[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 86 (Friday, May 17, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H3353-H3355]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SOUTHERN BORDER INVASION
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. Madam Speaker, I think one more time today it is
important to update the Chamber as far as what is going on with the
biggest crisis in America today. That is, of course, the virtual
invasion across our southern border.
We recently had published an estimate of the number of people who
have crossed the southern border in April, the most recent month
available. That number is about 204,000. April is usually a low month,
but per usual, it appears as though we hit the all-time record number
of people coming here in April.
A year ago, it was about 178,000, and a year before that, about
160,000. If you go back to the final year that President Trump was
President, it was about 6,000. We have gone from about 6,000 people,
which is apparently doable, to about 205,000.
During that time, President Biden, through executive orders, has
changed the policy and is also allowing about 30,000 people here as
parolees from countries such as Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba. So, that number
of 204,000 is really probably understated by about 30,000.
Our country continues to struggle with this. It is very expensive,
though that is not the biggest problem, be it schools, be it medical
care. Even in my district when I talk to people who try to put together
free clinics used to get Medicaid payments, that sort of thing, one of
them told me even a majority of people they are having to take care
of--in essence, charity--are people who some would describe as illegal
immigrants.
I assume that the number of illegal immigrants who are unaccompanied
minors continues to be a concern. We have about 6,000 of the 205,000
unaccompanied minors.
We heard testimony about this recently, but we still do not know
exactly where all these folks are. We don't know if they are living
with a so-called relative, whether we are consistently giving DNA tests
to see whether it really is a relative. We know The New York Times
published articles that guessed that there are tens of thousands of
unaccompanied minors not accounted for.
It would be very easy to solve this problem. You reinstitute the stay
in Mexico policy. You get parole. By the way, with parole, you
automatically get what we refer to as welfare benefits as soon as you
come here. You get rid of these programs and this drive to change
America would change almost overnight.
We can never forget that Barack Obama, living in the greatest country
in the world, the United States, during his term felt that one of his
goals would be to fundamentally change America. When you change the
people in America, how they are brought up, how they think about
things, you will fundamentally change America, the greatest country in
the history of the world.
The only reason you continue to let, as far as I can see, about a
quarter million people coming here every month is because you do want
to change it and want it to be different. So, I call upon President
Biden to return to the stay in Mexico policy.
I think primarily by doing that, you could get that quarter of
million figure back down around 20,000 or 10,000 almost overnight.
Again, the takeaway for this body and the American public should be,
and we should never get bored of saying it, it appears, one more time
in April, we hit the all-time high for an April of the number of people
crossing into our Nation.
What I thought was the biggest crisis in the country when I became a
Congressman--now I guess I have to say it is second to the border--is
the continued assault on marriage and the breakdown of the family. When
I talk to people in my district, they know something is wrong.
In some ways, America is different than the America they knew in the
1990s, the 1970s, the 1960s. You ask them what the change is, and they
frequently say the number one change is the breakdown of the American
family, the end of the old-fashioned mother and father and children at
home as we slowly increase the number of children who are born without
a father in the household.
Of course, this is a problem in two ways. It is a problem for the
children by every metric. They would be better off if they had mom and
dad at home. It is also a problem for the men in society, as usually
men get their self-worth out of supporting their family.
We have more and more families in which, as an immigrant in my
district tells me, in America, or some communities, the woman marries
the government. Because we have a situation in which we are encouraging
the woman to marry the government, we have a situation in which we no
longer have what is for most men their most important function in life,
and that is supporting their wife and supporting their children.
{time} 1300
I want to point out, by the way, that this is not a coincidence. When
I talk to people around my district and say: Why do you think the
family is breaking down? Maybe they shrug their shoulders and say:
America is less religious or something. They have to realize there are
people all along who want the breakdown of the family. That is their
goal.
In 1848, Karl Marx, who is still read and still respected in some
circles, wrote about the need to abolish the family in ``The Communist
Manifesto.'' He did not want children to be raised by parents. He
wanted the government to assume that role.
I think it is not a coincidence that in the 1960s at the time of
great subsidy of fatherless homes was also a high tide for feminism.
Kate Millett, a very important feminist, that I think some
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young people don't know, said that destroying the American family was
necessary to bring about the leftwing cultural revolution.
I think today our children are sometimes taught that the feminist
movement was a positive. We can't forget during their power of the
sixties their goal was to destroy the American family.
Remember a few years ago, at a time when so many Congressmen in this
institution would show up at places where Black Lives Matter was having
a rally or carrying signs, that at that time, before it was taken down
out of embarrassment, they said that they were calling upon the end of
the Western prescribed nuclear family.
Let's not forget that--despite the fact that on their website Black
Lives Matter was calling for the end of the nuclear family--dozens,
perhaps hundreds of people in this body, showed up at places showing
support for Black Lives Matter, as well as the chief executives of our
largest corporations frequently giving money to Black Lives Matter
because, apparently, they thought it was the trendy thing the way
America was going.
Last month, in another bit of evidence that the hard left likes to
believe the nuclear family is outdated, there was a Wisconsin Supreme
Court decision dealing with adoption laws. This wasn't the reason for
the decision; the decision wound up being unanimous. Justice Jill
Karofsky of the Wisconsin Supreme Court--and in Wisconsin our supreme
court justices are not partisan elections, but everybody knows who the
Democrat is and who the Republican is. The relatively new Democrat
Justice Jill Karofsky writes: ``The notion that marriage serves as the
foundation of society is at best outdated, and at worst misogynistic.''
Think about that. In a State like Wisconsin where frequently
Republicans win statewide, we have U.S. Senator Ron Johnson here, but a
woman got elected to the Wisconsin State Supreme Court and here she
declares that: ``The notion that marriage serves as the foundation of
society is at best outdated, and at worst misogynistic'' letting the
cat out of the bag that the goal of the left is to destroy the American
family.
Now, how is President Biden responding to this in his proposed
budget? There are many programs out there which are made available, as
long as there is not a breadwinner in the family, particularly as long
as there is not a man in the family, which I think they are really
aiming at, then those programs kick in. Some of these programs, it
appears to me, are increased in this budget, which, in other words,
further pushes for financial reasons for getting the men out of the
household.
President Biden tries to increase more low-income housing frequently
available to one-parent families, not to married couples. The earned
income tax credit is a horrible program which was begun or actually
pushed by a Republican Jack Kemp and is another program which
discourages marriage. SNAP increases discourage marriage. Things like
Pell grants are a program that is much easier to take advantage of,
college scholarships, if you don't have a two-parent family at home.
It is very disappointing that President Biden has decided to put all
this money into programs designed to assist primarily fatherless homes,
but we have to stand up as a Congress and say, no, we are no longer
going to push one lifestyle over another.
It would be a good thing if we went back to a time when the
government was not putting their thumb on the scale as to what type of
family you have. I hope that my Republican colleagues in the
Appropriations Committee, when they see the increase in these programs,
make sure that they don't come about, but, in fact, do the opposite,
that they turn around and begin to work our way back to the eighties,
the seventies, the sixties, the fifties where we did not punish parents
for getting married.
On the Pell grant thing I want to recount an anecdote I have talked
about before. I have spoken about this topic for over 20 years now, and
I was once speaking to a group of primarily senior citizens. It was
during the Tea Party thing. They were older people, and I went through
all the programs that you lost if you married a guy with an income.
There was a young gal working at that time. Most of the people who
are most familiar with the Tea Party movement know a lot of people
there were older, but there was a young gal. I asked her what she
thought about my speech and all the benefits out there to discourage
people from getting married. She said that, you know, me and my
husband, we got married before I had a child, but none of my friends
got married, and they get free college.
I realized even then that the 24-, 25-year-olds, they had it figured
out. Sadly, they already realized that the goal of the American
Government was to discourage marriage and do what they can to give
programs based upon the idea of not having a man in the family.
My hope is we begin to work our way back to a time where the two-
parent family--there are wonderful parents raising children in all
sorts of circumstances, but the government should no longer create
situations in which there are incentives to keep the man out of the
household.
We had some votes recently with regard to American aid to Ukraine,
and I believe that once we have gone down the path we have gone down,
we cannot allow Ukraine to collapse.
That being said, it bothers me that to this day the Biden
administration does not talk about trying to end this war. We have two
countries that are actually very closely related. In my district, when
you run across someone that is Russian, they very frequently have a
spouse from Ukraine or the other way around.
It seems to me a real tragedy that a huge number of people, tens of
thousands of people of both countries are dying because of that war.
Ukraine has the second lowest birth rate in the world. It is always a
tragedy when people die, but to have a country in which so many young
people are dying is truly a tragedy. They have the same problem in
Russia, a birth rate that is too low. Not only is the birth rate too
low, but they also have a huge immigration problem.
I know in this country having been down at the southern border, it is
not unusual to have Russians come in there. I know a few people in my
district, including a young couple with children that I am sure Russia
would love to have, but they left Russia to come here. That was before
the war started.
The goal of both Mr. Zelenskyy and Mr. Putin ought to be to try to
get more young people to populate their rather large countries, not to
have this war going on. I think they both must realize this if they
really want what is best for the future of their countries. I would
hope that President Biden, in addition to asking for more munitions for
the war would find some country, be it Israel, be it Turkiye, whatever
country, to try to negotiate an end to this war. It is such a tragedy
to see tens of thousands of young people dying on both sides when from
what I can see the biggest problem that both countries have is a lack
of young people in the first place.
I would ask President Biden to spend a little time on that. When I
have met in the past with his advisers or his Cabinet on this issue,
they really just seem dumbfounded when I ask them about when the war is
going to end. It is like they haven't even considered it. It is
something we should consider. It is also bad geopolitically for the
United States.
We saw earlier this week meetings between Red China and Russia. I
know going back to President Nixon we did not want close ties between
Russia and China, and we have been very careful to make sure that
hasn't happened. However, you leave it to President Biden, and those
countries have closer ties, as well as closer ties with Iran, another
country that we don't like to necessarily see prosper or become part of
an alliance against the United States.
My third request for this body is that we try to prod the Biden
administration in looking for an end to this war, so these two great
historical countries do not continue to lose their younger population.
To go over one more time, we have to have Americans still be aware
that we are hitting records of people coming across the southern
border.
We have to remind people at home that this breakdown of the family
did
[[Page H3355]]
not just happen; it happened because this Congress continues to dole
out money, virtually conditioned upon not having an old-fashioned,
nuclear family, and the Biden administration is trying to throw gas on
the fire with this budget.
Finally, we hope Members of this body will prod the Biden
administration towards looking for peace in Eastern Europe.
Madam Speaker, as I wrap up, I hope the body proceeds as I would
wish, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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