the drug cartels as well.
I talked to the Acting Labor Secretary about what she should do if
minors who are coming are found crossing illegally or if minors are
found working illegally. She refused to say how often they contact the
parents. Which, again, I thought was horrible. If you were an inspector
of a factory, Mr. Speaker, and found 15-year-old immigrants working
there who shouldn't, wouldn't the first thing you would do would be to
contact the parents?
Obviously.
The Biden administration doesn't do that. The Secretary of Labor will
not be drawn into even commenting that we ever contact the parents of
young people who are found here. We should always try to unite children
with their parents.
Quite frankly, I even feel at the border if children come across with
one parent that we should hold them up and look for the other parent.
In the United States if parents are dealing with a divorce situation,
in an effort to keep that family together, they sometimes try and say
that one parent cannot move to another part of the country because we
want both parents to participate in raising the children. I don't know
why we don't do the same thing at our southern border.
On the flip side of letting everyone in, we are also taking our eye
off of criminals who are not kicked out. Without a lot of hoopla in the
newspapers, the Biden administration in their budget guesses that for
the next 2 years we can anticipate about 29,000 people being deported.
I think they might have computed it in a different way, but in his
final 2 years under Barack Obama, we deported about 460,000 people. In
one 2-year period under Obama, 460,000 were deported. Under President
Biden, we have only 29,000 who were deported in a 2-year period. It is
just like saying that we absolutely don't care what is going on here.
Of course, many deportations are caused by people here who are
breaking
[[Page H3066]]
the law. People who are for open borders at least say: They are all
such wonderful people. They are all so hardworking. What an asset to
America.
The Biden administration is doing a pretty pathetic job even compared
to his predecessors, including President Obama. He is doing a bad job
of deporting people who break the law.
Of course, along with being soft on the border and letting everybody
across, it inevitably means more people are bringing drugs across the
border. In this country right now we have about 108,000 people every
year dying of illegal drug overdoses. That is a crisis that America is
not paying careful enough attention to.
As I have pointed before, we have about 57,000 Americans who died in
the Vietnam war over 12 years. I am old enough to remember the Vietnam
war. There were articles all the time about American troops dying.
People were protesting about how many Americans were dying, and 57,000
people died in 12 years. It was a true tragedy.
We now have 108,000 Americans dying every year from illegal drug
overdoses in this country largely because illegal drugs are flying
across the southern border. Virtually nothing is being done in this
budget to tighten up the border. Nothing is being done to prevent more
people from coming here. The inevitable result is a further change in
America as the people who come here may not have the traditional
American values that we need to keep our Republic going. Not to
mention, we will have people coming here who are taking advantage of
our generous welfare system and people coming who are breaking the law
and are not going to be deported.
That is the first issue that I feel that we really have to address.
The second horrible policy concerns the bizarre demands of this new
transgender lobby. This past week I had quite an experience. I met with
an 18-year-old who had doctors prescribe from 12 years old on
testosterone and puberty blockers. At age 15, the wonderful medical
establishment in our United States of America--I think primarily from
the psychiatry wing of the medical establishment--decided to remove her
breasts at age 15.
I don't care if someone went to medical school. Anybody with an ounce
of common sense knows people change dramatically between when they are
15, 20, 30, and 40 years of age. The idea that we have people going to
medical school--I guess that is why they talk about people with book
smarts and common sense. Nobody with common sense, unless they are
absolutely obsessed with greed and just will do anything to make money
in a surgery would possibly remove the breasts of a 15-year-old girl.
They are doing it at two hospitals in Wisconsin which is horrible. This
gal happened to have it done in California. Now this poor woman wants
to undo the damage, and she can't.
In Europe they are finding that puberty blockers may affect bones and
brain health. Sweden found that 10 years after reassignment surgery the
suicide rate was 20 times that of their peers.
Is that even really a surprise?
I could almost guess it on my own without reading the study.
{time} 2140
That is what they are finding in Europe, which went down this path
before this. In European countries, even their liberal, let's worship
the doctor societies know that they made a mistake.
I think someone has to look at the psychiatric industry and give them
some more supervision because they are doing horrible things that
anybody with any common sense would know.
The other thing the Europeans found is something we should realize in
this country, too. This is a much bigger problem than when I was a
child, and nobody ever seemed to know about it. How is that possible?
Well, it is possible because the more they talk about it in the press,
the more they talk about it in the entertainment medium, the more self-
righteous politicians talk about it, the more young people begin to
play in their mind with the idea that maybe if they are a boy, they
should be a girl, and maybe if they are a girl, they should be a boy.
This is what happened to the poor gal I met with. She was 10 or 11
years old, 12 years old. She was unhappy. Given all that is out there
on the internet, she thought, well, maybe I am unhappy because I should
be a boy, which is perfectly understandable if you are inundated with
this option on television and the computer constantly.
This is what we have. We have a gender dysphoria crisis, and the
crisis has been caused by all these doctors claiming it is a common
thing. The more kids hear about other people going through it--they may
read articles about it, as this gal did, or read about it on the
internet. It sounds interesting. ``There are these experts saying I am
unhappy because maybe I want to be a boy.'' That is what happens.
I hope the press is a little bit more responsible in the future about
pushing this as an everyday thing. When the press begins to push it,
when it gets out there on computer screens, people begin to read it and
begin to say maybe it is them.
There are at least two Congressmen out there with great bills on
this, one from Georgia and one from California. I hope we see these
bills on the floor of the Congress here in the very near future.
My one criticism of the bills is they only ban this type of risky
surgery under age 18. I don't know why we don't try to knock that up a
little bit higher.
I know in this country, as a practical matter, we bar the sale of
beer until age 21. I think this surgery seems a little bit crazy even
for a 30-year-old.
I hope we see these bills on the floor soon. I hope before they get
to the floor, the authors make an adjustment to the bills and knock up
the age to at least age 21.
One other comment I learned reading about this situation and talking
to someone who went through it is that part of the problem is we have
these well-meaning, progressive people who egg on these people. They
get on their Facebook page or whatever. They tell people who they don't
even know how proud they are of them for doing these surgeries, how
happy they should be now that they did these surgeries.
By popular culture acting as cheerleaders for these surgeries, what
do you think you get? A bunch of young, unhappy people who want to be
happier.
Every time someone sends you an email, sends you whatever comments,
``You are so brave, and I am so happy for you,'' you are encouraging
these people to get these horrific surgeries.
A lot of the blame, I think, goes on the people who are not familiar
with this, not familiar with the study showing a dramatic increase in
suicides, not to mention people without any common sense. They egg
these poor boys and girls on to get these surgeries.
I beg people who consider encouraging these people or flattering
these people for what they are doing to please stop it. Familiarize
yourself with the information and stop to think that by flattering and
encouraging these people, you may be the one responsible for making
these life-changing decisions.
I will wind up by saying I think we need more people looking at the
qualifications of some of these psychiatrists who push this and why
this whole profession has allowed this to careen out of control. I
think we have to look at the role that profession is playing in our
society.
I will blame President Biden a little for this. His administration is
all-in on this transgender, sexual confusion agenda, which is leading
so many people to be unhappy.
The fourth area that I would like to address tonight, I don't like to
address it. I really don't like to address it because it is such an
awkward area, but it has to be addressed because the President of the
United States is obsessed with it, so I have to address it.
The final issue is the issue of racism. It is Joe Biden's favorite
issue, as far as I can tell. Joe Biden talked about racism four times
in his inaugural speech and white supremacy once.
He keeps bringing it up in his State of the Union speeches. Again
this year, he inferred that policemen are racist, and we have to warn
particularly little Black children about racist police.
The studies don't show it. The studies show, adjusted for crimes
committed, if anything, it is the other way around.
Joe Biden, a White guy--I wonder what other people think of him--
keeps getting up there and saying how racist
[[Page H3067]]
we all are, that we have a racism problem with police. Like I said, the
studies show that that is not true.
What you can do, and I think people like Joe Biden have done, is
intimidate the police into being afraid to act because they are in fear
of being charged with racism. That is what you can do. You can make the
police timid.
Of course, ever since we had this massive antipolice feeling in the
aftermath of the events in Minneapolis a couple of years ago, we have
had a dramatic increase in the number of murders. I think a lot of
these murders have to be blamed on the timidity of the police, which is
caused by this strong antipolice feeling that you are getting out of
Joe Biden and his allies and the mainstream media, which I think also
creates this antipolice feeling and causes the police to feel that they
have to back off for fear they will be called racists or whatever.
Joe Biden again talked about white supremacy at Howard University, at
their graduation. It was kind of a weird speech because I think
normally in graduation speeches, you are dealing with the best and
brightest in America. I know Howard has a very good reputation. You
should have people leaving that stage with smiles on their faces,
anxious to change the world and do wonderful things in the United
States. Instead, we get President Biden showing up and saying what a
racist society we have and creating, I think, a defeatist attitude for
the people graduating there. I hope they got over Joe Biden's speech.
Joe Biden's Secretary of Labor--designated; she hasn't been confirmed
yet--believes the country was built on white supremacy. She will not
back off that statement, despite me asking her a couple of times to do
so. The Secretary of Labor, who has something to do with all sorts of
laws in this country, apparently believes our country was built on
white supremacy.
The proposed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff feels we should be
capping the number of White officers in the military at 42 percent. I
mean, I would think he would be primarily concerned about getting the
best people in there. It is important we have the best military in the
world.
Instead, we are going to have a bean counter who it sounds like is
more concerned about where people's great-great-great-grandparents were
born than what their qualifications are today.
A study found, I mentioned before, in Joe Biden's first 2 years, of
97 judges he appointed, only 5 were White men. Two of those were gay.
This was in the aftermath of two Democratic Senators telling President
Biden they were not going to confirm any more of his appointees if they
were White men unless they were gay.
To what degree are our judges being picked as the best, or to what
degree are they being picked with Joe Biden feeling there is something
wrong with appointing a White guy for the job?
Those are kind of amazing numbers, aren't they? I am not a big fan of
President Biden, and I would have guessed, if you would have asked me
how many White men were in his first 97 judges, I would say, well, he
is probably doing all he can to find people who aren't White guys, so
it is only 25 or 30. Well, it is only five.
{time} 2150
In his budget, he is asking that all of his agencies--Department of
Defense, Department of the Interior, wherever--have new equity action
teams. These pernicious new employees, I think, are going to run around
and judge people solely by race or gender. Their goal is supposedly to
look at diversity, which we will talk about in a second. Again, their
goal is to follow down this path of all Americans are supposed to view
themselves as a subgroup.
He tried to discharge debt of only farmers of color until the courts
shot him down there. He is trying to add a new preferred class. All
these topics are recent topics. We ought to discuss this issue before
it goes any further.
Right now, there are a variety of classes when you fill out your
Census form, when you fill out your EEO-1, which is a form that you
have to fill out if you do business with the government. They break out
if you are Asian, Pacific Islander, African American, Latin American,
Native American.
They want a new class--and I think with a class comes preferences--
for Middle Eastern and North African people. Again, I think we should
have a public discussion here. I don't think Middle Eastern and North
African people have been discriminated against or mistreated in
America.
I assume most of the people, if there are benefits from this program,
will come to people who just came here or are coming in the future. I
haven't seen a lot of articles on that, but there should be a public
discussion.
If somebody comes here from Syria, if somebody comes here from
Algeria, should they get preferences in hiring? Should they get
preferences if they found a business and are looking for a government
contract? Should they get preferences if they want to get into medical
school? That is what President Biden apparently wants, but I think we
should have a public discussion on whether he gets away with it.
As an aside, I am not sure how Joe Biden feels the country is such a
white supremacist country. I don't believe you can really judge people
that are worth their happiness by the amount of income, but it is a
number that is easy to judge. If you look online, most of the
successful groups in America today are not of European heritage. The
most successful are from India. Most Indians that I know came here and
are wildly successful, although they came here without even knowing
English--people from Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan, Cuba.
Thomas Sowell wrote a book 40 years ago--so it is a bit out of date,
but I can't find any more recent information--in which he claims that
people coming from the Caribbean, the children of people who come here
from the Caribbean, make more money than the average American. I guess
he would be talking about people from Jamaica.
I suppose you would think of people, therefore, like Kamala Harris'
dad, who came here from Jamaica and wound up being a professor at
Stanford. He did very well. I don't think he had a huge amount of
experience with racism, becoming a professor at Stanford. I would think
most professors would love to have a job like that.
Before we go that much further, I do think we should look at
individual questions that should be answered. The first question is,
right now, for the purpose of these government forms and who you hire,
you kind of self-identify. We will pick Peru because I talked to
someone from Peru the other day. If you came here directly from Peru,
you are Peruvian and Latin American. If you have one of four
grandchildren, they are also called Peruvian and are considered to
bring a diverse attitude toward a job, or America supposedly should
make up for past discrimination even though their ancestors may never
even have been in America.
Is it 25 percent? Is it 12\1/2\ percent? The Senator from
Massachusetts had one of these DNA tests, and she found out she was
like 1/64th Native American or less than 1/64th, but she apparently
felt that was enough to put on her forms and apparently add diversity
to the Harvard Law School faculty. I don't know if she really thought
that, but I guess she allowed herself to be labeled as Native American
based on whatever that would be, one great-great-great-grandparent.
Is that the way we should go? Or should it be one out of eight? Like,
if one of your eight great-grandparents is a certain type, is that
enough to identify with that type? Now we have DNA tests, so we can
look at these things.
I know in my district, there was a rumor. People questioned whether
one person who owned a construction company was really a person of
color like he claimed he was. He could have been because he could say
he was one-eighth, and under the current law, that would be enough to
get preferences. I think we ought to have that discussion.
The next question is, since affirmative action really began in the
1960s, the idea was to make up, I think, for America's past sins, so
should you have to have ancestors in America who can at least claim to
have been hurt, or can you get what amounts to special preferences if
you just immigrated to this country, say, a year ago?
Right now, you don't even have to be a citizen. You can count on the
government forms in which I think they view you more favorably if you
have people from certain backgrounds, even if you were not in America
for more than a couple of years. Should we require beneficiaries of
these programs to be in America?
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Were your ancestors slaves in America, or can you be like Kamala
Harris' dad and just have moved here from Jamaica, whether you had
preferences or not? I don't know.
The next issue that we should talk about is how long this should
happen. We began to have affirmative action in the early 1960s. I think
it really kicked into effect in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. There was a
lesser program under John Kennedy.
We have had this program going for about 50 years. Obviously, they
have added new groups that weren't included in the original number of
groups. We have women in the mix now, too. How long should this program
last with its government bureaucracy, with, in essence, government
looking over people's shoulders, telling them who they have to hire for
their company, that sort of thing? Another 10 years, another 100 years?
Thomas Sowell has written about affirmative action, so that is
another issue that we will have to look at. We will return and talk
about other issues after this evening. Not the least of which I think
we should talk about is how certain people think since you are supposed
to be bringing diversity to the table.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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