[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 162 (Tuesday, October 3, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H4960-H4961]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE PRESS NEEDS TO WAKE UP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I will address some of the votes that took 
place on the floor last week, in particular the vote regarding a 
continuing resolution designed to keep the government open that was 
taken here last Friday.
  The effort to keep the government open failed 232-198. Every Democrat 
voted against that resolution to close the government. What I am going 
to address is the fact that 21 Republicans voted against keeping the 
government open at that time. The press, particularly The New York 
Times, probably other organizations as well, referred to those 21 
people as hardcore conservatives.
  As our country goes under, some people are going to blame the 
executive, some people will blame Congress, some people will blame the 
courts, but a lot of it has to fall on the utterly incompetent press 
corps of this country. Hard-line conservatives?
  Let's look at the bill that we wanted to have to keep the government 
open last Friday. First of all, a continuing resolution is primarily 
about spending, and that spending bill cut spending, discretionary 
spending, on all but veterans, the border, and defense, by 30 percent. 
In other words, across-the-board, you put everything else together, 
discretionary spending on the Department of Education, the Department 
of Commerce, the Department of the Interior, the State Department, 
energy, the legislature itself, a 30 percent reduction in spending.
  How in the world can you say the people who voted for the 30 percent 
reduction in spending are not conservative? How in the world can the 
press corps refer to the people who voted against a 30 percent 
reduction in spending as the hard-line conservatives?
  We all know part of that bill was not just focused on government 
spending. Probably the biggest crisis facing America today is the 
massive group of people coming across the southern border, over 200,000 
a month. In addition to that, we have all the unaccompanied minors, 
8,000 to 10,000 children, coming across the southern border with no 
adult accompanying them at all.
  In that bill, we also tried to add 22,000 new border agents, end 
catch and release, so people showing up at the southern border would be 
kept in Mexico, and the policy of inviting unaccompanied minors into 
our country. In other words, we were dealing with the 
immigration crisis.

  We had two parts of the bill: A 30 percent reduction in discretionary 
spending on so much of the budget and, in essence, closing down the 
border to prevent all of these people coming here illegally, as well as 
to prevent the drugs coming across that kill over 100,000 Americans a 
year. The press corps in this country has the nerve to say that the 
people who sided with the Democrats to kill this bill are hard-line 
conservatives.
  I call upon the slumbering press to wake up and pay attention to what 
is in these bills and tell us exactly what you mean by hardcore 
conservatives if they vote against the bill.
  There may be a variety of motivations to vote against a bill. There 
may be personalities. Maybe you want to fancy yourself a hardcore 
conservative and you count on utter incompetence in the news media.
  I beg the press corps in the future to pay attention to what is in 
these bills

[[Page H4961]]

and only use the phrase ``hardcore conservative'' to describe people 
who are voting for hardcore conservative bills.
  The next thing that I think we should point out here today and the 
importance of having that large reduction in spending--and I don't mean 
to bore you with numbers--is the degree to which, on a daily basis, our 
country gets in worse and worse shape. That is because the interest 
rates go up. That is no vote that we take here in Congress. I mean, we 
fight trench warfare here on a variety of bills. Sometimes the bills 
are just minor bills that have a few million dollars in them. In the 
last 2 days, because of an increase in interest rates, the amount of 
money we are going to have to spend on interest, just interest in the 
next year, went up $12 billion.
  Since April, when interest rates were like 3\1/2\ percent, the cost 
in interest has gone up over $100 billion. We have serious problems 
here, and the costs in interest should also be reported by the press.

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