[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 181 (Friday, December 6, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H6438-H6440]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE WAR ON THE NUCLEAR FAMILY

  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, obviously, we are about to begin a new 
session, and one more time I would like to review what I think are some 
of the major mistakes that this body has committed over the last 50 or 
60 years that we should be revisiting now, now that it is apparent the 
American public wants some change.
  It is a goal of this body, and really even a constitutional mandate, 
that we treat everybody equally and that we don't prefer one group of 
people or ethnic group of people over another group of people, people 
of one lifestyle over another lifestyle.
  Nevertheless, one more time I think I have to bring up that it is 
very apparent that we are treating people differently and that is 
particularly with regard to people who elect to raise children in 
marriage and people who, for whatever reason, sometimes their fault 
sometimes not their fault, elect to raise children out of marriage.
  Mr. Speaker, if you look at almost every single government program, 
they are conditioned or based upon percent of poverty. If you are below 
a certain income level, then you are eligible for that program, and if 
you are above a certain level, then you are not eligible for benefits 
under that plan.
  Since in a household with a man and woman both there and both parents 
of a child, it is overwhelmingly likely that one of them is working 
full-time, they will be making $40,000 or $50,000 or $60,000 or more, 
that couple will almost never be considered to be in poverty.
  Mr. Speaker, if you have another situation in which the mother and 
father are in different households, if one of these people is not 
working or working minimally, making maybe $15,000 or $16,000 a year or 
less and the other person is working full-time, then that is considered 
to be not in poverty.
  As a result, financially, there is an incentive to make a household 
in which the mother and father are not both there the norm.

[[Page H6439]]

  Now, almost all of the programs that began with the so-called war on 
poverty in the 1960s gave grants or money to people who did not have 
both a man and a woman in the household. Some of these programs at the 
time were known as food stamps, some were healthcare, what is known as 
Medicaid, or different States have different words for it. In Wisconsin 
we call it BadgerCare.

  We have low-income housing which is, again, available only to people 
with low income. As a matter of fact, in a lot of these low-income 
housing projects one of the goals they have when they hire managers is 
to make sure that there is not a man in the household or a father in 
the household because then you shouldn't be able to take advantage of 
the program.
  There used to be cash grants called AFDC which were eliminated during 
the Gingrich/Clinton years, and they, again, gave cash basically to 
people in situations where you did not have a mother and father at 
home. It has since been replaced by TANF grants.
  If someone does decide to work 14, 15, or 20 hours a week there are 
grants for daycare that are not eligible for situations in which you 
have both parents at home. If you want to go to college, there are 
grants called Pell grants available, but not available to people in 
which you have both the mother and father at home.
  This should concern us all. It is not difficult to come up with 
hypotheticals. Another program which kind of discourages full-time work 
is called the earned income tax credit program where a family can wind 
up with $5,000 or $6,000 that you won't get if you are making say more 
than $40,000 a year or married to somebody with a normal income.
  We have to revisit this problem.
  These programs have changed America such that in 1965 before these 
programs kicked in, only about 5 percent of children born in America 
were born to a family without a mother and father at home. That number 
is now over 40 percent.
  Other programs have become more popular. Something I think we ought 
to remember is that it is not the cost that bothers me as much as it is 
what it is doing to America.
  At the turn of the century, we had about 17 million people on 
FoodShare, what people call food stamps. That number is now 42,000. In 
other words, we have over doubled the number of people on food 
assistance. America is very generous. I tour my food banks all the 
time. They do a fantastic job. Mr. Speaker, I love those food banks.
  America does have to cover people, but in order to get on food 
stamps, Mr. Speaker, you need a lower income, and I think we ought to 
be spending more time wondering why.
  Right now, unemployment is almost nonexistent, but despite the fact 
that we have almost nonexistent unemployment, we skyrocketed up from 17 
million to 42 million people on food stamps. So it is important.
  I want to dig into these programs because some of these programs give 
people on the programs benefits that people not on the programs would 
not use.
  Mr. Speaker, if you talk to your clerk in the local food store they 
will comment, if you ask them frequently, that people on the government 
benefit are buying things that the people behind the counter would not 
think of buying.
  We have to ask ourselves: Is that right?
  There is a housing program called section 42 which, in my opinion, 
does more to benefit property tax developers than it does to benefit 
the people living in the housing. There is a program in which because 
the government pays for 70 percent of the cost of the housing, the 
housing built for so-called low income is frequently nicer or more 
lavish.
  If you look at the kitchen counters and if you look at where they 
build the properties, they are more lavish than the average American 
finds.
  I had a staffer a little while ago who got married, and when she and 
her husband were looking for housing, they were disappointed to find 
that the nicest housing was all low income and they would not be able 
to afford such nice housing.
  I talked to a property developer, and he found it difficult to buy 
new land for new apartment projects because he always got outbid by the 
developers who were having 70 percent of their projects paid for by the 
government.
  I have got two problems there. One is the general marriage penalty 
associated with the programs and the other is whoever put the program 
in there and supports the program appears to me to be more concerned 
about making money for property developers than even the people who 
need the low-income housing.
  I should point out that some low-income housing is going to be a 
necessity. We have people on Social Security whose incomes are so low 
that they can't even afford an apartment. I can understand the reason 
for this housing. Overall, the point is that we, right now, are 
operating a policy in this country and have been operating the policy 
for 50 years that says: We don't want both mom and dad in the home with 
the children.
  George Gilder has written a lot about this problem. Robert Rector has 
written a lot about this problem.
  There is no question that one of the reasons we have gone from 5 
percent of the children born without a mother and father at home to now 
over 40 percent is that the problem is the government is encouraging 
this.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to point out, you may say, well, that is sure 
surprising. This is not something that we wanted.
  However, there are a lot of people who actually view the American 
nuclear family as a problem. Karl Marx, which seems kind of strange, 
170 years ago felt a goal of the hard left, the progressive left, 
whatever you want to call it, was to abolish the family.
  There are names that maybe are forgotten, but in the sixties, we had 
the radical feminists like Kate Millet, who was a well-known person, 
talked about destroying the American family. She, for whatever 
philosophical reason, didn't want men in the household. So there are 
people who want this.
  Two of the three people who founded Black Lives Matter called for 
ending the so-called Western prescribed nuclear family structure. There 
is no question that about 5 years ago around here Black Lives Matter 
was perceived to be a very powerful institution, and a lot of people 
spoke about it positively. So it is important to remember they wanted 
to get rid of the nuclear family.

                              {time}  1315

  How are we going to get back to where we used to be, where almost all 
children had a mother and father at home unless there would have been 
some catastrophe and one of the parents would have died?
  I think that is something that we should be looking at unquestionably 
over the next 3 months.
  This is a totally artificial thing. When I talk to people in other 
countries, such as Korea and India, it is almost unheard of all of this 
not having the father in the home.
  Why did it happen in the Western countries and the United States? No 
question, I think the reason is government policy has encouraged it.
  I hope that, in the next 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 months, as we look at 
government programs, we have as our goal not discriminating in favor of 
families that don't have a mother and father at home and, even more 
importantly, stop discriminating against and displaying hatred and 
inequity against families in which both mother and father are at home.
  One other anecdote of a program, Pell grants, which I mention just 
briefly. I have been talking about this, even before I got here, for 25 
years of my life, and once I talked to a young gal who must have been 
23 or 24 about the marriage penalties associated with college 
scholarships, what she thought about this.
  She said she and her husband got married before they were having 
children, but none of her friends were getting married because they got 
free college. In other words, they wanted to have the government pay 
for their college, and they realized that whoever puts together this 
Food Stamp program had, whether it was intentionally or 
unintentionally, put together one more program in which you were 
discriminated against if you were married and actually were 
discriminated against if your parents were married.
  It is another problematic situation here, and I hope that the 
American public and conservatives around this

[[Page H6440]]

Capitol and throughout the country demand a situation in which we stop 
discriminating against the old-fashioned nuclear family.
  I think that is the most important problem facing America and the 
next Congress. It is a difficult issue to deal with because you don't 
want to be labeled mean or cruel. On the other hand, as a public 
policy, I think coming up on 60 years, maybe 55 years, brazenly 
discriminating against a nuclear family with a mother and father at 
home has to end.
  We should stop treating the mother-and-father family at home so 
poorly. We should stop penalizing them by keeping the newer apartments 
off the market for them. It is not right that they can't afford things 
in the food store that maybe people with potentially lower income are.
  As far as health insurance is concerned, we discriminate against 
middle-class America. They frequently have big, $15,000 to $20,000, 
deductions on their healthcare, deductions that we would not give to 
somebody who, under normal circumstances, does not have both parents in 
the home. This is another example of discrimination and another example 
of policy in which we try to destroy the American family.
  I think the first step here is to have more and more people talk 
about it. I think the American people should be aware of it. The 
American people should not be supportive of any program that so 
brazenly discourages having a mother and father at home. I realize it 
can happen.
  I will finish with this. When this was first brought to my attention, 
there was a great author by the name of George Gilder, who wrote books 
about this family situation in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, and 
he actually studied what was known as the ghetto at the time in Albany, 
New York.
  He followed around a young couple, a man and a woman, after the young 
woman got pregnant, was going to become a mother.
  George Gilder was probably born around 1940. He felt at the time that 
that would be cause for concern and alarm, that the young woman was 
pregnant. In fact, he found out that, at that time in Albany, New York, 
it was not considered a bad thing, but it was considered a good thing 
because now they would be eligible for food and eligible for medical 
care and finally be able to get out from under their parents. They were 
given their own apartment.
  By the way, I find that in my district, too. When I talk to people 
administering the low-income housing, it is not unusual that people get 
into low-income housing because they are leaving their parents' house, 
which a lot of young people want to do, but I guess one way to get your 
own apartment is to have a child. I am not sure that is a good thing.
  In any event, George Gilder, looking at things, found a certain 
subset of society that felt it was monetarily beneficial to have a 
child without the father legally around. As a result, we were probably 
shifting society away from and discriminating against the mother and 
father at home.
  George Gilder made another observation as he studied this class of 
people. Traditionally, in our society, the purpose of the father has 
been to support the family, and George Gilder found that, frequently, 
fathers' income went up and responsibility level went up as he got 
married and had children and assumed the role of being the breadwinner 
and responsible for paying the mortgage, that sort of thing.
  As we got away from having the father in the home, they lose that 
motivation or that purpose in life. As they lose that purpose in life, 
they are more likely to do drugs and more likely to not be as 
productive citizens. In other words, the dad becomes more productive 
after he gets married, not before he gets married.
  Not only is this, I think, the current policy, a problem for 
children, but I think it is a big problem for men, as well. It is 
something that isn't talked about nearly as much as it should be, but 
sometimes people wonder why there is such a higher percentage of 
men incarcerated than women, a higher percentage of men dying of drug 
overdoses compared to women. I think part of it is because it has been 
the policy of the Federal Government to chase men out of the household.

  In any event, I leave my conservative friends around the country with 
this desire: over the next couple of months or 3 or 4 months, we talk 
about the perverse incentives and the apparent hatred of the American 
government for households with a man and woman both available to raise 
the children, and we work toward an equitable government in which we at 
least treat the two-parent family equally in the eyes of the 
government, as we do families in which both parents are not available.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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