[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 12, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H671-H673]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNITED STATES IS A REPUBLIC
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Begich). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2025, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) for 30 minutes.
Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to highlight an
underpublicized but important hearing that was held today.
First of all, however, I would like to make one more time the point
to my colleagues--because I recently heard one of the Senators
grotesquely abusing the word--what form of government we have here
today.
The Senator--fortunately, it wasn't a Congressman, but sometimes they
do it, too--twice, in two sentences in a row, referred to the form of
government we have as a democracy. Of course, we all should know by now
that we do not have a democracy. We have a Republic, and our
forefathers had contempt for democracy.
Alexander Hamilton said: We are a republican form of government.
Liberty is never found in the extremes of democracy.
John Adams: Democracy never lasts long.
Benjamin Franklin, upon the completion of the U.S. Constitution: We
give you a Republic if you can keep it.
When we say the Pledge of Allegiance, what, again, do we say? We
pledge allegiance to the flag and the Republic for which it stands.
Nevertheless, again and again around here, people misspeak and, I am
afraid, miseducate the younger generation into thinking we have a
democracy.
Why did our forefathers not like a democracy? Our Republic under our
Constitution is designed to keep limited government and, therefore,
liberty in the United States.
Democracy, or representative democracy, means a majority of people
are free to take property from anybody in here or take freedoms from
anybody in here. If a clear majority of people say it does not like a
religion or, as is increasingly true in this country, does not like
religion at all or some of the precepts of religion, they believe in a
democracy that they can impose their will on other people.
One of the crises we are facing, which we are going to be talking
about tomorrow night, is the huge debt we have. Why do we have such a
huge debt? Under our Constitution, under our Republic, they were
supposed to restrict the things that the Federal Government could spend
money on. Instead, as we have gotten away from a Republic, and the
arrogant people of this body think that we have a democracy--they think
because they won an election or got 55 or 65 percent of the vote, they
are free to either go into debt or spend other people's money until we
are bankrupt.
If they had realized all along that we are just a Republic, they
would be humble before our Constitution and say: We cannot spend money
on such and such. Go to your State legislator.
I had a couple of groups from an educational institution in my office
this week. Of course, they were asking for more Federal money. I didn't
want to get angry with them or mad at them, but I just noticed that,
one more time, a group of educators came before me and asked for more
money. Because I won an election, they think I have the authority to
give them other people's money. Well, I don't, and it is very
irritating to see educators in particular say that we have a democracy
when our forefathers disliked democracy and would have been terrified
had they known.
Right now, we are almost 250 years down the road. I am sorry, we are
230 years down the road from the founding of our Republic under our
Constitution. I am sure our forefathers would be terrified if they knew
how many people were under the impression that we were a democracy.
America's Welfare System
Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, now, I am going to talk about the hearing
we had earlier today and what I think is probably, next to the out-of-
control immigration system, the biggest crisis that we face, and that
is our welfare system and a huge marriage penalty associated with it.
When I talk about our welfare system, I talk of approximately 90
different programs that somebody who is almost broke is entitled to.
Some you have to have children to be entitled to. All these programs,
as you earned more money and went to work, you would lose eligibility.
There are two things we could say about these programs. I should
point out the testimony in a hearing today from a guy by the name of
Robert Rector from The Heritage Foundation. There are examples--and I
know there are even greater examples than this--that we penalize a
woman who marries the father of her children $28,000 a year if she
makes too much money or, scarier, if she marries a man to support her
or to support their family.
First of all, you might say: ``Well, that is hard to believe. Who
wants to destroy the nuclear family?'' It is not hard to find people to
destroy the nuclear family.
We have Karl Marx, of course, back from the 1860s, who felt the
family was the root of so many horrible things.
We have Kate Millett, who I would describe as the mother of women's
studies classes. Who knows how many of our poor college students have
taken that drivel. She was very definite in the fact that she wanted to
get rid of the American family and, in particular, wanted men outside
the family.
We also have Angela Davis, a 1960s radical who was still powerful
when she spoke into the 1980s and 1990s. She was clearly opposed to the
American family.
Until they scrubbed their website, Black Lives Matter was against
what they referred to as the Western-prescribed traditional nuclear
family.
These people all were against having a mom and dad at home with their
children.
You might say these people can't be that powerful, but you have to
remember, the Democratic Party has proven that they can be led around
by the nose by the most extreme elements of their coalition. That is
why, even though they have to know better, they will vote for abortion
at 8\1/2\ months. That is why the Democratic Party will vote for a boy
pretending to be a girl going into the girls' restroom, because they
will be led around by the most extreme group.
Therefore, I don't think it should be considered a surprise that the
Democratic Party has supported programs that overwhelmingly favor and
encourage an end to the nuclear family.
What type of programs are they? Almost any so-called antipoverty
program you can think of. Certainly, food
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share would qualify. Even worse, any low-income housing credits in
which if you are not married and don't have much of a salary, you get
almost free rent. Of course, to somebody who is 19 or 20 years old,
being able to get outside their parents' house and get free rent is
something that is very tremendous, very desired. There is free
healthcare, free daycare, Pell grants, which lead to free college
tuition.
All of these things are inducements to, as an Indian friend of mine
said, result in the American system in which the women don't marry the
men; the women marry the government.
Another downside, of course, is not only that the children do not
have a father at home, and they would be better off with a father at
home, but the fathers don't have anything to do, which is a problem, as
well.
Normally, in life, the purpose or the goal of a man is to support his
family, to be the husband and father of children. Of course, in the
system encouraged by our welfare system, the men have nothing to do.
If you look in areas of society in which we have maybe the worst
results of the welfare system, most of the bad results happen not to
the children--although the children are damaged--not to the women, but
to the men. When you think of areas of the United States that are more
associated with people taking advantage of these systems, these
benefits, the men are the ones who are largely committing the crimes.
The men are going to prison. The men are doing the drugs.
We talk about it like it is society's problem. It is society's
problem, but it was caused by an out-of-control welfare system that
left the men with nothing to do. This was well documented by George
Gilder, the great sociologist of the 1970s who followed around a young
couple when the young gal got pregnant. He noticed it was not cause for
concern. It was cause for celebration because of all of the benefits
that were available.
A thing that really brings this home is the fact that frequently
these programs provide a more beneficial system than even a low-income
married couple has. We all know that when you talk to the clerks at the
grocery store, they will frequently tell you that the people on the
government are buying food that they themselves don't feel they can
afford. We know that many young couples starting out may live with
their parents, which is probably a good thing because the grandmas and
grandpas can teach the young couple ways to live.
Unfortunately, here, they are not only given their own apartment but
an apartment that is superior to most other apartments. When I had a
staffer get married and look for an apartment back in Wisconsin, they
found the best apartments were the low-income housing.
Why were the best apartments low-income housing? It is because we
have a tax provision called section 42 in which we give overly generous
subsidies to property developers to build new low-income housing. Since
the government pays up to 70 percent of the cost of the housing, the
developers, of course, are able to make those new apartments, which
already are better than the old apartments just by their age. The new
apartments are particularly nice because the government is paying for
70 percent of them. You get better apartments than you would for your
sister who is getting married and having a husband.
We know that, frequently, middle-class families either choose not to
help their children out when they go to college or don't have the money
to help them out, and they wonder why somebody who comes from a family
which maybe was living off the government in the first place gets free
Pell grants and close-to-free college tuition, whereas the middle-class
family does not.
When you look at the medical--and we don't want to take away
anybody's medical care, but when you look at the medical, frequently
people who have a job in the private sector may have a $10,000 or
$15,000 deductible. Instead, people on the system have no deductible or
almost no deductible. It is usually no deductible. Again, the
government sets one up in which you are in better shape if you don't
get married and marry the government.
As I said, a lot of the problems wind up landing on the men who have
no purpose in life since the government has bribed the mother to raise
the children without a father in the home, but it results in a lot of
problems that this institution debates separately.
Over 100,000 people die every year in this country from illegal
drugs. They can come from any family.
I want to emphasize that there are single parents who do a fantastic
job. I know so many single parents, and their children would make
anybody proud.
Nevertheless, when I talk to law enforcement, disproportionately the
number of people who die of drug overdoses come from a difficult family
background. If we were serious about doing something about fentanyl, we
would be addressing the family background.
{time} 1830
Now, we have nice bills this week. Though, they may be technically
flawed--increasing the penalties for people with fentanyl--but if we
really want to go after the 100,000 deaths, you figure you would want
to do something about the family, but we don't care that much.
Crime. When I talk to law enforcement about crime that is going on,
again and again they will talk about the family being broken down as
the reason we have so much more crime than we did 50 years ago. As we
get away from the crime caused from the tragic events in Minnesota,
they have dropped the last couple of years. However, nevertheless,
crime is much greater than it was before we passed the Great Society in
the mid-1960s.
If we were serious about doing all we could to fight the crime in
this country, we would address the current welfare system, which
discourages making up a traditional intact family. In other words, I
would not say that this institution is being entirely sincere in saying
all they can do to fight crime when we continue to allow this welfare
system to ramble on, give the men no responsibility, and have the high
crime.
Another thing we spend a great deal of time talking about here is
education. I was talking with my school superintendents about a month
ago, and we talked about special education and the children who were
having special problems. My school superintendents agreed that
disproportionately those problems were caused by people with a tough
family background. In other words, it is caused by the actions of this
body who have set up a welfare system that discourages intact families.
This is the primary reason I ran for this job several years ago. If
you are in a city council, if you are in a State legislature, and you
want to address these problems like drugs or crime or the education
system, you quickly realize that a lot of the problems are caused by
the breakdown in the family, and that the Federal Government, who
caused the problem in the first place, is doing nothing to solve the
problem.
I ask our leadership, and I ask President Trump, in this important
bill we are going to pass sometime in the next 2 or 3 months, to
address our welfare system, which is designed to bribe, usually
mothers, to raise the child without a father providing the support,
without a father in the home. It is hard to believe we are trying to
make America great unless we revisit the horrible welfare system.
There is one more thing that I think the press has not covered enough
that I would like to touch upon today, and that is one of Donald
Trump's great executive orders. He is doing a good job here. One of the
things that I would like to get rid of and I thought it would take
maybe 10 or 12 years to do, Donald Trump--at least temporarily until we
have a Democrat President--got rid of it with a stroke of a pen.
In 1965--and something I think should have been unconstitutional--
Lyndon Johnson, with the stroke of a pen, said he would no longer
enforce Executive Order 11246, which was an order put into effect by
Lyndon Johnson that--well, he would argue it wasn't requiring--as a
practical matter, it created an affirmative action type system in which
preferences were given to women over men and preferences were given to
people based on racial background.
Now, there are absurdities in the order in the first place. You could
be a very well-off, say, Asian American worth millions of dollars, but
you
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would be considered a minority in need of help. You could be somebody
who just came to America a week ago, and you would be considered a
person who needed help, and, for diversity purposes, would be given
preference over a person of European descent who was around here for 50
years.
I have told the story when I was first made aware of this before, and
I will tell it again so you can see how it worked out as a practical
matter.
I got a call from a human resources professional who worked for a
company that had at least 50 employees and did at least $10,000 of
business with the Federal Government. They hired out a firm to tell
them how to negotiate this executive order.
I might have these numbers off by one, but they were told that when
they had five engineers and wanted to hire a sixth engineer, that sixth
engineer better be a woman. It didn't have to be a woman, but they had
to prepare to show the Federal Government that they did all they could
to find a woman.
They went from three to four members of management, and they were
again told: If you are going to hire a fourth member of management, see
if you can make it a minority. If you can't, that is fine, but you have
got to prove that you went out of the way to find someone.
As a practical matter, we had the Government weighing in, giving
preference to one person over the other person for different jobs in
this company. Because I tried to do something with this when I was in
the State legislature, people would come up to me with other examples.
There were plenty of examples.
This applies not only to employees of Federal contractors, but the
Federal contractors themselves. Recently, I had even heard stories of
people in which the Federal Government is going to pay significantly
more--which I think is illegal--for preferred contractors rather than
men of European descent. It is not only costing the taxpayer money, but
they were incredibly unfair to these people.
Sometimes you get around it by maybe it is a guy, maybe he puts his
wife in charge of the company, and that way he can say we have got a
woman-owned business, and they should get preferences.
In any event, Donald Trump, with the stroke of a pen, got rid of this
ridiculous law. It could be challenged in court. I am sure the Supreme
Court will uphold President Trump. I would hope this body would get rid
of this law once and for all. It would be hard to get it out of the
Senate. I think a lot of Americans don't know it exists. I didn't know
it existed until 12 or 14 years into my political career.
I thank Donald Trump for making sure one more time we are hiring the
most qualified people we can find. We are contracting with the best
that we can find. In any event, there are three stories for you today,
Mr. Speaker. Let me remind you one more time that we are a republic,
not a democracy, and our forefathers were scared to death of having a
democracy.
I, one more time, will point out the huge penalties that the welfare
system has on a man and a woman who want to get married together and
raise a child. I hope that this body takes up that problem. It is not
an easy problem to take up, but if we care at all about the next
generation or the generation after the next generation, we have to walk
our way back from the insane policies put into place by Lyndon Johnson
in the 1960s.
One more time, we thank Donald Trump for allowing the government and
contractors of the government to hire or contract with the best they
can find.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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