[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 10 (Wednesday, January 14, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H810-H811]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RESHAPING THE AMERICAN FAMILY
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr.
Grothman of Wisconsin was recognized for 30 minutes.)
Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, yesterday in this building, we had a panel
put together to address the situation of the lack of two-parent homes
in America and the degree to which it is caused by huge marriage
penalties in our welfare system.
The panel consisted of Matt Dickerson of the Economic Policy
Innovation Center, Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project,
Jamie Gillespie from the White House, Robert Rector from The Heritage
Foundation, together with three Congressmen.
The purpose of the program was to provide a framework to deal with
the antimarriage bias in American welfare programs. The panel was put
together at the request of 16 organizations and other concerned
citizens who work with nonprofits.
In addition to The Heritage Foundation and the American Principles
Project, Center for Urban Renewal and Education, Advancing American
Freedom, AdvanceUSA, Concerned Women for American Legislative Action
Committee, the Coalition for Jewish Values, the Commission of the
Southern Baptist Convention, Eagle Forum, Family Watch International,
Faith and Family Foundation, Independent Women's Forum, Students for
Life Action, the Family Policy Alliance, and the Faith and Liberty in
the Nation's Capital organization all were present.
I, quite frankly, since I have been here, haven't seen such a
groundswell of so many conservative nonprofit groups to come together
to address such a problem. Yet, this isn't surprising. The number of
children born into families without a mother or father at home, missing
one, is very high. When I was a child, that number was around 4 percent
to 5 percent. It is now around 42 percent.
These groups have gotten together to call on President Trump, Speaker
Johnson, and Majority Leader Thune to do something about this. It is
not unusual that a single woman, if she marries the father of her
child, would lose over $25,000 in benefits.
By the way, when I talk about going from 4 percent without a mother
and father at home to over 40 percent, at the time it was 4 percent, we
didn't even have abortions. Think about that. Then, in the interim, we
had abortions, and still the number of children born into homes without
a father at home went up by a factor of more than 10.
There are over 70 government programs available to a single parent
with low income, but you lose the benefits of these programs if you
marry the other parent who has a decent income of, let's say, $50,000 a
year.
I realize that there are great American families of all backgrounds.
I, like all of us, know single parents who have done a fantastic job of
raising their children. I commend them for that, but I think, also,
everyone would agree that it is easier on both the parents and the
children if you have two parents there. In essence, bribing a young
couple not to get married is not the way to go about doing things.
Programs like food stamps; low-income housing; earned income tax
credit; Women, Infants, and Children; Medicaid; Pell grants; and
government daycare all are generous programs. You would lose those
benefits if you had another parent in the house with an income.
Of course, this changes behavior, as well. I remember talking about
this topic about 15 years ago at a Tea Party event in Wisconsin. I
talked about Pell grants, which is a program of free college tuition or
free scholarships for low-income kids. I was addressing, like I said, a
Tea Party group, and like most Tea Party groups, it is usually older
men who agreed with me.
Yet, there was a young gal who was tending bar where we had the
meeting, and I asked her what she thought about the speech and what she
thought about Pell grants, which were, like I said, a grant conditioned
upon having low income.
She said that her and her husband got married before they had
children, but she told me none of her friends were getting married.
They got free college.
I have heard that from other people. That is just one of these
programs, Pell grants, which, intentionally or unintentionally, is
designed to discourage marriage. Like I said, I rattled off about eight
programs. There are about 70 programs that you could lose if you worked
your way out of poverty or married somebody who wasn't in poverty.
Usually, what you have to do is you have to keep your income below
$16,000 or $17,000, and if you talk to employers who hire people who
are making in the $10 to $15-an-hour range, they will always give you
anecdotes of their employees who don't want to work extra hours, or
they will lose their benefits.
{time} 1900
They don't want a raise because they will lose their benefits. This
is because in America right now we discourage work, and we actually
discourage savings as well, and we discourage marriage as well.
Just yesterday, I heard of another couple. They just had their second
child, but they weren't getting married. I didn't dig into it, but I
know what is going on when you have people like that not getting
married. They realize they don't want to lose their benefits.
Now, the fact that all of these government programs are set up to
discourage marriage, is this an accident? Believe it or not, no, I
don't think it is entirely an accident, because there are very powerful
intellectuals on the left who wanted to get rid of families.
We know Karl Marx himself felt that in order to have a dream
universe, you had to get rid of the family.
A woman by the name of Kate Millett, who was around in the 1960s and
I think could be described as the mother of women's studies classes,
also was adamant that we should try to get men out of the household. I
don't think it is a coincidence that she was at the peak of her power
in the 1960s when a lot of these programs went into effect.
Now, this problem should have been addressed years ago. It is kind of
a well-worn anecdote, but I will say it again. Patrick Monahan, a
Democrat U.S. Senator, in the late 1960s put together a study, and he
warned the degree to which we had these programs contributing to the
breakdown in marriage, but nobody paid attention Patrick Monahan.
Another man who did a lot of work in this area was George Gilder who
wrote a couple of books, ``Men in Marriage,'' ``Visible Man,'' ``Wealth
in Poverty.'' He first looked into this problem, as some people do, in
a ghetto in Albany, New York. He could remember the time right before
that when it was a considered real crisis if a woman got pregnant out
of wedlock. However, to his surprise, even in the 1970s, it was a cause
for enjoyment or a cause to celebrate for the young couple because when
the girlfriend got pregnant, she was able to make the rounds and get a
free apartment, get free food, get free medical care and, at the time,
get free cash from a program called Aid to Families With Dependent
Children. Now we have cash from a program called TANF.
In any event, Gilder was a little bit surprised, but wrote books on
the matter saying: Hey, wait a minute here. It shouldn't be a cause for
celebration when someone gets pregnant out of wedlock. It should be a
cause for a little bit of panic and what are we going to do now; but it
wasn't in the late 1970s as George Gilder documented.
Here we are today. We did do a little bit of looking at the welfare
programs in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, but we didn't go anywhere
near far enough.
[[Page H811]]
By the way, George Gilder made another observation. When we talk
about the welfare state, it obviously affects the children, it
obviously affects the single women, and it affects the men. But
according to Gilder, of the three groups, the one who is harmed the
most by our welfare system is the men. Of course, the women are hurt a
little in that financially it can be a little bit of a struggle. The
statistics will show again and again it harms the children, but we have
created a society in which men have lost the purpose of raising
children and being involved in the raising of their children, being
involved in providing for their children. Therefore, in areas in which
the welfare culture is widespread, we have a situation that the men are
doing drugs, committing crimes because they have no purpose in life.
Here in Washington and other big cities, like Chicago and Milwaukee,
they write articles about where is all this crime coming from. And if
they would stop and look or talk to any policemen, they will tell you
where the crime is coming from. The crime is coming from children from
these broken families. If we didn't have these broken families, a lot
of the men who are committing the crimes, the men that are just hanging
out and doing drugs would have a purpose in life and be more likely to
be productive.
I should point out, by the way, that this is a very important thing
for the men; but sometimes people say that we need the welfare system
because there are no men with decent jobs, and that is why we have to
have the government step in.
I have an Indian immigrant friend of mine. It always amazes me how
people who come here from other countries have observations that are
not made by the native-born who are just used to it. As my Indian
immigrant friend said: In America, the woman marries the government. In
any event, while the woman is marrying the government, the man has
nothing to do, and that is why we have many of these problems.
I, of course, have been in politics for a while now. I have attended
a lot of committee hearings, and be it committee hearings on poverty,
be it committee hearings on crime, be it committee hearings on drugs,
be it committee hearings on depressants, be it committee hearings on
people not doing well at school, they always look for how does this
happen; but they never address the obvious reason why kids do less well
in school or why kids end up committing crimes. They do it because of
the total breakdown in the family.
In any event, both for the children and the men and the single women,
we would be better off retracing our steps back to the great society
years of 1965 and 1966 when, in my opinion, the worst President in our
country's history decided to institute these programs and destroy the
family. I am not sure that was the motive. I think perhaps the real
motive was electoral.
Our forefathers, when they put together our founding documents,
warned us that there were going to be some politicians who were going
to try to make people dependent on the government in exchange for
votes. I think that at the time was maybe the motivation for these
horrible programs; but in any event, it is something that we have to
address now.
Now, we are going to be doing a reconciliation bill, I hope, sometime
in the next 6 months. Almost all of these programs are what are
referred to as ``mandatory spending,'' so we can change these programs
and do what we can to get rid of the perverse incentives.
I think some of the burden of these folks will have to be put on
private organizations because it is a problem no doubt if people are
able to get these programs without being confronted with moral choices
or moral problems.
In a great book that I am reading, ``The Tragedy of American
Compassion,'' the type of people who were involved in providing food
for the poor when our country was founded were very keenly aware that
programs which indiscriminately gave things to people were actually
harmful to people, that you had to weigh in with them on their moral
choices, on their work choices. It was, in fact, a negative to set up a
program in which one did not look at moral choices that people are
making.
In any event, after we have spent about 60 years after the Great
Society, 60 years after Patrick Monahan warned us what would happen, it
is time for this Congress to address this problem, get rid of the
perverse incentives which discourage marriage and get America back to
where we were before the Great Society when we had much stronger
families, when crime was lower than it is today--I think you would have
to say people came out of school better than today, and I think you
would have to say the amount of antidepressants consumed was a tiny
fraction of what we have today--and really Make America Great Again.
{time} 1910
I implore President Trump's administration--we had a representative
from his administration here yesterday. I implore them to put together
a working group so that we can come up with solutions to this problem
over the next few months.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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