[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 19 (Thursday, February 1, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H381-H385]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1145
                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Loudermilk).
  Mr. LOUDERMILK. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the service of someone who I 
believe is one of the best staff members in this institution--Mr. Tim 
Monahan.
  I first met Tim a few years ago during his tenure with the Committee 
on House Administration. As with me, Tim has left a lasting impression 
on many here in Congress.
  Anyone who has ever met Tim probably remembers their first impression 
of the Gettysburg neighbor who some refer to as a grizzly with a Philly 
charm.
  As you get to know Tim, you learn just how steadfast, generous, and 
kind he really is. He is the kind of person who can handle anything 
that is thrown his way, whether it be big feelings, awkward moments, 
and even the most outlandish member requests.
  Tim first started on the Hill at the Office of the CAO during Speaker 
Boehner's years where he learned the nuts and bolts of our institution.
  Later serving on the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, 
Tim deepened his institutional relationship while ensuring his work was 
for the greater benefit of the House.
  He joined ranking member Rodney Davis at the Committee on House 
Administration at the beginning of the 116th Congress where his natural 
leadership skills quickly stood out, and he was soon appointed staff 
director for the committee.
  In 2023, Tim took over the House operations for Speaker Kevin 
McCarthy where he remained a steady hand during several unprecedented 
moments, including staying on through the transitions of Speaker pro 
tempore McHenry and now-Speaker Mike Johnson.
  So much could be said about Tim's dedication to our institution and 
the people working here. I could talk about his vital role in reopening 
the House post-pandemic, his conflict resolution skills, his role in 
the first House filibuster, his helping Congressman Davis carry 
Representative Wright to safety on January 6, 2021, staffing a historic 
15 rounds of votes for the Speaker of the House, his mentorship and 
leadership for the past 15 years, or his deep, resolute patriotism.
  Tim possesses an honor and respect for the halls of Congress that is 
admired by many. He gets to know and cares about all of those who work 
within its walls and works hard to ensure that our Capitol remains a 
functional beacon of our constitutional Republic. Tim's legacy in the 
House will be his strong character and his servant leadership.
  Everyone who knows Tim is better for it. As he prepares to leave the 
House, our institution is better, thanks to his service.
  Tim, we wish you all the best in this next chapter of your life. 
Hopefully your departure from the House will allow more time with your 
lovely wife, Marissa; your baby daughter, Marian; and your puppy, 
Bella.
  Some of the staffers you have worked with have had some parting 
wishes for you. We hope the soup is plentiful in the next cafeteria, 
the nuts are absent, and that you have more time to listen to JLo and 
dream of Tiger Woods' comebacks.
  Please, they said, if you ever try the grocery store sushi, Pringles, 
and kombucha combo again, please don't share.
  To me, Tim has been not only a great member of the House staff, but 
he has been a close confidante and a good friend.
  He has been instrumental in helping me with some of the greatest 
moments in my tenure as a Member of Congress, but he has also helped me 
through some of the most difficult times. Tim Monahan is the gold 
standard of this institution, and more should aspire to be like him.
  Tim, we will miss you. God bless you.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am going to comment on a variety of 
things. Like always, I like to use this time to bring the Chair's 
attention to stories that I don't feel our mainstream media is doing an 
adequate job of covering.
  A couple comments before I delve into these five stories. First of 
all, Congressman Loudermilk gave a shout-out to one of his staffers who 
is leaving.
  This will be the final week that Kyle Amato of my office will be 
working for me, and I thank him publicly for the great job he does, 
particularly putting out the newsletters that everyone around the 6th 
Congressional District of Wisconsin likes.
  The second thing I would like to do is I really didn't care for the 
form of the child tax credit that has been discussed so much today, but 
I thank the people for putting it together for this one reason.
  Normally around here when we pass legislation designed to benefit the 
children, we leave out the children of what I will call the working 
middle class.
  In other words, if you are hardly working at all, certainly if there 
is not a man in the house, this institution gives more and more 
benefits to people of that demographic.
  We did something the other day, which is almost unheard of. We 
extended those benefits to the middle class.
  While there are certainly problems with the way it is laid out, if 
you are a married couple making 120 grand a year and have a couple 
kids, you are going to get the child credits just as you would if you 
weren't working at all. Small favors, but I would like to point that 
out.
  Now, the first issue that I don't think has been adequately addressed 
around here is there has been, I think, misinformation spread on the 
conflict between Israel and Hamas or Israel and Gaza.
  We are supposed to be very sensitive and say Hamas is one group and 
Gaza is another group; but, in fact, Hamas--at least the polls show--is 
wildly popular in the West Bank and also, of course, popular in Gaza; 
and Gaza elected Hamas.

  I think too many people feel it is a historical conflict, and, in a 
way, we heard this in a speech from a prominent American earlier today.
  They are kind of treated as two sides of the same coin. In fact, that 
is not true, and I would like to talk a little bit more about how the 
people in Gaza should be so lucky, so grateful--realize how lucky and 
grateful they are that they are living so close to Israel.
  There are far too many Americans in general, and congressmen in 
particular, who define this conflict as between two sides apparently 
equal or close to equal.
  In fact, Gaza has been treated incredibly fairly and generously by 
Israel. When Gaza was set up as kind of an independent--I don't know 
what you would call it--principality a while ago, the Israelis removed 
the Jewish temples from the area despite the fact that in Israel 
proper, there are 400 Muslim mosques.
  In Gaza, Israel felt, well, okay, if they don't want them, they 
shouldn't have to put up with temples in that area.
  Not only that, they physically removed Israelis who were living in 
Gaza. Maybe you remember this. They physically grabbed and removed them 
from Gaza to the rest of Israel.

[[Page H382]]

  Apparently, the Gazans did not have to put up with Jews living in 
Gaza. That was bending over backward. It was almost barbaric.
  Then Gazans were able to work in Israel. Israel is a wildly 
successful Western country on the Mediterranean. As a result, I think 
the second biggest source of revenue for people in Gaza was working in 
businesses in Israel.
  That is their major source of income, along with foreign welfare that 
they didn't work for at all. It largely comes from Europe.
  When Gaza was set up as an independent or somewhat independent 
principality, they were given greenhouses so they could take over those 
businesses and make money.
  Of course, the Palestinians on their own destroyed the greenhouses 
because they didn't want to accept something that was tainted by 
previously being Jewish businesses, which is kind of offensive. I don't 
think the public really knows that.
  I think one way you can tell whether you are put upon and have things 
tough or whether you have things easy is other people want to be like 
you, or people are running away from you.
  Already, at the time of the barbaric acts in October, there were over 
10,000 people from Thailand living in Israel and working in Israel. In 
other words, they came halfway around the globe from Thailand to Israel 
to work in Israel.
  At first, I was kind of stumped when they said that Thai nationals 
were killed by Hamas in Israel or Thai nationals were taken hostage in 
Israel.
  I thought what in the world are people from Thailand doing in Israel. 
Actually, they knew it was so wonderful working in Israel that they 
came halfway around the globe to work there.
  As a practical matter now, since Israel can no longer trust the 
Palestinians, those jobs are going to be opened up to people around the 
world.
  Not enough people know that, right; be they people from India--which 
is a booming country in its own right--Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Kenya, 
Malawi.
  They are coming from around the world to replace the Palestinian 
workers who are fortunate enough to have jobs in Israel.
  By the way, those Gaza citizens who worked in Israel were making far 
more money than your average person in the Arab world is making. They 
just lucked out that they were near enough to Israel, and they could 
grab these good jobs.
  Now that they kicked them away by killing so many Israelis, they are 
going to be replaced by other people all around the world.
  One thing that I think has not been publicized anywhere near enough 
is there are talks of 25,000 people from Ecuador who may come to Israel 
to work.
  Think about that. The Gazans think they are so put upon that they 
have to kill the Israelis, chop off their heads, chop off the heads of 
children, and, meanwhile, people in Ecuador are coming halfway around 
the world with possible plans of taking 25,000 Ecuadorians to live in 
Israel and take those jobs.
  That is something that every American should know. They don't know it 
because the American press is not covering it.
  They are allowing people to believe, oh, those poor Gazans. They 
don't realize that people from Thailand or Ecuador or the southern part 
of Africa would move halfway around the world--goodbye to their 
families--to be in heaven, to work in Israel.

  By the way, there is another item that ought to be pointed out with 
regard to how well the Arabs in Israel have it.
  Not long ago, there were efforts made for a two-State solution. Bad 
idea, but, nevertheless, they talked about doing it.
  At the time when they talked about it, they thought okay, in this 
area of land we call Israel, we are going to have some of that land be 
Israel and some of that land be Palestine.
  So people don't have to be offended, the Israelis living in what 
would become Palestine would move to Israel, and the Palestinians 
living in what would become Israel will move to Palestine.
  It seemed at first blush kind of a commonsense thing. You know who 
screamed bloody murder? The Palestinians who were going to have to move 
to Palestine and leave Israel because when push came to shove, they 
know that their children would be a lot freer, get a lot better 
education, and be a lot more economically well off living in Israel 
than they would in Palestine.
  Palestine would probably become another State like Gaza, kind of a 
crooked State in which whatever leadership they vote for takes the 
foreign aid and keeps it.
  By the way, some of you older people--I don't know how old the Chair 
is--remember Yasser Arafat who many, many years ago was running Gaza.
  Apparently his ancestors now, they got out. They are living in Paris. 
They don't want to live in Gaza. They are living in Paris high on the 
hog with all the money that Yasser Arafat managed to make off the 
foreign aid the West was sending to Gaza.

                              {time}  1215

  In any event, I would ask the press to report a little bit about 
these land swaps--even that is kind of an old story--and in a new 
story, point out all the people from around the world who would like to 
live in Israel and replace the Palestinians who kicked away the great 
jobs that they had in Gaza, and particularly pay attention to what is 
going on in Ecuador and how many people from Ecuador are going to come 
halfway around the world to be grateful to have the jobs that the 
Palestinians kicked away who were living in Gaza at this time on the 
beautiful Mediterranean Sea.
  Now, the next thing I want to talk about, and I don't think has been 
adequately addressed, we reported on the tax bill yesterday. I am not 
sure you could call it a major bill. There were good things in the bill 
and bad things in the bill, as you can imagine, because it was part of 
negotiations between Republicans and Democrats.
  As I mentioned, the child tax credits probably have an element of 
welfare in them, which is bad. On the other hand, they did go to the 
middle class, which is one of the few things that we don't phase out 
and say because you are making $60,000 a year, we are going to take 
them away from you and punish you for working, or punish you for 
getting married.
  There was another provision in there that I really disliked, even 
though I voted for the bill, because overall, the positives outweighed 
the negatives, but it is a provision that was only in there because the 
press corps does not highlight it; that is, low-income housing tax 
credits. It is a little bit of a boring topic, but I ask the Chair to 
indulge me a little bit.
  There are a variety of ways in which the Federal Government--it is 
none of their business to do it, by the way--in which the Federal 
Government tries to provide low-income housing for people. One is by 
giving a low-income housing tax credit to property developers of low-
income housing.
  We tweaked that credit for only a 2-year period and only a certain 
subset of that credit yesterday in the bill. The press corps ought to 
talk a little bit about these credits, because I don't think that they 
would survive the light of day, or survive appropriate attention by the 
mainstream media.
  My problem with them is in addition to my problem with all Federal 
mucking around in low-income housing, particularly low-income housing 
that is not for the elderly. For the elderly, I guess I can say 
positive things for it. For the disabled, I can say positive things 
about it.
  The low-income housing tax credit means that when the Federal 
Government gets involved, a huge beneficiary is, quite frankly, well-
off property developers. So you understand what happens, when 
developers take advantage of low-income housing tax credits, they get a 
credit equal to 9 percent of the total cost for a 10-year period. 
Because there is a time value of money, it means that when they build 
low-income housing, the government pays for 70 percent.
  In other words, if I am a well-off property housing developer, the 
government gives me 70 percent of the cost of that building and I only 
have to put in 30 percent, at a minimum. There are, I am told, places 
around the country where the States and local governments give them 
further incentives.
  I think a lot of these people, by the way, make campaign 
contributions. I think they are politically well-connected, as you can 
imagine, to take advantage of such a generous credit.

[[Page H383]]

  In any event, it is a very complicated thing. You might say what 
happens if the property developer does not have income tax to offset 
with the credit. What happens is, then they sell the credits to 
somebody else, frequently banks. We not only have beneficiaries of what 
is supposed to help with the low-income people go to an incredibly 
generous subsidy to property developers, but banks are able to use the 
credit to show the FDIC, or whoever, the banking regulators, that they 
are socially conscious, so they get a little bit of a benefit there as 
well.
  There are some anecdotes I have heard about this--by the way, an 
accounting firm puts out an explanation of the tax credit. The tax 
credit by itself kind of makes your eyes glaze over. People wonder 
where paperwork comes from. The accounting firm that puts it out 
devotes 1,400 pages to an explanation for a credit. Even if there are 
other things you like, you should know if Congress is passing a program 
that takes 1,400 pages to explain, you know it is a bad program.
  I think, by the way, it is complicated on purpose so you confuse 
Congressmen into voting for it. Because the government, not surprising, 
is paying for 70 percent of the cost of that apartment, that apartment, 
in general, costs 30 percent more than an apartment would if it was 
built in the private sector without having the government muck around. 
Right off the bat, there is a big problem there.
  I know a property developer in Wisconsin who builds normal 
apartments, not aimed for low-income housing, not taking advantage of 
the generous credit. He tells me that the people with the low-income 
housing credit frequently outbid him for the land, because the 
government is paying for 70 percent of the cost. Think about that. If 
you want somebody to build apartments for the middle class, they can't 
get the prime location in town because the low-income credit is so 
generous that the person with the low-income housing will always outbid 
them.
  Another thing that happens when the government pays 70 percent of the 
cost of something, you have a nicer apartment--because after 20 years 
it is no longer low-income housing--a nicer apartment than people who 
don't have low-income housing have. I have heard that complaint. I have 
heard people looking for new apartments, and they find the nicest 
apartments in town they are not eligible for because they are the low-
income housing units. That is what happens when the government pays for 
70 percent of the cost of the unit. Not to mention, there is the 
possibility for crookedness there, because if the government is paying 
70 percent of the cost of anything, doesn't it encourage your 
subcontractors to jack up the prices because the government is paying 
for 70 percent? Of course it does.

  Now, this new increase in generosity in the low-income housing credit 
will expire in 2 years. They were able to get this thing through 
because naive people, first of all, thought it was the Federal 
Government's business to get involved at all, but nice people felt that 
the low-income housing tax credit benefited low-income people. They 
didn't realize it was a payoff to well-connected property developers.
  If the press corps would wake up and write articles about this 
program, it would not survive the next 3 or 4 years. The only reason 
this program, which I consider to be about the most questionable part 
of the Internal Revenue Code--the only reason this thing is able to 
survive is because the slumbering press corps does not report on it.
  Now, there are a lot of programs on it. I don't like to highlight one 
nonprofit, but the Cato Institute has a great expose about this program 
out there, if you want to find it on the internet. It is about 5 years 
old, but it is as accurate today as it was then. If you think the 
Internal Revenue Code is used by well-heeled people to get things in 
there, this is for you.
  I strongly encourage the press corps to pay attention to the low-
income housing tax credits. Like I said, it is a waste of taxpayer 
money. I am the type of Congressman who tries to look out for the 
average guy. These are provisions stuck in the Internal Revenue Code to 
benefit the well-off, the politically well-connected. Just because they 
put kind of a nice-sounding title to it, ``low-income housing tax 
credit,'' you think they are looking out for the poor. They are looking 
out for the well-heeled property developer. That is the second thing 
that our slumbering press corps should pay attention to.
  The third thing I want to talk about is an issue we have talked about 
many times before, but since I last addressed the Chair, we released 
the figures on the number of people coming across the border.
  Now, I had guessed the last time I was up here that for the first 
time ever we would have over 300,000 people a month crossing the 
border. I remind people that back in the days of President Trump, that 
number was, depending on the month, around 10,000 or 12,000. We have 
gone from 10,000 or 12,000 people a month crossing our border what I 
will call illegally--because I think they are asking for asylum they 
don't deserve--from 10,000 or 12,000 to--this is just shocking; 
whenever I look at it, I can't believe it--370,000. We have gone up 
about 30 times as many people crossing into the United States as we did 
3 years ago.
  The American public ought to be absolutely appalled. We have an 
administration with Joe Biden, who fumbles around and says: Well, I 
guess maybe we should do something about that. Maybe Congress should 
meet with me, and we should try to do something.
  The American public should know, the fact that we have gone up from 
12,000 to 370,000 has nothing to do with Congress; it is the inability 
of the Biden administration to want to enforce the law. This is 
something they want by design. Instead of 12,000 people coming here 
illegally every month, they want 370,000. If they went back to the 
policies of President Trump, the stay-in-Mexico situation, we would 
reduce this number by 85 percent.
  Now, it would still be over 50,000. We still have more work to do. It 
would still be a disaster. Just by the signing of a piece of paper, he 
could knock that 370,000 figure back down to 40,000 or 50,000.
  Pointing out other things that are going on that the mainstream media 
is not doing a very good job on. In the 370,000, there were about, one 
more time, 12,000 unaccompanied minors. There is another thing that has 
gone up exponentially under this administration.
  The mainstream media purports to care when families are separated. I 
will tell you, when you have 12,000 people cross the border without 
their parents, that is family separation. Those kids should be turned 
around and sent back to their parents or contact their parents. Now, we 
don't do anything like that at all. If the child shows up and they have 
got a piece of paper on their T-shirt that says ``deliver me to Uncle 
Joe in Portland, Oregon,'' we buy them the plane ticket, we deliver 
them to Uncle Joe. We don't do DNA testing to see if it really is Uncle 
Joe. It is a recipe for human trafficking when people want to take 
advantage of young children, but the press allows it to happen.
  Under President Trump, they screamed about family separation when it 
was only a very temporary thing for a very small number of kids. Now, 
you have 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 kids a month, no big deal. We don't 
talk about it.
  The next thing to remember is that even once these kids are placed 
with sponsors, the Biden administration does not follow up to see where 
they are. Estimates vary, but somehow, I think somewhere between 30,000 
and 80,000 kids we have lost track of. In other words, we have let 15-
year-olds, 14-year-olds, and 12-year-olds in the country, and after a 
few months, we don't even know where they are.
  I would strongly encourage the press corps to report on the volume of 
people who came here in December. Even I, as opposed to the Biden 
administration as anybody, was expecting that number to come in 
310,000, 320,000. Instead, it is 370,000. They blew away the old record 
by about 50,000, more than I ever would have dreamed.
  We have to remember, in addition to all the people coming into our 
country, changing our country, committing crimes in our country, in 
addition to that, we have a situation in which they are bringing drugs 
in the country. We have to remember that over 100,000 of our citizens 
are dying every year from illegal drug overdoses.
  I know there are some hardhearted people who say: They took the drugs

[[Page H384]]

themselves; we don't care. Apparently, the Biden administration is in 
that category, because they don't do much to stop it. You would think 
any normal President, just to save the 100,000 lives and prevent all of 
these drugs from coming into our country, would close the border on 
that alone. The press, again, does not report it.

                              {time}  1215

  I was old enough to remember the Vietnam war. In 12 years in the 
Vietnam war, 57,000 American troops died, and it was reported 
constantly and should have been reported constantly. That was news when 
our troops were dying in Vietnam, 57,000 over 12 years.
  Now, we have 108,000, every year, dying from illegal drug overdoses. 
It happens in county after county, and it is swept under the rug 
because the mainstream media doesn't want to embarrass the Biden 
administration, so we don't talk about 108,000 people a year dying.
  Of course, is there any effort made to close the border or any effort 
made to prevent it? No. No effort is made to prevent it.
  It is a story that every local newspaper in the country--they are 
easy to find--ought to be reporting, not only the number for America as 
a whole; they ought to be pointing out how many people died, say, in 
the State of Wisconsin, or whatever State their paper is sent. They 
should be reporting how many people are dying in the county.
  You will find out, I would think, for almost every county in the 
country, probably every county in the State, if you added up all the 
murders and all the car accidents together, the number of people who 
are dying of illegal drugs is way over that total. We put car accidents 
with fatalities in the paper all the time because it is a tragic thing; 
people like to read about it or want to be informed about it. We 
obviously put local murders in the paper all the time.
  There are 108,000 Americans dying every year with spouses, with 
parents, with children. Let's sweep it under the rug, says the 
mainstream media. I will tell you, if you put that in there, people 
would pay attention to those stories.
  The next issue that I don't think has been covered enough and I will 
talk about more next week, but we had one more committee hearing in my 
subcommittee on wokeness in the military.
  Our current General Brown, who was previously head of the Air Force 
and is now head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, prior to coming in the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly said he wanted to reduce the number of 
officers in the military from 67 percent White men down to 43 percent 
White men.
  I walk around my district, and I ask average people. I said: Do you 
know the most important member of the military in the country has said 
his public goal is to reduce the number of White officers in the 
military from 67 percent to 43 percent? Almost nobody knows. The rest 
of the people are shocked.
  I told this to a Vietnam veteran who fought in Vietnam. I thought he 
was going to break down and cry right there when he found out what was 
happening to our military. They have taken the single most important 
agency in the United States, and they run it like it is some stupid 
community college, where it doesn't matter who we promote, where we 
don't have to pay attention to merit. Who cares? I can go to a cocktail 
party and brag about how many Hispanics or how many Asians or how many 
Native Americans are in the military. I no longer brag about how good 
my military is or how strong it is. I brag about how diverse it is.
  The press does not know what is going on here. In my committee, there 
were inferences that we also were playing games with who gets into our 
military academies--West Point, Air Force Academy, Annapolis. I 
nominate those people, like all Congressmen do every year, but the 
testimony was they are putting a thumb on the scale as to who gets into 
them.
  It is just offensive. It mirrors what is going on in other parts of 
the country.
  They pay people $190,000 a year to be diversity experts, to say: Oh, 
this person is registered as this, this person is registered to that. I 
believe, when they do it, they do it like they do in the private sector 
and have been doing this for 50 years. You self-identify, so we keep 
this fiction going that, if you are one-quarter Peruvian, that you are 
a protected minority and you bring a diverse view of the world.
  I don't know why, if somebody has a grandmother who is Peruvian and 
grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, you have a unique view of the world 
and it is important to give you preferences to get a promotion in the 
military, but that is apparently how we are operating right now. In any 
event, all of the American public should be aware of that.
  If our military is not number one in the world, we are going to be in 
big trouble, baby. One of the only reasons why we are number one in the 
world is because we do have the strongest military in the world, and to 
begin to say our promotions should no longer be based on merit but 
should be based on looking around and finding somebody from--I don't 
know--South Africa or whatever is preposterous.
  Now, I will remind the Chair one more time that we are adding a new 
minority group to be given preferences right now. President Biden wants 
North Africans and Middle Eastern people--people, if you draw a line 
from Morocco all the way to Iran, he wants them considered as a special 
group who is in need of protection, as well. This will mean that if 
somebody emigrates here from, say, Egypt, and President Biden gets what 
he wants, they will also be considered a special case, in need of 
special protection, and being given preference over the native born.
  It is so divisive. Not only do you not have the best people 
necessarily getting the job, but it is so divisive because you are 
teaching our military--rather than you are one, we are all one unit, we 
are all American, you are taking the military and saying: You should 
walk around with a chip on your shoulder. You are a Hispanic American, 
you are an African American, you are a Native American, you are an 
Asian American, you are a Middle Eastern American, and it is just the 
beginning of the end.
  I strongly hope, when we come to the appropriations bill--and we made 
some progress--not as much progress as we wanted in the authorizing 
bill, but I hope that our team, when it comes to the appropriations 
bill, removes all of these horrible DPI positions.

  Our military, a lot of people tell us it is underfunded. I am not 
sure that is true, but people tell us that. To pay 190 grand a year for 
these people is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and it is something that 
should be reported in the mainstream media.
  My fifth story that we are going to cover today that the mainstream 
media is not going to pay attention to is we had a prayer breakfast 
earlier this morning in the Capitol. In the past, we had that prayer 
breakfast outside the Capitol. We would take a bus a mile away or rent 
something in a hotel. Today, we did it right here in the Capitol, which 
is fine, saved a few bucks; that was good. President Biden came over, 
gave a little speech, which was good.
  In any event, the main speaker was the Chaplain of the Senate, and 
the Chaplain of the Senate was very animated, gave quite a long sermon. 
However, it was an interesting sermon, because I believe he called for 
a fast of all Americans of once or twice a week. It wasn't a full fast. 
I mean, you could drink water. The fast would end every day at 3 
o'clock.
  Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting that Reverend Black from 
the U.S. Senate, who claimed there are a lot of Senators or Members of 
the Senate--I think maybe he was mentioning staff, too--who fasted 
frequently. Of course, he quoted several Bible verses in both the Old 
and New Testament in which the Israelis fasted. Jesus' disciples, after 
he left, were going to fast.
  I thought it was interesting that we had such a student of the Bible, 
the Chaplain of the Senate, who has been here since 2003 that was 
calling for a fast.
  I think it is something interesting and ought to be in your local 
newspaper if you want to know what is going on around here. I mean, it 
was a prayer breakfast. A significant number of U.S. Senators and 
Congressmen attended. The President of the United States attended. 
Wouldn't you think they would cover it?
  I bet, if I look in the mainstream newspapers tomorrow--the 
Washington Post, the New York Times, et cetera,

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the Milwaukee Journal in my area--they will not cover the fact that the 
longtime Chaplain in the U.S. Senate called for a fast.
  So those are five stories that have been underreported. We will ask, 
if there are any members of the mainstream media that we see, whether 
their newspapers covered them. If the stories are even a little bit 
old, it doesn't mean they shouldn't be in there.
  To me, if you are a mainstream newspaper, a citizen who reads you 
every day should be informed, and every one of these five issues, I 
think somebody who reads the Washington Post; the Philadelphia 
Inquirer, if that is still around; the Milwaukee Journal, would not 
know these five issues.
  I am going to go through them again:
  The degree to which people all around the world are looking to 
replace these Palestinians as far as doing work in Israel.
  The horribleness, the waste of the low-income housing tax credits 
which would not survive the mainstream media paying attention to it.
  What is going on at the border, the degree to which, in December, we 
just blew away any previous totals of people coming across there, and 
the degree that we have to do something.
  The wokeness in the military--that is the fourth issue--the degree to 
which the current head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is overtly saying 
that he does not want the best people running the military if they 
happen to be White.
  Also, that the Chaplain of the Senate was such a Bible-believing guy 
that he called on the Congressmen and Senators who were there today to 
begin to fast, and he actually told us that a lot of the U.S. Senators 
are already fasting.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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