[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 55 (Wednesday, March 26, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H1295-H1297]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         EDUCATING YOUNG PEOPLE

  (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. 
Grothman of Wisconsin was recognized for 30 minutes.)
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to hear from 
legislators on the experiences they had before this week as they toured 
their district and as they talked to normal people to see whether their 
concerns and observations squared with those of the people in this 
building.
  Donald Trump has done a great job of trying to remove the diversity, 
equity, and inclusion from our government, including our military. We 
have, to a degree, gotten rid of some of the bureaucrats who pushed 
this odious ideology in our businesses and our schools.
  Nevertheless, these bureaucrats everywhere are waiting to gain a 
foothold in America again as soon as we have another administration, 
and it is important to educate the young people in this country as to 
the degree to which America is really a broken system, a racist system, 
and whether white supremacy is a major problem, as Joe Biden said.

                              {time}  1530

  While I was back home, I had an opportunity to speak to a mosque of 
Ahmadiyya Muslims. Ahmadiyya Muslims have a little bit different 
theology than Muslims in general. They are persecuted by those members 
of Islam who live in Pakistan, and many of them have had to flee 
Pakistan even with regards to their own personal safety.
  Nevertheless, when I met with the Ahmadiyya Muslims, there were two 
things that hit me: First of all, they were all successful, at least 
the ones I met. I asked them whether they knew of any of them that were 
having children out of wedlock. They knew nobody like that. They all 
seemed to be working hard and succeeding in America.
  This, of course, is at complete odds with the DEI ideology in which 
people who are not Europeans are struggling or can't succeed in 
America. Indeed, the Ahmadiyya Muslims are one more example of a group 
of people who are succeeding in this land of opportunity.
  Actually, they were very thrilled to praise America. They praised us 
not only as being a much better place to live than Pakistan, but they 
pointed out we are a much better place to live than Europe. They 
laughed at Europe, which they referred to as a ``socialist continent'' 
and one in which there was

[[Page H1296]]

no room for people who wanted to work hard and get ahead. One more 
time, we have an example of foreigners who come here from other places 
who seem to appreciate America more than the native born and certainly 
appreciate America more than the average college professor.
  I would like to point out that another, I guess you would call, 
minority that is very common in my district is the Hmong, who came here 
from Laos. They as well are achieving, doing well, having strong 
families, succeeding in the realm of education, and all seem to have 
jobs. This despite the fact that when they came here from Laos, again, 
many of them didn't know the language. It, again, shows it is a lie for 
any of these DEI professionals--be they in business, government, or 
education--to say that America is not a place where people can succeed.
  As a practical matter, while I don't think the Hmong are a large 
enough minority to have statistics on how well they are doing 
economically, it is apparent subjectively that they are probably doing 
better than the average American who was born here and, indeed, larger 
minorities for which we have statistics.
  I remind everybody that people who come here from India, who are the 
most successful minority, Philippines, China, Japan, Cuba, the coast of 
western Africa all are succeeding wildly in America. All it takes is 
hard work and strong families, and all these groups have strong 
families.
  I encourage our educators and all our policymakers to educate the 
people back home on all the groups from all around the world who are 
doing a fantastic job. I think they are doing, in part, a fantastic job 
because they don't listen to the naysayers who want to run down America 
and apparently say that if you are not succeeding and things aren't 
going right, it is because of prejudice.
  The next thing I would like to point out is immigration is still in 
the news. There are some people who complain about Donald Trump doing 
what he so desperately has to do, and that is to remove the people who 
snuck into this country illegally.
  I want to point out to everyone that, again, in the last year we had 
many new Americans who were naturalized. There are people who say about 
the people who are being removed: Why can't we let them stay? We have a 
system in this country to make sure that we are getting the best 
people, the law-abiding, the self-reliant people, which is all we 
should need here.
  We took in 850,000 last year on a rolling 3-year average. I still 
believe we are at the all-time high of even more than that. We should 
be reminding anybody who says we are mean or not doing our share of 
taking in people who would rather live here that, in fact, we took in 
850,000 naturalized citizens; those are new citizens.
  That is not including the approximately 10 million people who are 
here on student visas, work visas, or tourist visas. As far as people 
who want to spend a short time here, particularly to work, we are even 
more generous that way. I have heard of no strong efforts being made to 
greatly reduce these numbers.
  Again, we have to remind our young people, our constituents, not to 
put up with this anti-American rhetoric of why are we kicking these 
people out. We have to remind people every year that in this country we 
wind up swearing in about 850,000 new people legally. I think if you 
think about that number for a little bit, something that is far higher 
than the historical average in this country, you will realize it is 
ridiculous to say this country is in any way xenophobic.
  As I mentioned, one of the strong predictors of success in this 
country for everybody--for women, men, and children--is that of strong 
families. I think we have to spend some time pondering why it seems to 
be that people who are used to the American culture seem to have weaker 
family ties than those people who are coming here from other countries.
  It is my personal belief that the reason we have weak families in 
America--and one of the reasons why our American children cannot do as 
well as children whose ancestors come from Pakistan or India or 
Philippines--is that we have such strong incentives in America, through 
a horrible broken welfare system, to discourage mothers and fathers to 
stay together with their children.
  This began in the 1960s under Lyndon Johnson, who I felt, before Joe 
Biden, was the worst President in this country's history. In the 1950s, 
we only had about 4 percent of American children born without a mother 
and father at home. We now have over 40 percent who are born without a 
mother and father at home.
  This doesn't mean there aren't wonderful single parents. I know some 
single parents, particularly emotionally strong single parents, who 
have done a fantastic job of raising their children. Anybody would be 
proud of them. However, the statistics make it obvious that overall 
children would be better off if they had a mother and father at home.
  Almost every program in what would be referred to as ``the welfare 
state'' has incentives to discourage there from being a mother and 
father at home. This is because eligibility for almost every program is 
based upon percent of poverty. If you are a single parent and don't 
have a job or are working part time, you are eligible for many other 
programs. I think probably the most damaging is that of low-income 
housing where if, say, a single parent has a child, even when they are 
a minor without another parent at home, you are eligible for low-income 
housing, which means almost no rent and the ability to get away from 
your parents.
  Other programs that also discourage marriage, programs that you would 
lose eligibility for if both parents were working and had a child are 
the food-share programs, the Medicaid programs, the earned income tax 
credit, the Pell grants. Indeed, I could go on. There are about 90 
different programs in America which are designed to go to a single-
parent family, but if you have a two-parent family making a decent 
income, they are considered not in poverty and, therefore, they are not 
eligible for a program.
  This is why, anecdotally, if you get out in your district, away from 
the fundraisers and such, you find so many stories of single parents 
who may even live with the other parent--sometimes illegally--but they 
don't want to get married because they lose all this money.
  Nobody is eligible for all 90 programs at once, but I don't think it 
is difficult to find hypotheticals in which a parent alone is eligible 
for maybe $25,000 or $30,000 that they would lose if they were married 
to the other parent. In other words, it seems like the policy of the 
United States is to try to discourage the strong families, which are 
one of the reasons why so many immigrants--be it the Ahmadiyya Muslims 
or the Cubans or the Mexicans or the Filipinos--seem to do so well in 
America, indeed frequently better than so many of the native born.
  We are soon going to pass a reconciliation bill, and that 
reconciliation bill will be a tremendous bill, a revolutionary bill. 
The bill, I think, is going to try to get America back to its roots. 
Certainly, one of the goals of this bill has to be to get rid of the 
huge marriage penalty, which has such an impact on causing there to be 
many fewer children with a mother and father at home than are 
necessary.
  I think it is important to look at all the programs I just named off, 
as well as a few others, particularly any low-income housing programs, 
because it is not right that a young person can receive their dream of 
renting an apartment, not in their parents' home, by having a child out 
of wedlock.
  I also want to point out with regard to these immigrants coming here, 
there are so many more than there used to be when I was growing up. 
Right now, as far as the people who feel we are not allowing enough 
people in this country, in the 1960s we were around 200,000 a year. Now 
we are around 850,000 a year. We are about four times what we were when 
I was a child. By historical standards, we have been very, very 
generous.
  The next question is: Why are we seeming to subsidize or have set up 
programs with an apparent hatred of having both a mother and father at 
home? You might think that every politician would be encouraging having 
both a mother and father at home, and this must have been an 
inadvertent thing.
  It is important for the young people today that they know that there 
is a strong number, it is a small number,

[[Page H1297]]

but a strong number of intellectuals going back to the 19th century, 
actually even going back to the 18th century who are hostile to the 
idea of having a man in the home.
  Certainly, there were people who felt this way during the French 
Revolution when we had the atheistic mobs killing the clergy. It 
continued through Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 1800s. The 
Marxists were hostile to the family. A goal of theirs was to get rid of 
the family. It winds its way all the way up through communism and the 
feminists in the 1960s.
  Let me give you a couple quotes of people who are famous, who were 
well-known to people in the 1960s. We have Simone de Beauvoir: ``As 
long as the family and the myth of the family . . . have not been 
destroyed, women will still be oppressed.''
  There is also Germaine Greer: ``I'm passionately opposed to the 
nuclear family.''
  Then we have Kate Millett, who some people would consider to be the 
mother, or whatever, of women's studies programs, which are all over 
our universities: ``The complete destruction of traditional marriage 
and the nuclear family is the `revolutionary or utopian' goal of 
feminism.''
  Eventually, Angela Davis, another person prominent in the revolutions 
that were taking place in the 1960s, was very antifamily. Even since I 
have been in Congress, we had the Black Lives Matter movement, who came 
out against what was referred to as the ``traditional family.''
  This is not only a problem for children, it is a problem for the men. 
I think men are frequently more likely to cause problems and be less 
productive if they are not connected with a family, and social 
scientists like George Gilder have pointed this out. One of the reasons 
why I think we have a disproportionate number of men in prison, men 
doing drugs is because they are not connected with a family, and that 
was because of all these programs which provide financial incentives to 
make sure that one of the parents, usually the man, is not part of the 
family.

                              {time}  1545

  Mr. Speaker, Black Lives Matter stated that they want to get rid of 
what is known as the traditional nuclear family. It is a group that a 
lot of people in this building were happy to stand with, despite 
stating that on their website. Eventually they took it down, but it 
shows the power even today.
  Mr. Speaker, you might ask why in the world anybody would be 
antifamily. Why would any politician do that? I mention these powerful 
people who seem to have a stranglehold on the Democratic Party. Who is 
for having men participate in women's sports? Who is for an abortion at 
8\1/2\ months? Who is for men in the women's locker room? The same 
group is for them all.
  It is the same group that is against having children raised in a 
nuclear family. It is the radical feminists and their successors from 
the 1960s. As long as they have such a vise grip on the leftwing of 
this body, I am afraid they will continue to break down the American 
family.
  In any event, I think those are three things that we have to look at 
and remember to tell young people. It is the fact that people who are 
not from Europe come to America and succeed wildly again and again. 
Statistically, these groups are doing better than the native born, be 
it the Muslims, Hmong, Chinese, Filipino, Cuban, Nigerian, what have 
you.
  I think we have to remember that it is the welfare structure which is 
right now creating huge incentives not to raise children in a nuclear 
family. Frequently there is a penalty of $25,000 or $30,000 for getting 
married to the father of one's children. This affects so many other 
problems that we have in America.
  The crime problem is a family breakdown problem. The drug problem is 
certainly not exclusive, but it is a strong element of the family 
breakdown problem. In talking to teachers, particularly in the area of 
special education, frequently the problems stem from a breakdown in the 
family.
  We have to do something to remove these horrible marriage penalties. 
I really don't think America is truly going to be great again until we 
have a dramatic cut in 40 percent of children who are born without a 
mother and father at home.
  Those are three big issues today. We should educate the young people 
on all of the issues. Until they realize what our government is doing, 
they may go back to the days of Joe Biden, a time in which he tried to 
divide people by ethnic background.
  We will continue down the path of having huge incentives not to get 
married, and our young people will continue to be educated that America 
has a huge race problem and that we should not be adequately proud of 
America.
  As I mentioned, right now there are many examples of ethnic groups 
who are doing better than the native born today, which puts a lie to 
the idea that anybody is not succeeding in this country because their 
ancestors did not come from Europe.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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