[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 88 (Tuesday, May 21, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H3390-H3393]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. D'Esposito). 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 would like to address the House and talk 
about four issues that, per usual, I think have not been adequately 
covered by our mainstream press corps.
  The first issue I would like to deal with is their treatment in their 
public statements by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which is 
the second

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biggest university in the State of Wisconsin, towards what is going on 
in Israel.
  They, I think in part because of some Palestinian sympathizers who 
set up tents on their campus, felt compelled to make an issue on what 
American foreign policy or at least UWM's foreign policy is.
  To my great concern and great embarrassment, they have decided to, in 
their statement, condemn Israel. Also, in addition, to condemning 
Israel, they called on Israel to begin a cease-fire in the Middle East.
  If you read their statement, Mr. Speaker, it is apparent that there 
is some equivalence between Israel and what could be called Palestine, 
or even treating Palestine in a superior position there. This is 
completely unacceptable, and it is, sadly, something that is seen too 
much on university campuses.
  The thing that makes this uniquely horrible is it is coming from the 
administration. It is bad enough if run-of-the-mill faculty members of 
universities around the country can't figure out the obvious difference 
between right and wrong here. It is particularly disturbing that the 
administration itself has a problem distinguishing that.
  Israel was attacked, and over 1,000 people were killed in the most 
bloodthirsty and callous way possible. Israel responded to this 
declaration of war by trying to, as carefully as possible, get rid of 
the Hamas fighters who had tried to destroy them and recapture hostages 
that at least are claimed to be hidden probably in tunnels beneath the 
Gaza community.
  There is a huge difference between the countries. Israel is a modern 
Western, humane country. It is a country with lots of mosques that has 
a very diverse population. Mr. Speaker, you will notice when the over 
1,000 people were murdered and taken hostage, people from Thailand and 
the Phillipines were in Israel. They are trying to get people from 
Ecuador in Israel. People are coming from all around the globe for an 
opportunity to work in Israel.
  Meanwhile, Gaza, like too many, sadly, Third World countries, is a 
corrupt state in which, despite receiving billions of dollars from 
foreign countries, primarily in Europe, is still stuck in the muck. It 
is a country that has no synagogues in it. There is not the 
appreciation for freedom of religion in Gaza like there is in Israel.
  The people who run Gaza have been corrupt. The leaders have sometimes 
been in Qatar and sometimes been in Turkiye. The ancestors of Yasser 
Arafat, who ran Palestine during much of my life, wound up in Paris. 
The people who get the money here don't even stay in Gaza. It is a 
country, by the way, that would be well-run and would be prosperous. It 
is located on the Mediterranean Sea. It was formerly a place where 
people came to recreate and was a tourist spot. It was a place that 
used to have greenhouses that were left behind by the Jews when they 
had to go back to Israel and were destroyed by the people in Palestine.
  In any event, we have to weigh in as a country and wake up as far as 
what is going on in our universities.
  Why do we have universities?
  Some of the American public will overwhelmingly figure out whom they 
should have sympathy for. Nonetheless, in the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee, the administration clearly had more sympathy with Hamas than 
they did with Israel, which is something of great concern.
  Another thing of great concern is when they had to deal with the 
apparent crisis of having tents in their university, they felt 
compelled to negotiate with the squeaky people who sympathized with the 
barbaric Hamas military and didn't even talk to people who have had a 
vested interest and apparently didn't talk to people who had a vested 
interest in looking out for Israel, which, after all, is fighting for 
its existence.
  If Israel would immediately pull out of Gaza, what would happen?
  It would allow the Hamas group to replenish their arms and to regroup 
and to someday attack Israel again 5 years, 10 years, 15 years down the 
line.
  So, in any event, I realize the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is 
not as well-known academically as Harvard or MIT or Northwestern or 
some of these other universities that embarrass themselves, but I hope 
the public is paying attention to what is going on in the University of 
Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
  I hope the taxpayers are paying attention, and I hope the chancellor 
who has made some admission that what he did was maybe not right, would 
take a bolder stance and say that his university is not going to weigh 
in or give any sympathy towards Hamas, particularly so soon after they 
so barbarically killed over 1,000 Israelis.
  My second issue today is that within the last few weeks, we received, 
one more time, the monthly totals on the number of migrants who came 
across our southern border. One more time, it is true almost as far 
back as you can find, the numbers for April were a substantial increase 
over last April and a huge increase over the final April under Donald 
Trump.
  During the final April under Donald Trump, April 2020, about 6,000 
people crossed the border. Last April about 178,000 people crossed the 
border. We are now at 204,000. So it has been a huge increase, from 
178,000 to 204,000 people. This is obviously unacceptable.
  That increase is understated because what President Biden has done to 
hold down the numbers is he gives parole to people who are coming here 
from Cuba and Haiti, which probably would add another 30,000 people to 
this list, except for it is not included on the numbers released. So 
the American public and the American press should keep paying attention 
to what is going on at the border.
  The biggest problem in our country, if our country goes under, our 
great country, I think is we anticipate a free press, but to have a 
free press and have it count for something, it has to be a competent 
press. When the numbers were released a couple weeks ago, I think it 
was within the last week, on the number of people who crossed the 
border from April, it should have been a banner headline in every 
newspaper in this country.

                              {time}  1930

  Every 10 o'clock news station around the country should have led with 
the story that we had another all-time record for an April as far as 
people coming across the southern border--instead, nothing. They should 
have pointed out that, one more time, we have just shy of 6,000 
unaccompanied minors.
  There was a time when the press corps cared a little bit about 
breaking apart families.
  Now, when a 16- or 15-year-old shows up at the southern border, what 
does our administration do? Nothing. For all we know, that child is 
never going to see his parents again. Who knows what his motive is for 
showing up at the border, but nothing is done. Our administration is 
settling in where we expect if a young person crosses the border 
without their parents, we will find them a sponsor, and they will stay 
here.
  Quite frankly, what our administration ought to be doing is, even if 
a child shows up at the border with one parent--in this country, in a 
divorce case, we will frequently try to keep both parents in touch with 
the child. So, at the southern border, even if a child shows up with 
one parent, they ought to be turned around unless we can document where 
the other parent is and that they are signing off on this situation.
  Again, I strongly encourage the press corps to pay more attention to 
the border.
  By the way, I want to make one more statement with regard to the 
situation with Israel. There are people who are horrified--and it is 
horrific--when people die in this war. The war could be ended by Hamas 
at any time. At any time, they could say they surrender, here are their 
arms, here are where you are going to find the tunnels, here are where 
the hostages are held. The war would be over tomorrow.
  People do die in the explosions and bombings that take place there. I 
think that there should be a little more attention paid by the 
protesters before they condemn Israel to see how this country reacted 
when we felt it was necessary to bomb population centers when war was 
declared on the United States during World War II.
  I suggest sympathizers with Hamas look a little bit at the Dresden 
firebombings and the bombings in

[[Page H3392]]

Tokyo. That was before we got to the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki. Even with traditional bombs in Dresden and Tokyo, you will 
find, I think, more horrific things happened than anything that is 
happening near Hamas. Not to mention, the Israelis had been incredibly 
careful--much more careful than we were in Tokyo and Dresden--about 
warning civilians and trying to keep them out of harm's way.
  If anybody in this body wants more sympathy or wants to condemn 
Israel, I suggest they look at how we handled the situation when we 
were bombing Japan and Germany toward the end of World War II--by the 
way, at a time when the conclusion of the war was, to a certain extent, 
already determined.
  The third issue that I believe has not been adequately addressed in 
the paper--and when I get back on the weekends, I try to talk to people 
about it; they have no clue--is the fact that we have recently begun 
collecting information regarding Middle Eastern people and people from 
North Africa for a variety of purposes.
  I think people believe that by keeping track of these people, we will 
eventually give them the benefits of affirmative action-type programs 
or diversity sort of programs. Prior to this, which was only approved 
in the last few weeks, we gave potential preferences to Hispanic 
Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Asians--quite frankly, 
we give preferences whether you are American or not, just Asians who 
are here--and Pacific Islanders.
  The Biden administration, the most divisive administration in this 
country's history, felt that wasn't enough. I think even without 
showing a need, they have decided to add Middle Eastern and North 
African people to the mix.
  If you look at a map of the world, right now, Pakistanis already have 
potential preference, but that ends at the Pakistan-Iran border.
  What they have done is taken anybody who lives between the Pakistan-
Iran border over to the Atlantic Ocean, over to Morocco, and said they 
have the potential for preferences.
  My guess is it would mean that, right now, if you come here and open 
a business, and your ancestry is from these countries, you would, 
therefore, for example, get preferences in government contracting. You 
may get preferences for the purpose of government hiring. You may get 
preferences for government bidding.
  In any event, I think there should have been a lot of discussion in 
the news media before we added another huge bloc of people who, as a 
practical matter, were going to get preferences over the native-born.
  Making this decision even more bizarre, I think the two rationales 
for affirmative action--neither of which I agree with, by the way--were 
either because something bad happened to people in this country maybe 
100 years ago or that this group maybe statistically was not doing as 
well when measured by economic metrics.
  Here, people from the Middle East and North Africa largely have not 
immigrated to this country until the last 30 or 40 years, so you 
couldn't say that there has been historical discrimination here. Not 
only that, at least with regard to people from Iran, they are doing 
much better than the native-born.
  If people from Iran who are doing a great job in this country and 
adding a lot to the United States are making more money than the 
native-born, why would the government go out of its way to say they are 
going to get preferences for government contracting?
  Even more bizarre, like all preferences under these programs, is they 
don't care how wealthy you are. I can be here. We will say I am from 
Morocco. If I inherited $10 million from my parents, I still would be 
helped or given a preference because of my ethnicity, despite the fact 
that I am wildly wealthy. It doesn't really make any sense.
  You self-identify, so you could have somebody who is three quarters 
Irish and one quarter Moroccan, and they would be able to identify as 
North African and get preferences.

  The biggest problem is that it continues the Biden policy of trying 
to create division in Americans. They want people to view themselves 
forever as not just an American, as we did when I was a child, but for 
forever as: I am Hispanic American. I am an Asian American. I am picked 
on.
  This is a way to, I believe, destroy America. I think that is why the 
Biden administration is going down this path.
  I do think, coming back to the mainstream media, we should ask 
ourselves why I have a hard time finding anybody back in my district 
who is aware that we have recently given preferences to this whole new 
body of people, which is a significant policy change. If we had a 
competent press corps in this country, it is something everybody would 
be aware of, and we would have had a public discussion about.
  The final topic, which I don't think has been discussed enough, is 
the goal to have two-thirds of our vehicles be electric vehicles by 
2032.
  I recently bought a car, a Ford Escape, and it occurs to me now that 
it is not impossible that this will be the final normal car I will ever 
own.
  There are a lot of things that can be said about electric cars, but 
almost all of them are bad. My major concern--though there are others, 
as well--is that they are more expensive. When I talk to my insurance 
agent, he tells me the cost of auto insurance with an electric car 
could easily be up more than 50 percent. There are other sources who 
don't say it will be that high, but I think everybody would agree it 
will be at least a 20 or 30 percent increase in the cost of auto 
insurance.
  This, at a time, where due to the excessive spending of the Biden 
administration, the cost of housing is through the roof and the cost of 
food is through the roof. Well, guess what? The cost of a car is about 
to go up. I am told the cost of a new pickup could go up $20,000 as we 
switch to electric cars. The cost of insurance is going up.
  In addition to that, we have the problems that our infrastructure is 
not even remotely ready for electric vehicles and the problems you are 
going to have in which you are not able to drive as many miles. I 
happen to be from Wisconsin, where the huge problem will be trying to 
get these things charged when it is 10 degrees below outside.
  In any event, it is something for this body to pay attention to and 
to warn our constituents about so they are aware that as they set aside 
money for a new car--I think it is a smart thing to set aside money so 
you don't go into debt--you are going to have to set aside extra money 
if you plan on buying a new car more than 8 years from now. It is just 
one more cost that is going to make it more difficult for young 
Americans to join the middle class and prepare for the American Dream.
  In summary, I mentioned the four issues I wish the press would pay 
attention to.
  In the Wisconsin area, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee came 
out with a ridiculous press release, which they have tried to modify, 
but nowhere near enough, in which they imply that Israel has to do 
something as far as ending the war in the Middle East, not, apparently, 
Hamas, the brutal people who killed many Israelis a little over half a 
year ago now.
  The second issue to look at is that, one more time, we have a record 
number of people coming here for a month, a record number of people 
coming across the border in April, at a time, by the way, when we are 
hitting in 4-year increments records of people being sworn in as 
immigrants legally. It is not like nobody is coming in here, but I 
think the American public ought to be appalled that, one more time, in 
April 2024, we hit an all-time record for people coming here in April.
  The third issue almost entirely unreported in the mainstream media is 
the fact that we apparently are going to give preferences to people 
from North Africa, Libya, Algeria, whatever, over to the Middle East, 
Syria, Iran, as far as government contracting and probably government 
employment. I don't know if it is something we can undo if we get a 
different President, but it is certainly very divisive.
  With it comes the bureaucracy that will forever tell people from 
North Africa and the Middle East that they should identify not just as 
American but a Middle Eastern American or a North African American.
  Finally, I hope the press, as the clock winds down to 2032, warns 
Americans what they are going to have to expect as far as driving a new 
electric vehicle.

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  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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