Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, sometime in the next month, there is going to finally be a serious debate on the number of people streaming across our border. It may be over an appropriations bill. It may be over an aid bill to Ukraine. There are going to be a lot of people who say there are other issues more important than this and to just wait a little longer to solve the problem at the border.

We have waited for 3 years to do something at the border as the Biden administration has watched the number of people who crossed the border every month go from 10,000 to 20,000 to 370,000 people. That is unacceptable.

We had testimony in my subcommittee last week that the people who are coming across the border are 3\1/2\ to 4 times as likely to commit a crime as the native-born, and we saw tragedy in Atlanta just on that topic.

We know very well, if you talk to people, that all of these people streaming across here have to live somewhere and are partly responsible for the increase in rental costs that we have across our country.

We don't want to shut down the government, and we don't want to say no more aid to Ukraine, but we have no choice. If it is not now, when? We have waited 3 years.

Mr. Speaker, the first European settlers arrived in present day Menasha in 1835. In 1848, Governor James Doty and Curtis Reed formed the Town of Menasha, naming it after the Winnebago word for ``thorn'' or ``island'' and otherwise known in the Menominee language as ``little island''. In 1849, the navigational channel of the Fox- Wisconsin waterway was placed through the north channel in Menasha, leading to the construction of the Manitowoc and Mississippi Railroad in 1854. The creation of this railroad led to major water and rail transportation routes passing directly through the city. Menasha was officially incorporated as a city in 1874, and was considered to be a transportation hub.

One of the earliest successes of the newly established city was the Menasha Wooden Ware Company which produced wooden tubs and barrels, and eventually made its way to become the world's largest wooden ware products manufacturer. Evolving into the corrugated packaging business, the company changed its name to Menasha Corporation.

By the early 1900's, Menasha earned the moniker ``Industrial City,'' hosting renowned companies such as Menasha Corporation, the George A. Whiting Paper Company Mill, the John Strange Paper Mill, Island Paper Company, the Gilbert Paper Company, and the George Banta Publishing Company. These enterprises reflected a community characterized by ingenuity and the collaborative spirit of its residents, contributing to the city's success through hard work and dedication.

This year, as a Representative of the great state of Wisconsin, I am proud to join in commemorating the city of Menasha in the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of its founding. The celebration on the beautiful Menasha waterfront showcases various events honoring the city's history, culture, character, and quality of life. The celebration aims to engage local residents along with visitors from other communities with associated observance activities in recognizing the city's notable historical achievements along with their ongoing tenacity projecting a future vision of Menasha as Your Place on the Water.

I would like to extend my gratitude and congratulations to the people of Menasha and wish the city 150 more years of prosperity and success.

Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 44.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address something that happened in this Chamber earlier this week, something that we haven't done or seen in over a century in this country, and that is the impeachment of a Cabinet member.

Impeached was Secretary Mayorkas, Homeland Security, for ignoring his duties, and by ignoring his duties, creating a situation which I think is the biggest crisis in this country in my lifetime.

That, of course, concerns his inability to address the huge problems at the

border. I will remind the American public that only 4 years ago during the final year of the prior administration, the number of people being let in this country at the southern border bounced back and forth between about 6,000 and 25,000.

A good estimate of the number of people who came here in the last month is 37,000, so it has gone up by a factor of about 18 to 1.

Not only have this many people crossed the border--think about that. I guessed 37,000. In addition to this many people crossing the border-- because around the world, it is known the United States is not enforcing our border--we have people dying in the Pacific Ocean trying to get around the wall over there. We have people dehydrating in the Arizona desert. We have people drowning in the Rio Grande, all horrific instances in and of themselves, because of the inability to address people coming across our border.

I have been told by law enforcement that the price of fentanyl in this country is as low as it has ever been--it is a matter of the law of supply and demand.

We have 108,000 Americans dying of illegal drug overdoses every year, twice as many people as died in 12 years in Vietnam.

We have, through our negligence, created wildly wealthy drug cartels, wealthier than ever. I have been at the border at least eight times, and every time I hear the Border Patrol is under the impression that the Mexican cartels--which are currently corrupting the Mexican Government--are making more money allowing people across the border than they even are selling drugs. A complete disaster.

Along with this 300,000-plus people who are let in every month are 8,000 to 10,000 unaccompanied minors. There was a time when people in this body used to care a little bit about breaking up families, but that is 8,000 to 10,000 unaccompanied minors.

There was a time where we checked DNA tests to see whether these minors were related in any way to perhaps aunts or uncles who claim they were related. We stopped that policy.

The New York Times said that at one time--I think this number is a little bit high, but they had lost 83,000 unaccompanied minors in this country.

I personally think it is more like 50,000 or 60,000, but in any event, can you imagine losing track of 50,000 or 60,000 unaccompanied minors?

As a result of the negligence taking place at the border, we have all of these disasters, and I would argue it is creating a situation in which I think in the final year, well over 2 million new people were let in the United States, some of which are suspected terrorists from all over the world.

It will take the United States perhaps decades to recover. Again, there are so many of them, we are incapable of doing a background check.

We are capable of doing a background check on crimes committed in the United States and crimes committed in Canada, but that is about it.

You hear anecdotal evidence of crimes, including sexual assault being committed by people, when you talk to local district attorneys.

Again, the Biden administration doesn't care. I think the reason the Biden administration doesn't care and the reason Secretary Mayorkas doesn't care--when they could so easily go back to a stay in Mexico policy or wait in Mexico policy pending an asylum hearing--is because they want to change America.

President Obama said he wanted to fundamentally change America, and that is what you are going to get when you have people from all around the globe coming here.

We want to point out that this is hardly the time in which it is necessary or cruel to turn people around. In the last 4 years, we have had more people sworn in as legal new citizens than any 4-year period in the last 100 years, at least, so it is not like we are being mean or overly strident.

People are coming here all the time and finding ways to become citizens completely legally. The only reason for allowing this deluge of people in here is if you do want to fundamentally change America, invite people who do not understand the background of freedom and of limited government that is necessary of our new citizens to keep the Republic which our forefathers gave us.

In any event, I thank this body for impeaching Secretary Mayorkas. I urge the Senate to take up that impeachment because it is mandatory that the people of this body--and by this body, I mean both the House and Senate--do whatever we can to send the message that ignoring the crisis at our border can no longer be tolerated.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California. A week ago, I stood at this microphone and talked about five stories that I think the mainstream press has left uncovered or undercovered. I always felt that under our Constitution, we have three branches of government. Now we are in a lot of trouble. When I think of the three branches of government, I think which one would disappoint our forefathers the most. I think it would be the judiciary, which doesn't have an adequate respect for the U.S. Constitution.

Our Constitution also presupposed an active press corps doing a good job of informing the public of the issues of the day. I don't think these issues have been adequately covered. One more time, I would just like to touch upon what I believe are five key issues that have been in the news but undercovered by the press.

The first one is what is going on at our border. In December, we hit a new all-time high of the number of people crossing the border and staying in this country. That was 370,000. Sometimes the press and for whatever reason some of my colleagues talk about the number of contacts with Border Patrol. They do not talk about the number of people let in the country. The 370,000 is easily the highest amount we have had in a month. By point of reference under the prior administration, the number let in per month in the final year would vary from 5,000 to 20,000 people a month.

We are now increasing by a factor of about 18 to 1, and it creates the biggest threat to the future of our Republic that is out there.

In addition to the 370,000 people crossing the border, all of which will be schooled here, all of which, as promised in his election bid, will receive free medical care. By the way, I should point out that many Americans don't get free medical care. They are either uninsured or have $20,000 deductibles.

No, our President has promised the new immigrants here free, unlimited healthcare. With those people come, depending on the month, 8,000 to 10,000 unaccompanied minors.

We do not allow 7- or 8-year-olds to wander around the country if they are born here. We are now getting, depending on the month, 800 to 1,000 unaccompanied minors, obviously a recipe for human trafficking, obviously a recipe for being mistreated, being allowed to work in factories all hours.

The administration has not done anywhere near an adequate job of keeping track of these folks and where they are.

They have intentionally said they are not going to be giving out DNA tests so that if somebody wants to be a sponsor and claims to be an uncle for little Missy, we have no idea whether that is true or not.

Depending upon who is doing the counting, we have lost somewhere between 30,000 and 80,000 of these unaccompanied minors somewhere in the country.

For a press corps that in the past had concerns about families being broken up, that only happened for a couple of weeks at a time and only when it was absolutely necessary. Here we have tens of thousands of young children without either parent, possibly never seeing them again.

It is a story that ought to be talked about, and there ought to be graphs on the front page of every newspaper in the country that we are now letting in 370,000 people.

It should also be more accurately covered the number of people who are dying of preventable overdoses in narcotics. We are over 100,000 a year.

I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war, where there was great concern as we lost 57,000 American servicemen over 12 years. Madam Speaker, 57,000 American servicemen over 12 years--over 100,000 people killed every year by illegal drugs crossing our southern border.

I think the mainstream media ought to do more to point this out. If people die in a murder, if people die in a car accident, it always makes the local pages.

This is far more than the number of murders plus car accidents every year, and we ought to do a better job of educating the public about the number of people dying in any individual county. That is an underreported story and will result in the end of America.

We do report that there is currently a war going on between Hamas and Israel, and it has been reported that that war was started 100 percent by Hamas, which stormed across the border, raping women, cutting the heads off of little children, killing over a thousand people.

I think some members of the American public believe the reason this war began is that, in some fashion, Palestinians were being mistreated by being adjacent to Israel. This is not true at all, and it has been underreported what a potentially good situation one had prior to this war if one lived in Gaza.

During the initial horrific invasion, some people may have noticed that some of the people killed were from Thailand. Other people may have noticed that some of the people who were held hostage were from Thailand. I don't think the mainstream media has done a good job of explaining why that was. It is because if you lived in Gaza or near Gaza, there were all sorts of good jobs that were made available by being at or near Israel.

It recently appeared in the paper that up to 25,000 people from Ecuador wanted to move to Israel to take these jobs. These jobs are better jobs than almost anywhere else in the Arab world. Indeed, why would people from Ecuador or people from Thailand come from halfway around the world to live in Israel? Because it is a wonderful place to live; people are well paid; and even though you are leaving your family behind, it is a highly desirable life.

I think if one considers the number of people from other parts around the world who are coming to Israel to work, one would realize that the case that Hamas has made to society as a whole, that they were a put- upon minority, disappears. It shows 100 percent of the sympathy in the current conflict or the beginning of the conflict should stand with Israel.

Israel right now is looking to put forth agreements with other countries

of people who want to come and take jobs, many of which used to be taken by Palestinians. People from the Philippines and people from Vietnam are also going to be coming to Israel because of the huge economic progress that is made by the Jews in Israel as they have taken a land that was considered almost entirely a wasteland 60 years ago and turned it into one of the most modern countries in the world.

I will also point out that Israel is a very tolerant country. In Gaza itself, run by the Palestinians, they would not have any Jewish temples. In Israel proper, there are over 400 Muslim mosques, which operate and are allowed to operate by the Israeli Government.

I think if we are going to educate the American public about what is going on in this Hamas-Israel war, we have to let the American public know how many people wish they could come to Israel to work.

The next issue--and I talk to people about this all the time when I go back home, and we will talk about it again--is the attitude of the new head of the Joint Chiefs, General Brown, toward his diversity initiative.

Now, traditionally, America has gotten where it is by being a meritocracy, and people advance whether they are good or bad. Of all the parts of society, the part of society that had better never cease to be number one is our American military.

Nevertheless, the head of the Joint Chiefs has publicly said he wants to reduce the number of White male officers from something in the 60 percents down to, I believe, 42 percent, 44 or 42 percent.

Again, this is a fundamental change in the way the military has naturally done things. They want to operate like a little second-rate community college in which they are more concerned about race or where people's great-great-grandparents were born than about making sure we have the right person for the job.

I think this is something that should be discussed more, even though General Brown has been confirmed, and finding out what exactly is being done in achieving this goal.

On a subcommittee that I am fortunate enough to chair, we had a hearing on this topic. We found out that there is a perception, which probably is true, that people who are White are treated poorly. As a result, we are not meeting our recruiting goals because White people are realizing, perhaps accurately, that they are going to have a hard time in the military.

When it comes time to be promoted, they are going to be viewed hostilely. I think that is something we must look at more.

The next thing to talk about is that we have tax credits that are benefiting the wealthiest developers in our society. We are expanding the use of those credits under the tax bill that I voted for because of other good provisions and the tax law passed a couple of weeks ago.

I personally think the low-income section 42 tax credits are the worst in the tax code. They give money to well-heeled developers. They are allowed to have 70 percent of their building paid for by the government, a lavish subsidy in which the already wealthy members of society become wealthier still.

Finally, I would mention the prayer breakfast we had a week ago, which is something else that has been understated. We will talk about that next week.

Mr. Speaker, obviously the biggest issue facing America today is the huge volume of people coming across our southern border. We recently had 1 month in which 370,000 unvetted people crossed the southern border.

In debating this topic, I sometimes hear people say it is important and the United States has an obligation to let some new people in our country every year. That is true, but what is not talked about enough is that we just got done with a year in which 950,000 Americans were legally sworn in.

This is a number that goes up and down over time, but over the last 4 years, the average number of people who are sworn in as new American citizens, and find a way to do it legally, is over 800,000. It is the highest ever in this country's history.

If you go back to when I was a child in the 1960s and the 1950s, it was more likely to be 200,000.

Throughout most of my life, we have had 200,000 to 250,000 people being sworn in every year. We are now over 800,000 in an average month. Last year, we were up to 950,000. It is easy enough for people to come here legally.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Loudermilk).

Mr. Speaker, I am going to comment on a variety of things. Like always, I like to use this time to bring the Chair's attention to stories that I don't feel our mainstream media is doing an adequate job of covering.

A couple comments before I delve into these five stories. First of all, Congressman Loudermilk gave a shout-out to one of his staffers who is leaving.

This will be the final week that Kyle Amato of my office will be working for me, and I thank him publicly for the great job he does, particularly putting out the newsletters that everyone around the 6th Congressional District of Wisconsin likes.

The second thing I would like to do is I really didn't care for the form of the child tax credit that has been discussed so much today, but I thank the people for putting it together for this one reason.

Normally around here when we pass legislation designed to benefit the children, we leave out the children of what I will call the working middle class.

In other words, if you are hardly working at all, certainly if there is not a man in the house, this institution gives more and more benefits to people of that demographic.

We did something the other day, which is almost unheard of. We extended those benefits to the middle class.

While there are certainly problems with the way it is laid out, if you are a married couple making 120 grand a year and have a couple kids, you are going to get the child credits just as you would if you weren't working at all. Small favors, but I would like to point that out.

Now, the first issue that I don't think has been adequately addressed around here is there has been, I think, misinformation spread on the conflict between Israel and Hamas or Israel and Gaza.

We are supposed to be very sensitive and say Hamas is one group and Gaza is another group; but, in fact, Hamas--at least the polls show--is wildly popular in the West Bank and also, of course, popular in Gaza; and Gaza elected Hamas.

I think too many people feel it is a historical conflict, and, in a way, we heard this in a speech from a prominent American earlier today.

They are kind of treated as two sides of the same coin. In fact, that is not true, and I would like to talk a little bit more about how the people in Gaza should be so lucky, so grateful--realize how lucky and grateful they are that they are living so close to Israel.

There are far too many Americans in general, and congressmen in particular, who define this conflict as between two sides apparently equal or close to equal.

In fact, Gaza has been treated incredibly fairly and generously by Israel. When Gaza was set up as kind of an independent--I don't know what you would call it--principality a while ago, the Israelis removed the Jewish temples from the area despite the fact that in Israel proper, there are 400 Muslim mosques.

In Gaza, Israel felt, well, okay, if they don't want them, they shouldn't have to put up with temples in that area.

Not only that, they physically removed Israelis who were living in Gaza. Maybe you remember this. They physically grabbed and removed them from Gaza to the rest of Israel.

Apparently, the Gazans did not have to put up with Jews living in Gaza. That was bending over backward. It was almost barbaric.

Then Gazans were able to work in Israel. Israel is a wildly successful Western country on the Mediterranean. As a result, I think the second biggest source of revenue for people in Gaza was working in businesses in Israel.

That is their major source of income, along with foreign welfare that they didn't work for at all. It largely comes from Europe.

When Gaza was set up as an independent or somewhat independent principality, they were given greenhouses so they could take over those businesses and make money.

Of course, the Palestinians on their own destroyed the greenhouses because they didn't want to accept something that was tainted by previously being Jewish businesses, which is kind of offensive. I don't think the public really knows that.

I think one way you can tell whether you are put upon and have things tough or whether you have things easy is other people want to be like you, or people are running away from you.

Already, at the time of the barbaric acts in October, there were over 10,000 people from Thailand living in Israel and working in Israel. In other words, they came halfway around the globe from Thailand to Israel to work in Israel.

At first, I was kind of stumped when they said that Thai nationals were killed by Hamas in Israel or Thai nationals were taken hostage in Israel.

I thought what in the world are people from Thailand doing in Israel. Actually, they knew it was so wonderful working in Israel that they came halfway around the globe to work there.

As a practical matter now, since Israel can no longer trust the Palestinians, those jobs are going to be opened up to people around the world.

Not enough people know that, right; be they people from India--which is a booming country in its own right--Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Kenya, Malawi.

They are coming from around the world to replace the Palestinian workers who are fortunate enough to have jobs in Israel.

By the way, those Gaza citizens who worked in Israel were making far more money than your average person in the Arab world is making. They just lucked out that they were near enough to Israel, and they could grab these good jobs.

Now that they kicked them away by killing so many Israelis, they are going to be replaced by other people all around the world.

One thing that I think has not been publicized anywhere near enough is there are talks of 25,000 people from Ecuador who may come to Israel to work.

Think about that. The Gazans think they are so put upon that they have to kill the Israelis, chop off their heads, chop off the heads of children, and, meanwhile, people in Ecuador are coming halfway around the world with possible plans of taking 25,000 Ecuadorians to live in Israel and take those jobs.

That is something that every American should know. They don't know it because the American press is not covering it.

They are allowing people to believe, oh, those poor Gazans. They don't realize that people from Thailand or Ecuador or the southern part of Africa would move halfway around the world--goodbye to their families--to be in heaven, to work in Israel.

By the way, there is another item that ought to be pointed out with regard to how well the Arabs in Israel have it.

Not long ago, there were efforts made for a two-State solution. Bad idea, but, nevertheless, they talked about doing it.

At the time when they talked about it, they thought okay, in this area of land we call Israel, we are going to have some of that land be Israel and some of that land be Palestine.

So people don't have to be offended, the Israelis living in what would become Palestine would move to Israel, and the Palestinians living in what would become Israel will move to Palestine.

It seemed at first blush kind of a commonsense thing. You know who screamed bloody murder? The Palestinians who were going to have to move to Palestine and leave Israel because when push came to shove, they know that their children would be a lot freer, get a lot better education, and be a lot more economically well off living in Israel than they would in Palestine.

Palestine would probably become another State like Gaza, kind of a crooked State in which whatever leadership they vote for takes the foreign aid and keeps it.

By the way, some of you older people--I don't know how old the Chair is--remember Yasser Arafat who many, many years ago was running Gaza.

Apparently his ancestors now, they got out. They are living in Paris. They don't want to live in Gaza. They are living in Paris high on the hog with all the money that Yasser Arafat managed to make off the foreign aid the West was sending to Gaza.

In any event, I would ask the press to report a little bit about these land swaps--even that is kind of an old story--and in a new story, point out all the people from around the world who would like to live in Israel and replace the Palestinians who kicked away the great jobs that they had in Gaza, and particularly pay attention to what is going on in Ecuador and how many people from Ecuador are going to come halfway around the world to be grateful to have the jobs that the Palestinians kicked away who were living in Gaza at this time on the beautiful Mediterranean Sea.

Now, the next thing I want to talk about, and I don't think has been adequately addressed, we reported on the tax bill yesterday. I am not sure you could call it a major bill. There were good things in the bill and bad things in the bill, as you can imagine, because it was part of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats.

As I mentioned, the child tax credits probably have an element of welfare in them, which is bad. On the other hand, they did go to the middle class, which is one of the few things that we don't phase out and say because you are making $60,000 a year, we are going to take them away from you and punish you for working, or punish you for getting married.

There was another provision in there that I really disliked, even though I voted for the bill, because overall, the positives outweighed the negatives, but it is a provision that was only in there because the press corps does not highlight it; that is, low-income housing tax credits. It is a little bit of a boring topic, but I ask the Chair to indulge me a little bit.

There are a variety of ways in which the Federal Government--it is none of their business to do it, by the way--in which the Federal Government tries to provide low-income housing for people. One is by giving a low-income housing tax credit to property developers of low- income housing.

We tweaked that credit for only a 2-year period and only a certain subset of that credit yesterday in the bill. The press corps ought to talk a little bit about these credits, because I don't think that they would survive the light of day, or survive appropriate attention by the mainstream media.

My problem with them is in addition to my problem with all Federal mucking around in low-income housing, particularly low-income housing that is not for the elderly. For the elderly, I guess I can say positive things for it. For the disabled, I can say positive things about it.

The low-income housing tax credit means that when the Federal Government gets involved, a huge beneficiary is, quite frankly, well- off property developers. So you understand what happens, when developers take advantage of low-income housing tax credits, they get a credit equal to 9 percent of the total cost for a 10-year period. Because there is a time value of money, it means that when they build low-income housing, the government pays for 70 percent.

In other words, if I am a well-off property housing developer, the government gives me 70 percent of the cost of that building and I only have to put in 30 percent, at a minimum. There are, I am told, places around the country where the States and local governments give them further incentives.

I think a lot of these people, by the way, make campaign contributions. I think they are politically well-connected, as you can imagine, to take advantage of such a generous credit.

In any event, it is a very complicated thing. You might say what happens if the property developer does not have income tax to offset with the credit. What happens is, then they sell the credits to somebody else, frequently banks. We not only have beneficiaries of what is supposed to help with the low-income people go to an incredibly generous subsidy to property developers, but banks are able to use the credit to show the FDIC, or whoever, the banking regulators, that they are socially conscious, so they get a little bit of a benefit there as well.

There are some anecdotes I have heard about this--by the way, an accounting firm puts out an explanation of the tax credit. The tax credit by itself kind of makes your eyes glaze over. People wonder where paperwork comes from. The accounting firm that puts it out devotes 1,400 pages to an explanation for a credit. Even if there are other things you like, you should know if Congress is passing a program that takes 1,400 pages to explain, you know it is a bad program.

I think, by the way, it is complicated on purpose so you confuse Congressmen into voting for it. Because the government, not surprising, is paying for 70 percent of the cost of that apartment, that apartment, in general, costs 30 percent more than an apartment would if it was built in the private sector without having the government muck around. Right off the bat, there is a big problem there.

I know a property developer in Wisconsin who builds normal apartments, not aimed for low-income housing, not taking advantage of the generous credit. He tells me that the people with the low-income housing credit frequently outbid him for the land, because the government is paying for 70 percent of the cost. Think about that. If you want somebody to build apartments for the middle class, they can't get the prime location in town because the low-income credit is so generous that the person with the low-income housing will always outbid them.

Another thing that happens when the government pays 70 percent of the cost of something, you have a nicer apartment--because after 20 years it is no longer low-income housing--a nicer apartment than people who don't have low-income housing have. I have heard that complaint. I have heard people looking for new apartments, and they find the nicest apartments in town they are not eligible for because they are the low- income housing units. That is what happens when the government pays for 70 percent of the cost of the unit. Not to mention, there is the possibility for crookedness there, because if the government is paying 70 percent of the cost of anything, doesn't it encourage your subcontractors to jack up the prices because the government is paying for 70 percent? Of course it does.

Now, this new increase in generosity in the low-income housing credit will expire in 2 years. They were able to get this thing through because naive people, first of all, thought it was the Federal Government's business to get involved at all, but nice people felt that the low-income housing tax credit benefited low-income people. They didn't realize it was a payoff to well-connected property developers.

If the press corps would wake up and write articles about this program, it would not survive the next 3 or 4 years. The only reason this program, which I consider to be about the most questionable part of the Internal Revenue Code--the only reason this thing is able to survive is because the slumbering press corps does not report on it.

Now, there are a lot of programs on it. I don't like to highlight one nonprofit, but the Cato Institute has a great expose about this program out there, if you want to find it on the internet. It is about 5 years old, but it is as accurate today as it was then. If you think the Internal Revenue Code is used by well-heeled people to get things in there, this is for you.

I strongly encourage the press corps to pay attention to the low- income housing tax credits. Like I said, it is a waste of taxpayer money. I am the type of Congressman who tries to look out for the average guy. These are provisions stuck in the Internal Revenue Code to benefit the well-off, the politically well-connected. Just because they put kind of a nice-sounding title to it, ``low-income housing tax credit,'' you think they are looking out for the poor. They are looking out for the well-heeled property developer. That is the second thing that our slumbering press corps should pay attention to.

The third thing I want to talk about is an issue we have talked about many times before, but since I last addressed the Chair, we released the figures on the number of people coming across the border.

Now, I had guessed the last time I was up here that for the first time ever we would have over 300,000 people a month crossing the border. I remind people that back in the days of President Trump, that number was, depending on the month, around 10,000 or 12,000. We have gone from 10,000 or 12,000 people a month crossing our border what I will call illegally--because I think they are asking for asylum they don't deserve--from 10,000 or 12,000 to--this is just shocking; whenever I look at it, I can't believe it--370,000. We have gone up about 30 times as many people crossing into the United States as we did 3 years ago.

The American public ought to be absolutely appalled. We have an administration with Joe Biden, who fumbles around and says: Well, I guess maybe we should do something about that. Maybe Congress should meet with me, and we should try to do something.

The American public should know, the fact that we have gone up from 12,000 to 370,000 has nothing to do with Congress; it is the inability of the Biden administration to want to enforce the law. This is something they want by design. Instead of 12,000 people coming here illegally every month, they want 370,000. If they went back to the policies of President Trump, the stay-in-Mexico situation, we would reduce this number by 85 percent.

Now, it would still be over 50,000. We still have more work to do. It would still be a disaster. Just by the signing of a piece of paper, he could knock that 370,000 figure back down to 40,000 or 50,000.

Pointing out other things that are going on that the mainstream media is not doing a very good job on. In the 370,000, there were about, one more time, 12,000 unaccompanied minors. There is another thing that has gone up exponentially under this administration.

The mainstream media purports to care when families are separated. I will tell you, when you have 12,000 people cross the border without their parents, that is family separation. Those kids should be turned around and sent back to their parents or contact their parents. Now, we don't do anything like that at all. If the child shows up and they have got a piece of paper on their T-shirt that says ``deliver me to Uncle Joe in Portland, Oregon,'' we buy them the plane ticket, we deliver them to Uncle Joe. We don't do DNA testing to see if it really is Uncle Joe. It is a recipe for human trafficking when people want to take advantage of young children, but the press allows it to happen.

Under President Trump, they screamed about family separation when it was only a very temporary thing for a very small number of kids. Now, you have 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 kids a month, no big deal. We don't talk about it.

The next thing to remember is that even once these kids are placed with sponsors, the Biden administration does not follow up to see where they are. Estimates vary, but somehow, I think somewhere between 30,000 and 80,000 kids we have lost track of. In other words, we have let 15- year-olds, 14-year-olds, and 12-year-olds in the country, and after a few months, we don't even know where they are.

I would strongly encourage the press corps to report on the volume of people who came here in December. Even I, as opposed to the Biden administration as anybody, was expecting that number to come in 310,000, 320,000. Instead, it is 370,000. They blew away the old record by about 50,000, more than I ever would have dreamed.

We have to remember, in addition to all the people coming into our country, changing our country, committing crimes in our country, in addition to that, we have a situation in which they are bringing drugs in the country. We have to remember that over 100,000 of our citizens are dying every year from illegal drug overdoses.

I know there are some hardhearted people who say: They took the drugs

themselves; we don't care. Apparently, the Biden administration is in that category, because they don't do much to stop it. You would think any normal President, just to save the 100,000 lives and prevent all of these drugs from coming into our country, would close the border on that alone. The press, again, does not report it.

I was old enough to remember the Vietnam war. In 12 years in the Vietnam war, 57,000 American troops died, and it was reported constantly and should have been reported constantly. That was news when our troops were dying in Vietnam, 57,000 over 12 years.

Now, we have 108,000, every year, dying from illegal drug overdoses. It happens in county after county, and it is swept under the rug because the mainstream media doesn't want to embarrass the Biden administration, so we don't talk about 108,000 people a year dying.

Of course, is there any effort made to close the border or any effort made to prevent it? No. No effort is made to prevent it.

It is a story that every local newspaper in the country--they are easy to find--ought to be reporting, not only the number for America as a whole; they ought to be pointing out how many people died, say, in the State of Wisconsin, or whatever State their paper is sent. They should be reporting how many people are dying in the county.

You will find out, I would think, for almost every county in the country, probably every county in the State, if you added up all the murders and all the car accidents together, the number of people who are dying of illegal drugs is way over that total. We put car accidents with fatalities in the paper all the time because it is a tragic thing; people like to read about it or want to be informed about it. We obviously put local murders in the paper all the time.

There are 108,000 Americans dying every year with spouses, with parents, with children. Let's sweep it under the rug, says the mainstream media. I will tell you, if you put that in there, people would pay attention to those stories.

The next issue that I don't think has been covered enough and I will talk about more next week, but we had one more committee hearing in my subcommittee on wokeness in the military.

Our current General Brown, who was previously head of the Air Force and is now head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, prior to coming in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly said he wanted to reduce the number of officers in the military from 67 percent White men down to 43 percent White men.

I walk around my district, and I ask average people. I said: Do you know the most important member of the military in the country has said his public goal is to reduce the number of White officers in the military from 67 percent to 43 percent? Almost nobody knows. The rest of the people are shocked.

I told this to a Vietnam veteran who fought in Vietnam. I thought he was going to break down and cry right there when he found out what was happening to our military. They have taken the single most important agency in the United States, and they run it like it is some stupid community college, where it doesn't matter who we promote, where we don't have to pay attention to merit. Who cares? I can go to a cocktail party and brag about how many Hispanics or how many Asians or how many Native Americans are in the military. I no longer brag about how good my military is or how strong it is. I brag about how diverse it is.

The press does not know what is going on here. In my committee, there were inferences that we also were playing games with who gets into our military academies--West Point, Air Force Academy, Annapolis. I nominate those people, like all Congressmen do every year, but the testimony was they are putting a thumb on the scale as to who gets into them.

It is just offensive. It mirrors what is going on in other parts of the country.

They pay people $190,000 a year to be diversity experts, to say: Oh, this person is registered as this, this person is registered to that. I believe, when they do it, they do it like they do in the private sector and have been doing this for 50 years. You self-identify, so we keep this fiction going that, if you are one-quarter Peruvian, that you are a protected minority and you bring a diverse view of the world.

I don't know why, if somebody has a grandmother who is Peruvian and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, you have a unique view of the world and it is important to give you preferences to get a promotion in the military, but that is apparently how we are operating right now. In any event, all of the American public should be aware of that.

If our military is not number one in the world, we are going to be in big trouble, baby. One of the only reasons why we are number one in the world is because we do have the strongest military in the world, and to begin to say our promotions should no longer be based on merit but should be based on looking around and finding somebody from--I don't know--South Africa or whatever is preposterous.

Now, I will remind the Chair one more time that we are adding a new minority group to be given preferences right now. President Biden wants North Africans and Middle Eastern people--people, if you draw a line from Morocco all the way to Iran, he wants them considered as a special group who is in need of protection, as well. This will mean that if somebody emigrates here from, say, Egypt, and President Biden gets what he wants, they will also be considered a special case, in need of special protection, and being given preference over the native born.

It is so divisive. Not only do you not have the best people necessarily getting the job, but it is so divisive because you are teaching our military--rather than you are one, we are all one unit, we are all American, you are taking the military and saying: You should walk around with a chip on your shoulder. You are a Hispanic American, you are an African American, you are a Native American, you are an Asian American, you are a Middle Eastern American, and it is just the beginning of the end.

I strongly hope, when we come to the appropriations bill--and we made some progress--not as much progress as we wanted in the authorizing bill, but I hope that our team, when it comes to the appropriations bill, removes all of these horrible DPI positions.

Our military, a lot of people tell us it is underfunded. I am not sure that is true, but people tell us that. To pay 190 grand a year for these people is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and it is something that should be reported in the mainstream media.

My fifth story that we are going to cover today that the mainstream media is not going to pay attention to is we had a prayer breakfast earlier this morning in the Capitol. In the past, we had that prayer breakfast outside the Capitol. We would take a bus a mile away or rent something in a hotel. Today, we did it right here in the Capitol, which is fine, saved a few bucks; that was good. President Biden came over, gave a little speech, which was good.

In any event, the main speaker was the Chaplain of the Senate, and the Chaplain of the Senate was very animated, gave quite a long sermon. However, it was an interesting sermon, because I believe he called for a fast of all Americans of once or twice a week. It wasn't a full fast. I mean, you could drink water. The fast would end every day at 3 o'clock.

Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting that Reverend Black from the U.S. Senate, who claimed there are a lot of Senators or Members of the Senate--I think maybe he was mentioning staff, too--who fasted frequently. Of course, he quoted several Bible verses in both the Old and New Testament in which the Israelis fasted. Jesus' disciples, after he left, were going to fast.

I thought it was interesting that we had such a student of the Bible, the Chaplain of the Senate, who has been here since 2003 that was calling for a fast.

I think it is something interesting and ought to be in your local newspaper if you want to know what is going on around here. I mean, it was a prayer breakfast. A significant number of U.S. Senators and Congressmen attended. The President of the United States attended. Wouldn't you think they would cover it?

I bet, if I look in the mainstream newspapers tomorrow--the Washington Post, the New York Times, et cetera,

the Milwaukee Journal in my area--they will not cover the fact that the longtime Chaplain in the U.S. Senate called for a fast.

So those are five stories that have been underreported. We will ask, if there are any members of the mainstream media that we see, whether their newspapers covered them. If the stories are even a little bit old, it doesn't mean they shouldn't be in there.

To me, if you are a mainstream newspaper, a citizen who reads you every day should be informed, and every one of these five issues, I think somebody who reads the Washington Post; the Philadelphia Inquirer, if that is still around; the Milwaukee Journal, would not know these five issues.

I am going to go through them again:

The degree to which people all around the world are looking to replace these Palestinians as far as doing work in Israel.

The horribleness, the waste of the low-income housing tax credits which would not survive the mainstream media paying attention to it.

What is going on at the border, the degree to which, in December, we just blew away any previous totals of people coming across there, and the degree that we have to do something.

The wokeness in the military--that is the fourth issue--the degree to which the current head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is overtly saying that he does not want the best people running the military if they happen to be White.

Also, that the Chaplain of the Senate was such a Bible-believing guy that he called on the Congressmen and Senators who were there today to begin to fast, and he actually told us that a lot of the U.S. Senators are already fasting.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 29 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, February 5, 2024, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to address a few issues tonight that have been brought to my attention by my constituents back home.

First of all, I rise to address the current policy of so much of the left of trying to encourage more and more people, and, in California, even require people, to build electric vehicles.

Now, I am very concerned, given other policies, that we are making it harder and harder in America to become a member of the middle class. One of the things that has kept America a free country is the fact that we have always had a large, strong, middle class, who when they go to the polls, protect the freedoms our forefathers have given us.

In order to become a member of the middle class, to me, you have to buy three things: you need a house; you need food; and in America today, you need a vehicle.

Americans have been in love with their cars for over 100 years, and that has been something owned by not only every member of the middle class, but even people who don't have as much money.

I am very afraid that the high-income, leftwing, liberal element has taken over the Democratic Party, and by pushing electric vehicles, that they are creating something that will make it very, very difficult to achieve middle-class status.

Mr. Speaker, I have been alerted by some insurance agents that when you buy an electric vehicle, your insurance can go up 125 percent. That is right, 125 percent.

Now, that is not something that the uber wealthy have to worry about; they always have money to pay their bills. And, quite frankly, it is not something that the incredibly poor people have to worry about, because a lot of times they don't have any auto insurance anyway, or they try to find a way to get around it.

However, for the average American to have their auto insurance go up 125 percent is devastating, and you are hitting the most responsible members of society. Not only is your cost of auto insurance going through the roof, but I am informed the cost of a new vehicle, if you have to buy electric instead of buying the old gas engine, will also go up by 25 percent.

On one shot, the policies we are seeing in California, the policies we are encouraging on a national level, are going to make it much more difficult to buy that automobile that all Americans need, make it much more difficult to obtain middle-class status, much more difficult to have enough money left over to have children.

It was also recently brought to our attention, at least in Chicago-- we have had a snap of a bit of a cold spell in the Midwest--that it is frequently true that when the weather gets cold enough you cannot get a decent charge on these vehicles anyway. Even if you do get a charge, I am told the maximum mileage you can make on a full charge may drop 35 or 40 percent.

In other words, it may not be a problem for people in Hollywood, it may not be that big a problem for people on Martha's Vineyard, but I will tell you, it is a big problem for people in a lot of America, including Wisconsin.

I think before we continue the laws which encourage more and more use of electric vehicles, we ought to have a look and see how well they operate at times like today, when the temperature is under 10 degrees in my district back home. It is time to stand up to the leftwing, wealthy set who think it is all cool to buy an electric vehicle, because they have always got enough money to deal with the insurance, deal with the high cost, and probably have another car that they can use when the temperature gets below zero. For the average person, this is really a body blow as you try to achieve the middle class.

The next thing I am going to deal with is an issue I touched on briefly last week, and I think some people wrote about it incorrectly. That is with regard to anchor babies.

Anchor babies are babies that somebody comes here, is not a citizen, and has a child. By custom today, we are calling those children U.S. citizens, but this is not guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. It is important that all Americans understand it is not guaranteed under the Constitution. People get the idea that you should be able to come here, have a baby, and go back to China, or go back to wherever, and that child will immediately become an American citizen. They get that from looking at the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

To understand why this did not create birthright citizenship, you have to look at when the 14th Amendment was passed and why it was passed.

At the time, when the Civil War wrapped up--so many Americans fought and died in the Civil War. I had at least two ancestors myself who fought in the Civil War. At that time, there was concern that as the other party regained power, they would claim that since Black people who were slaves at the time in the South, that the Southern States would claim that they were not citizens and their children were not citizens. At the time,

you became a citizen if your parents were citizens.

They passed the 14th Amendment to make sure if you were in this country when that child was born, that child was a citizen. Of course, it was designed to make sure that--some of the people in the South didn't want to give up the fight--they did not try to say that if your parents were slaves, you were therefore not citizens.

It was not designed--and it makes no sense to say it was designed-- that if somebody wanted to come here from another country and just have a child and return back home, that that child would automatically become an American citizen. That would make no sense.

There are two Supreme Court cases that misinform people and sometimes try to confuse people into thinking we have birthright citizenship in this country. One of those cases was in 1898. The court case revolved around people who were here legally, legal citizens, having a child and saying that then that child was a citizen. I don't really think that is what the Congress, after the Civil War, meant. At least it was restricted to people who were legal citizens here.

Later on, there were some dicta put in there by Justice Brennan, which is not binding on anybody, talking about birthright citizenship. Of course, Justice Brennan was one of the most far-left Justices we had in my lifetime. In any event, that was a case not reaching a decision on birthright citizenship; that was just some language that Justice Brennan threw in a decision, but it is not determinative.

When we look at this, we should rely on our common sense. In America today, while there are bills out there--and I have cosponsored the bill to get rid of birthright citizenship--any President, if they want to, can say that the 14th Amendment solely applies to situations which were anticipated by the Congress after the Civil War. There are really none of those situations left today, because all the children of slaves have long since passed away.

It is scandalous that people will take the work done by that Congress, including people who were related to and were so familiar with the people who gave all to end slavery in this country, and they would try to take this amendment designed to protect children of slaves and claim that creates a situation in which you have a tourist industry in which somebody can fly here from Asia, come up here from Latin America, just step across the border, have a child one week after you are here, go back home, and forever that child is an American citizen. That obviously makes no sense.

Insofar as journalists try to confuse the public, you have to remember that the Supreme Court decision in the 1890s was not all encompassing, was not intended to be all encompassing, and the Supreme Court decision in which there were some dicta put in there by Justice Brennan is also not binding.

We should pass legislation, if we have to, but hopefully, we will get a good President in here who will get rid of birthright citizenship. The idea that somebody who just comes across the border can have an American citizen child makes no sense.

My final comment for the day is with regard to a hearing we had earlier, and that hearing was with regard to deportations or the lack of deportations under President Biden.

A lot has been talked about with regard to the huge number of people who are crossing the southern border. I have talked many times at this microphone that we have gone from under 20,000 people coming here a month 3 years ago to right now over 300,000 people being left in the country every month.

It is not as publicized that not only are we trying to change America by letting an unlimited number of people come here, but we are also trying to change America by not deporting people even after they have committed crimes. Right now, we have dropped from a situation in which over 250,000 people were being deported during the Trump administration. Perhaps people will remember that under President Trump, he was rightly criticized for not deporting enough people. That was one of the few times the Republican Party stood up and was critical of President Trump.

After getting over 250,000 people deported a year, that has fallen now to under 75,000. We are in a situation in which we are at about one quarter the number of people being deported as were deported 3 years ago. Not only are we changing America by letting so many people in here; we are also trying to change America by not kicking out people who I think the average American citizen wish would be deported.

I hope this is something that our leadership team, in negotiating the appropriations bills with the Democrats at this time, bring to the floor and insist President Biden deport people at least at the low rate that President Trump was deporting people. When you see less deportations today, at a time when there are so many more people that you could deport, so many more people committing crimes, so many more people we wouldn't want to have here.

I call upon President Biden to look out for the future of America, to look out for the future of your children, and not only not let so many people in the country who we have not vetted but begin to remove the people that we used to remove after they had committed crimes in America.

Those are three issues that I don't think have been adequately covered in the press: Both the degree to which the electric vehicle scandal is going to put vehicles beyond the reach of the middle class or create a situation in which you have to spend so much on vehicles you won't have enough money for food, you won't have enough money for a house, and you won't have as much money as you should to have children.

The next issue for the press to cover is the lack of deportations in this country, which goes hand in hand with the unlimited people crossing the southern border.

Finally, I hope we cover a little bit more accurately the laws in this country regarding birthright citizenship. We should not say that someone can come in here from another country, fly in on an American airline, have a baby within a week, go back home, and forever that child is an American citizen.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 57 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, January 18, 2024, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, it is our first week back from what I guess we refer to as Christmas or winter break, and at least 60 of us Republicans spent a couple days down at the Texas border to analyze one more thing, the complete disaster that we have going on with regard to what I will refer to as illegal immigration.

I will summarize one more time for the American public and for my colleagues what we find when we go down there.

First of all, it is apparent, in December of 2023, we will one more time hit an all-time high in the number of people who are let into our country. We are going to clear 300,000.

I remind the body that, as recently as 3 years ago, that number, the monthly number, may have been 5,000 or 10,000. So we have gone up by a factor of 30 times as many people crossing the border.

Sometimes comments out there made by the President imply that it is going to be very, very difficult to find a way to prevent 300,000 people from crossing the border every month. I remind the American public, without Congress doing anything, the prior administration had that number under 10,000.

I also want to point out these people are coming from all around the globe.

We were down in the Del Rio sector, the Eagle Pass entryway. Now, we are just talking here about people who formally check in with the Border Patrol. In the 33 days prior to us coming down there, people came in from 61 different countries.

Among the over 300,000 who come across in an average month, about 9,000 are unaccompanied minors. Can you imagine in this country, I mean, can you imagine us sending children to another place around the globe, a 12-year-old without either of their parents?

This is routine at the southern border. We saw one room where we were told, the prior week, there were 300 unaccompanied minors, people under 18, in that room at one time.

There is no appropriate oversight. When these people claim that they want sponsors in the country that are related to them somehow, an aunt, an uncle, whatever, we don't do DNA tests. We have no idea if--and it probably in some cases is--it is human trafficking.

The United States, instead of sending them back to their country of origin and having the courts in Guatemala or Brazil or wherever determine where this child goes, we will deliver them anywhere. The cartels will put a name on a T shirt and say, deliver this child to 123 Elm Street, and the U.S. Government kind of plays like UPS. We just take that child and deliver them wherever they want.

We have no idea whether the people who take care of them are good sponsors or bad sponsors; if they claim they are relatives, are they relatives or not?

I would suggest, as we debate in the next month what we are going to do with President Biden, our Republican negotiators add an addition to H.R. 2, a bill which we passed about 2 years ago, that we will stop taking unaccompanied minors in this country. As a matter of fact, we should stop taking people without both parents here, because, in America, we should be trying to keep families together.

Right now, the Border Patrol, through no fault of their own, are assisting young children here without either parent. As a matter of fact, sometimes they get children so young, they cannot yet talk, and then they have to try to track somebody down or, in some cases, just send them to foster care.

I hope the American public realizes that, by creating the perception around the world that now is the time that anybody can come into the United States as long as they claim asylum or, once they get into United States, we never try to deport them, we have people dying.

We heard another story when we were in Eagle Pass of a mother and two of her children who almost drowned in the Rio Grande. Fortunately, our wonderful Border Patrol was able to drag them out and at least save the mom and one child, but one child did die.

This is not unusual when we send the green light, providing you have the Mexican drug cartels helping you across. Not only are people dying in the Rio Grande River; they are dying in the Pacific Ocean as people try to get around a fence that goes--I am guessing here--about a quarter of a mile into the Pacific Ocean.

I was down there a little while ago in San Diego. They were told that very day they had pulled someone out of the ocean. We were also told that the Mexican Government finds more people drowning in the Pacific Ocean on their side of the fence than our side of the fence.

We, again, heard about people sneaking across between the designated entryways, dehydrating to death in the New Mexico desert, in the Arizona desert. This should never happen, and the American people, generous as they are, they go out in the desert and put gallons of water, hoping that people who are going to dehydrate to death find the water in time.

Nevertheless, the current hodgepodge down there does result in deaths in the Pacific Ocean, deaths in the Rio Grande, and deaths in the Arizona and New Mexico deserts, and I think the people who continue on with the policy or pretend like it is some sort of mystery how we got here are at fault for those deaths.

One more time, we heard that the primary beneficiary down there is the Mexican drug cartels, that they are the ones who are now making more money sneaking people across the border than they do even selling drugs.

I personally heard, somebody was telling me in Wisconsin, in my district, somebody from India was paying $70,000 to get here. Now, of course, once that person gets here, they are kind of tied down. In this case, they felt that person, after working 3 years, will have paid off his $70,000.

However, when it comes to other countries, places like Guatemala or Nicaragua, the cartels kind of have the family back home as hostages to make sure that the person who came in this country eventually pays their 10 or $12,000.

The next thing we find out is--I talked to a woman who was in charge of the medical analysis of the people coming across the border--and she got a little bit emotional--all the sexual assaults that are happening, which isn't surprising, because you have got to remember that the southern border is run by the Mexican drug cartels.

Apparently they do a good job of making the pitch how wonderful it would be on the trip, how wonderful it would be to go to America. However, again, the number of sexual assaults as we push people through the southern border, through the Mexican drug cartels, is something that is on the people that favor this policy and don't get rid of this policy.

The next thing pointed out is that people who come across the southern border are not necessarily poor people. They read the advertisements or find the advertisements on social media, and they come here. The Border Patrol points out the clothes that people wear and whether they look particularly emaciated or not. They point out that frequently people are coming from other countries and throw away their ID. However, maybe you have somebody who is from Cuba. They go to Chile first when they leave Cuba, and then eventually they come to the United States, not because they were starving in Chile. They come to the United States because you make more money than Chile. We are a very wealthy country and, if you work hard, you are able to make money. Additionally, maybe the welfare benefits are more generous in the United States.

In any event, do not fall for the myth that people are coming here because they are emaciated and starving, and it is all they can do. They frequently--it is apparent to the Border Patrol--are by the standards of their home country, be it Brazil, be it Venezuela, be it Cuba, they just can make more money in the United States.

I think before the American public believes that that is an appropriate way to come here, the American public ought to stop and realize that with well over 1 billion people in China and India, just to pick two countries, if we have a policy of anybody who can just make more money in the United States can come here, then we can find ourselves with tens of millions more people and eventually hundreds of millions of more people here. I would guess, Mr. Speaker, if you talk to all the people in China and talk to all the people in India, a very high percentage would rather come to America. As it becomes more and more apparent that we have a President who doesn't care what is going on at the border, more and more people will come here.

I also want to point out that by having people come here, it drives down the wages for other people. We know there are powerful people who lobby us and who tell us that they don't like paying American workers so great a wage. There was a time when the Democratic Party at least pretended to care about the low-wage worker, but there is no question as we continue to let 300,000-plus people here a month ultimately it will drive down wages and hurt the American workers who are already here.

It will also create a situation in which people are sending these people back to their country of origin, but it also creates a situation as we have so many people checking in at the designated entryways that the Border Patrol provides for people, the Border Patrol will not have the manpower necessary to patrol what is going on between designated entryways, and that is how we get the drugs in this country that are killing over 100,000 Americans a year.

I have said before--I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war--in the

Vietnam war there were all sorts of articles and comments about the number of American troops who were dying. In 12 years in Vietnam, about 57,000 Americans died. Every year twice that many die of illegal drugs in the United States. Obviously, one of the first things we ought to do is cut off the spigot at the southern border, but the Biden administration does not care, and the drugs keep flowing across the border and our young Americans keep dying twice as many every year as died 12 years in Vietnam.

I will mention one more time that they get here or they frequently come here because of advertisements on social media around the world. These advertisements, of course, make things look good. I think the United States has to get out there and try to explain, once we enforce our border, that it is not all going to be that good, they may wind up sitting on the Mexican side of the border, and they may not wind up in the United States at all.

Again, I repeat, in that sector alone, which is one of nine sectors on the southern border, in the prior month, people came here from 61 different countries including countries, by the way, whose government may not necessarily be favorable to the United States and may wish the United States ill. We haven't had horrible terrorist attacks within the United States, but I think all Americans should remember 9/11 and remember right now you are dealing with a country who wants to wish the United States ill. We have a lot of single men coming here from countries all around the world and countries like say Syria, or Iran, or say the Houthis out of Yemen, there has never been an easier time to come into this country and put yourself in a position in which you can kill many Americans through terrorist attacks, destroy some of the American electrical grid. That is what is happening.

Again, I will point out that a lot of single men are coming across that border.

Mr. Speaker, ask yourself: Why are so many single men coming across the border?

So, in any event, I beg for Republican leadership--and I don't think that there is any hope that President Biden cares anymore but we used to have under 10,000 people cross the southern border a month, and that was before we built any wall which we should be building--now is the time to go back to the policies that were in effect 3 years ago when we had 10,000 people crossing the border.

Some people say to me: Glenn, why are they doing this?

They are doing this because they want to change America. Mr. Speaker, I just gave you statistics on people coming across the southern border. I want to also point out that few people are being deported. You would think that you wouldn't want everybody to come here, but at least once somebody committed a crime here that at least then you would kick somebody out.

Now, I was here under President Trump, when President Trump was perhaps rightfully criticized for not deporting enough people in this country who had broken the law. Believe it or not, under the Biden administration, we are deporting people at one-fourth to one-fifth the rate of the Trump administration who wasn't deporting enough people.

Think about that, Mr. Speaker. President Trump was criticized for not kicking out enough people when they broke the laws, and President Biden is kicking people out at about 20 to 25 percent of that rate.

What conclusion can you draw, Mr. Speaker, that he wants good people to come to this country or the appropriate conclusion that he wants anybody under the sun coming into this country?

As far as people who feel we are being mean by not letting people in the country, last fall I attended a ceremony in which new people who had come here legally became American citizens. We are now, I believe, in the next year when the final numbers are released, over 1 million people managed to become American citizens by doing it legally.

They are appropriately vetted, they have stayed in America for a while, and if you talk to them, Mr. Speaker, it is truly a joy. I haven't had anybody talk about serious proposals to reduce that 1 million figure. We are now bringing people in legally at the highest rates since 2006, and I wouldn't be surprised when the new numbers are out if new people are being sworn in at a greater rate than at any time in this century.

If anybody in the Republican leadership has any influence on the Biden administration, then they should do what they can to bring these numbers back under the 10,000 figure, and they should do what they can to begin deporting people who are in this country who shouldn't be here. Let's face it, if some of these people who have borrowed $12 or $20 or $70,000 begin to be deported so that they no longer know whether they are going to be in the United States long enough to pay off the drug cartels, we are going to have a dramatic decrease in the number of people coming here.

So the next issue that has not changed since I was here before is we continue to have the war between Ukraine and Russia. I don't read anything about the Biden administration making any efforts to try and end that war. That is a war in which both countries should be very concerned about their young people, and both countries have shortages of their population. Ukraine has the second lowest birth rate in the world trailing only South Korea. Russia has a low birth rate and also suffers from so many of their young people trying to get out of the country.

Nevertheless, rather than approach France or Israel or Turkiye to try to negotiate some sort of truce there, the administration seems perfectly happy to allow the carnage to go on. Not only is this a humanitarian disaster in its own right, but it creates a situation in which the U.S.' stature in the world continues to decline.

Since this war has begun, we have driven Russia and China together. They should both be our friends, but instead they are both more likely our enemies. It is the same thing with Iran, as we drive Iran and Russia together. At least we are told, we are supposed to be cautious about Iran; they are trying to make nuclear weapons. However, as long as the war goes on, Iran and Russia become closer and closer.

The solution clearly is to work through some sort of peace. People will say that we can't negotiate with Vladimir Putin. I remember the 1950s--I don't remember it personally--but you read about in the 1950s when we had the Korean war. In the Korean war the head of Red China was Mao Zedong, who may have been the greatest mass murderer in history.

Did Eisenhower say that we have to let this war go on and on and on, because we don't have 100 percent of what we want? We have to let it go on and on and on because we won't negotiate with the Communist Chinese?

No. President Eisenhower realized the world would be more stable; we now have a line between North Korea and South Korea. We haven't had a war there in almost 70 years now. Nevertheless, that is when we had a President Eisenhower who realized the world is safer when we don't have these hot wars going on.

Now, President Biden just sits there: Oh, we can't negotiate with Vladimir Putin, he is a bad person. Oh, Ukraine is not yet prepared to end the war, so we just have to let this thing go on for years.

We have had, we guess, over 30,000 dead on each side in countries which have such shortages of young people already.

I urge President Biden and maybe some of the people around him to think: What can I do to end this war?

Wouldn't it be a more stable world if we went back to where we were a couple of years ago and we slowly worked both Ukraine and Russia into the regular group of nations?

We hope that happens.

There is a third issue that has come to our attention. Yesterday, on my subcommittee which is a subcommittee of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, one more time we looked at the effect of offensive progressive policies in the military.

We currently have the head of the joint chiefs in what I thought was an inflammatory statement said he wanted to reduce the number of White officers in the military down to 42 percent. I think currently it is high 60s or something.

In other words, he wants to overtly have racial background used to decide who gets promoted in the military.

First of all, that is opposed to merit. I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, if our military is ever not number one, then we will have big problems in this country. Be that as it may, apparently, President Biden's first pick for head of the joint chiefs, thinks the most important thing is to put people in silos and say: Now we have to promote the Native American; now we have to promote the Hispanic American--whatever--and we aren't just going to promote the best people. That, by itself, is a problem.

Secondly, it is divisive. There is a reason why the hard left likes this DEI. The Marxists have not been able to take down America because we have such a strong and prosperous middle class. We love being Americans.

Marxists like to believe that they can destroy countries by setting the middle class against the rich and create a conflict or a civil war- type situation and destroy that country.

They realize now that they can't do it. The American middle class is too strong. Their religious beliefs are so strong. That is not the way they can take down America from within.

So they are coming to plan B. Plan B is that we are going to divide Americans by race, and we are going to say that because we have divided it by race, then we have achieved greater diversity, and with diversity comes a better corporation, a better college, what have you.

It bothers me the press never calls them out on how this diversity is supposed to make things better.

I suppose, normally, when you think of diversity, Mr. Speaker, you think of people who have had different life experiences. Maybe they had different majors. Maybe they had different jobs. Maybe if you are talking about the military, it would be somebody who was in the Navy and somebody who was in the Air Force where you had genuine different viewpoints on things.

However, the theory here they are talking about is racial differences.

Now, given that for the purpose of this sort of thing, you self- identify, and as we have more intermarriage in the United States which just by itself is a sign of nonprejudice, you are going to have some people who might be say one-half Mexican, one-half Cuban, one-half Jamaican, and one-half Korean.

Apparently, the people in favor of this feel that, therefore, they are going to bring different gifts or different viewpoints to the table. They should be challenged on that by the media.

If we have two kids who go to Silver Spring High School here, and one is one-quarter Mexican and one is one-quarter Korean and one is one- quarter Vietnamese, and they all live on the same block, and they all were on the same basketball team, and they all hung around with the same friends and went to the same church, then I challenge the advocates for this diversity stuff to tell me how these kids are going to have such a different view of the world.

Tell me especially how for a job of Navy fighter pilot, Army Corps of Engineers, how are they going to add something different because of where their grandmother was born, a grandmother maybe they never met, maybe they never spoke to?

Maybe they never even spoke Vietnamese, they never spoke Spanish, or they never even saw these countries, but we now have an ideology here in which people are supposed to bring something to the table because their grandmother or grandfather came from such and such a country.

It is ridiculous on its face.

Nevertheless, we have to put up with this praising of diversity as somehow bringing something to the table. It is not just the military, of course. It is Big Business, Big Education, and whatever. The people should be challenged on that.

The only reason you could possibly say it results in diversity is if you really are a racist and believe you have different gifts or talents genetically because you are one-quarter Cuban or one-quarter Nigerian or what have you. It is something that we ought to criticize. It is something we ought to get rid of.

By the way, one of the things we learned in the committee is that, right now, the military will pay people up to $190,000 a year to be experts on diversity.

Do we want more diversity experts in this country? The cost is bad, but just as bad as the cost is that these people, to justify their existence, are going to run around and try to inflame people and sic people one against the other.

On our American seal, it says, ``E Pluribus Unum,'' ``out of many, one.'' We are supposed to take people from all around the globe who come here and now view themselves as equals and together with each other.

Not surprisingly, the Marxist people who like DEI in the military and other places view it as the opposite. They want to take people who are happy, well-adjusted Americans and say: You should be unhappy. You should not view yourself as an American. You should view yourself as a Cuban American. You should view yourself as a Burmese American. America is prejudiced against you. You should walk around with a chip on your shoulder and ask for something because your ancestors came from Burma or because your ancestors came from Brazil.

Clearly, the Marxists want to do this because this is a way to destroy America, to set people against each other. This is a way to say every promotion, every hiring, every government contract is a contest between groups, and in every election, we should vote for the party that does the most to look out for our group.

Mr. Speaker, I beg the President to rescind his drive toward DEI bureaucrats running the Pentagon.

I wish we would do something about the current head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has just brazenly said he is going to discriminate against White people when it comes to promotions, and get back to the wonderful America that we had 20 or 30 years ago.

Examples of this DEI occur not only in the military but in other governmental agencies in the world. My hope is that as our negotiators negotiate the budget for the calendar year, October 30, all of these DEI bureaucrats are kicked out of the American Government and we get back to where we are Americans first and foremost and back to a time when merit determines who is promoted.

Mr. Speaker, those are three issues I hope the press would pick up on, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 49 minutes a.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Tuesday, January 16, 2024, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, earlier today we had a subcommittee hearing in the Oversight Committee regarding foreign affairs, the border, and the military. We had an interesting topic that the press ought to follow up on, and that is the progressive march through our military.

It can be kind of summarized as an obsession with race in our military, an obsession with dividing people, and it was also summed up by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Q. Brown, Jr., who believes we ought to cut the number of White officers in the military to 42 percent from where it is now at over 60 percent.

The supposed reason for this is diversity, which I think has an entirely racist connotation itself. We ought to be spending more time wondering what exactly do these people mean by people from different ethnic backgrounds going back generations will add something to a unit if we pick them by where they are from. If I have one of my four grandparents from Mexico, how do I carry a different viewpoint toward being in the military or being at an engineering firm or being at a law firm.

The press has to ask these diversity experts to give us examples of how you

improve the makeup of a decision by having people who are one-quarter from different parts of the world.

Mr. Speaker, during the last few weeks when we were back in our district, I had time, along with about 50 other Congressmen, to visit the Eagle Pass entryway at our southern border. From what I saw down there, that should be the number one issue this body tackles in January. It is more important than even our annual budget.

We saw a room in which 300 unaccompanied minors were at one time without either parent being allowed in the country. We heard guards talk about what it was like to work in December. We believe when the final numbers came out, over 300,000 people came here from other countries and crossed our southern border. Remember, Mr. Speaker, it wasn't that long ago--3 years ago--that that number was more like 10,000. So we have gone from 10,000 to 300,000.

I watched and as I heard in this, which is one of only nine sectors down there, in the last 33 days prior to that, people came here from 61 different countries. We have the whole world coming here as the Mexican drug cartels charge people $5,000, $10,000, and $12,000. I heard of somebody being charged $70,000 to come here from India.

Mr. Speaker, Congress needs to wake up. The President needs to bring that number back down to 5,000 or 6,000 from the 300,000 he is letting into America today.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to follow up on the last series of speeches and point out to the American public that over the next month--we are now going to leave for about 2\1/2\ weeks. But over the next month, all eyes should be on the Republicans of the House of Representatives as we finally dig in and try to tackle the biggest problem that America faces today. That problem is the illegal immigration across the southern border.

I want to give some statistics because I have talked to a lot of people, and some people are still confused. They think we will be mean if we try to cut off the illegal immigration, or xenophobic, or something.

I point out to the American people one more time that the number of people coming across our southern border each month is historically wildly high. It is even high by the standards of the Biden administration.

The most recent figures we have are still for October 2023. Almost 300,000 people came across our southern border in October. That is up from about 180,000 a year ago. It went from 180,000 to 290,000. If you go back 2 years, you are down under 100,000. If you go back 3 years, it was under 20,000.

We are going up even higher than I thought. We are going up to about 14 times as many people crossing the border today as were crossing the border 3 years ago. It is a disaster for the United States.

Of that amount, depending on the month, we are up to having 6,000 to 9,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border. There was a time when Americans' heartstrings were pulled a little bit if a family was separated. If a 16-year-old comes across the border without either of their parents there, isn't that a broken family? For all we know, they may never see their parents again. They may be human trafficked. They might wind up working illegally on a third-shift job.

The New York Times reported it, and the Biden administration objects to it, but I think anybody would agree that we have lost track of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors in America.

Why aren't more people upset by this? There are people who say some of them are okay. Are we making any effort to find out if they are okay?

Some other statistics that should be tackled here, as we permanently change America, is that we not only look at the number of people coming here illegally, but we should be looking at the number of people who are coming here who are being deported after they do bad things.

Let me say that one more time. We find dramatic reductions in the number of people who are coming to our country who are being deported from our country after they do bad things.

In the most recent year available, 72,000 people were deported, primarily for breaking the law. You have COVID in the middle there. If you go back 2 years, that 72,000 was 185,000. Before COVID hit at all, we were deporting about 250,000 people a year for breaking the law. We have now dropped that to about one-quarter as many.

We not only have a problem with the current administration that has an open border, with the number of people crossing the border up by 14 times what it was 3 years ago, but the number of people deported compared to--and I don't like to make this a Trump thing--under Trump has dropped about one-quarter as many.

It is hard to believe right now, but at the time of the Trump administration, people were critical because people were doing horrible things and not being deported. I think President Trump should have been deporting more. Nevertheless, almost a quarter as many people are being deported as were 4 years ago.

We are both letting far more people in the country and kicking out fewer people who I think everybody should agree are a problem.

Mr. Speaker, there is going to be a strong effort made when Congress returns from our Christmas break to do something to aid Ukraine. The Republicans feel, and rightfully so, that this is such a crisis of what is going on at our southern border that we should not be addressing any other crises around the world until this situation is solved.

There are other statistics that the public should be aware of. Every year in this country, over a million people are allowed in the country with green cards. It is not impossible to come here. Right now, almost a million people are sworn in every year to become new citizens.

This is the highest number that we have had since 2006, so don't let anybody say it is impossible to come here. Don't let anyone say that America is xenophobic and turning its back on the world. Just shy of a million people every year are being sworn in legally. A million people a year are also being let in on visas. As a result, nobody should say that America is afraid of people from other parts of the world.

The only question is: Should we have people coming here who have not been appropriately vetted? How much of a quick change in the makeup of America's population can we stand?

Mr. Speaker, I have statistics available for last year, when 970,000 new people were sworn in as Americans. I was at a ceremony in Milwaukee County where 270 people were sworn in in 1 month by itself.

Last year, despite this huge illegal immigration, we had just short of a million people naturalized. That is the most since 2008.

There were only 2 years, from what I can tell, in the last 50 years when more people were legally sworn in as new citizens than who were sworn in last year. I am led to believe, at least by my local officials, that that number is going to go up again when we collect the final numbers from 2023.

I strongly encourage my Republican colleagues to hold the line. We have passed legislation out of the House--and we don't even really need legislation, but we have passed legislation out of the House to change the immigration laws the degree to which we will go back to where we were a couple years ago and only a small number of people will come here who are not legal, and we will stop the current trend of having such a wholesale change in the make-up of our immigrants coming to America.

John Adams said that the Constitution is built for a moral and religious population and totally unfit for any other.

We therefore have to make sure that just as we do a good job of raising our children who are expected to live in a country under our wonderful Constitution which anticipates a limited government which is necessary for a free people, we have to make sure that the people who come here are a moral group of people who are prepared to live in a country based upon less government and leaving people alone. If the House Republicans do not get what they want in January or February, then it is scary for the future of our country.

This is a fight the Republicans, of course, do not want.

Who wants to fight?

Nevertheless, it is something that is necessary to change our country. If we lose that fight, then we are going to go back to the days, or continue the days, of 180 or 300,000 people per month crossing the southern border.

I hope the press pays careful attention to what is going on here, and I hope the American people pay close attention to what is going on here.

The next topic I am going to address, and we have addressed it before, is that we are right now working through the 12 bills which we call appropriation bills and which the people back home would call budget bills.

In virtually every bill, there will be a disagreement as to whether America ought to be spending more money identifying people based on racial make-up, trying to use the racial make-up of where your parents were born 2 or 3 or 10 generations ago when determining who gets a job, who gets a promotion, and who gets a government contract.

This has been a big part of American life since 1965, but under the Biden administration it has become a much bigger, I won't say problem, but a bigger part of American life because we ask people what their racial background is.

Maybe I should explain why it is something of concern to me.

I personally became aware of this when a local human resources professional contracted out to someone. This business had over 50 employees, and it is something that every business with at least 50 employees has to worry about. They were going to hire a new engineer, and they were told by a firm they had hired to monitor this sort of thing that if they currently had four men who were engineers, then they had to make sure the fifth person was a woman.

In other words, despite the fact that the guy owned this company privately, the government was going to sit in a room and say: We don't care if the best person for the job is a guy, it has to be a woman.

Later on, they were going to hire a member of management. Before this time they had four members of management who happened to be White folks. They were told that the next person should be a person of color.

Again, this person who called me was a human resources professional, a woman herself, but she just felt that something was wrong with this. It is our company. If we find somebody we think we ought to hire, then we ought to hire that person.

The Biden administration and virtually every agency wants more attention paid to where people come from. I think there are two justifications for that, and I wish we were debating it more openly.

The first justification is diversity. I question whether that is really the motivation or is it just to divide Americans. The reason I say that is because when you identify people by their ethnic background, it has nothing to do with their life experiences or their opinions on any individual issues.

Some of the rules make no sense whatsoever. When identifying somebody, a person self-identifies. You could be one-quarter a protected class or one-eighth a protected class, and the government will say that because you are say, one-eighth Peruvian, that therefore you bring a diverse viewpoint and it is important we bring you into a company. That makes no sense. Nevertheless, that is the current justification.

Or the justification may be that we have to make up for past sins. Again, people getting preferences are ever-increasing. These are people who were not even in this country 20 years ago.

Why would we have to put our thumb on the scale or order a company to hire somebody who thought the United States was so wonderful that they would immigrate here?

Last night, I was reading about a woman who came here who had one parent from Jamaica and one parent was, I think, from the Bahamas. In any event, this person's ancestors were not suffering in any way in the United States. Nevertheless, they used the excuse that in order to make up for past injustice, we have to give preferences. This makes no sense.

The diversity argument is also strange. We can have somebody who came here from Vietnam three generations ago. Maybe they are right now one- quarter Vietnamese. Maybe they don't know how to talk Vietnamese and have never set foot in Vietnam. Nonetheless, according to the diversity bureaucracy, it is important they are given preference because they will bring a diverse viewpoint to the workforce.

Mr. Speaker, does it make any sense to say that you are going to bring a diverse viewpoint if you know nothing at all about the country or culture which you supposedly represent?

In any event, there are programs along this line being pushed throughout the Federal Government.

I think, largely, the Republican Party will try to decrease them and just say that we are going to view people as individuals while the Democratic Party wants to forever label people by where their grandfather or great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather lived.

I think that is a recipe for divisiveness. I hope the Republicans prevail, and I hope the American public objects to this increasingly divisive program.

I want to focus on one area in particular. Recently the Biden administration has decided to add to the groups of people whom I think will be given preference in the government contracts.

By the way, I recently toured a company owned by and run by a guy from Asia. His parents had founded the company and were very, very successful, but despite the fact that, from what I could tell, he was going to inherit a company worth tens of millions of dollars and had lived a very lavish, let's say a spoiled life to this point, he was taking advantage of, or was being given an advantage for government contracting because he was perceived to be a protected person or a person who needed assistance.

This is a person who is going to inherit tens of millions of dollars and who is living in an upscale Wisconsin suburb, but under current law, he had to be given preferences over maybe somebody who had lived in America for generations, who was brought up in a difficult background, and who founded his own company working it from the ground up. Nevertheless, because of this divisive affirmative action sort of stuff, the American, the guy whose great-great-grandparents were here, was going to be given a disadvantage in getting a government contract because he was not the son of Asian multi-multimillionaires.

We ought to have a discussion about this. This is the sort of thing that should matter.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration, in addition to trying to hire all different people in our agencies, wants a new group that would be considered persons of color and given preference, and that is Middle Eastern or North Africans.

Now, I will make a couple of comments about that. Right now, Mr. Speaker, if you look at a map from Morocco all the way over to Iran, these people are considered just like any other American. They are not given preferences.

Why they would get preferences, I don't know.

I think most people from this part of the world immigrated here only very recently, so I wouldn't even say their parents or grandparents or great-great-grandparents were treated poorly in this country.

Insofar as I know people from this part of the world, I believe they think like every average American. I don't see what sort of diverse viewpoint they are bringing to the workplace. Moreover, I should point out, that right now people from Middle Eastern or North African background are making, if money can be described as a success, considerably more than the average American citizen, including the average American White citizen.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration wants to say to this group from Morocco, from Lebanon, from Syria, and from Iran that if you found a company here, then you get preferences if you are dealing with the Federal Government.

I have yet to find one person back home who knows the Biden administration is trying to do this, but it is something that ought to be more publicized in the mainstream media, and it ought to be subject to debate.

One of the topics that should be brought up is the question: Is this a way to destroy America and divide Americans, or when people vote they create a situation in which people say: What are you going to give me because I am from Peru?

What are you going to give me because I am from Vietnam?

What are you going to give me because I am from Iraq?

What are you going to give me because I am from Angola?

I think that is where we are headed, and the time is now to nip it in the bud.

By the way, I mentioned that people from North Africa make more than the average American. That is also true for the wealthiest immigrant group in this country, people from India. People from China make more than the average American. People from the Philippines make more than the average American. People from Cuba make more than the average American.

From what I can see, it might take one or two generations, but then people from Africa or Southeast Asia make more than the average American. So we should not be afraid to put an end to this.

We have a labor shortage. These DEI specialists should be swept aside, and we should go back to the days in which companies could hire and promote people based on who is the best for the job.

I hope this is discussed over the next 3 weeks back home so that when Congress reconvenes and works on our appropriations bills we try to do what we can to get rid of these DEI specialists.

The final topic of the day is with regard to two different groups who are being treated very differently, and it is time we got rid of the differences.

Beginning in the 1960s, the Federal Government began to institute widespread use of income-based benefits. Some of them were low-income housing benefits, some of them were at the time what we called AFDC benefits, some of them were food benefits, and some of them were healthcare benefits. Nonetheless, they all gave more benefits to people who were considered to be in poverty.

Frequently, being in poverty meant that you couldn't get married because if you have a couple together and one of them has a job, then they usually are not considered to be in poverty, so they don't get free housing, free food, and free checks. There is a flawed program called the earned income tax credit in which people also get more money.

All these programs have two things in common: They largely penalize people who get married to someone with an income, and they largely discourage people from working. In my experience talking with people on a lower level of the income scale, they all know when they should stop working to get the maximum benefits.

There is a sweet spot if you are a single parent, around $16,000 to $18,000, and you get your earned income tax credit. You get your rent- free apartment or almost rent-free apartment. You get your food share. You get your medical care. You may be getting some separate individual checks. As a result, we are discouraging two things: We are discouraging marriage, particularly marrying somebody who has got an income, and we discourage work.

There is a bill working its way through Congress right now, which is adding a new class of Pell grants. Pell grants are what amount to college scholarships for people who are perceived to be low income.

What happens with Pell grants--and the same thing should be said about food stamps, the same thing should be said about low-income housing--if one couple gets married and raises a child on their own, under most cases they are not eligible for free government scholarship.

If they decide not to get married and maybe you have one parent with a small income, their children get what amounts to a college scholarship. I had a woman approach me saying that her and her husband got married and their daughter was $35,000 in debt when she graduated from college. She thought that was unfair because her sister didn't get married and her daughter was getting what amounted to almost free tuition for 4 years because of the martial status of her parents.

The child from a married couple is $35,000 in debt, compared to very little debt of the child of the unmarried couple.

In America, we are supposed to be treating people equally. Obviously, we are not treating people equally here. It is like it is the policy of the Federal Government to discourage marriage and particularly discourage marriage if you have children. This is not something that has been talked about lately. It hasn't been talked about in depth here, as far as I can tell, since the 1990s, but since equity or ``equalness'' or something is the catch word that you hear a lot of around here, I think we ought to look at these programs and stop penalizing people who get married and have children.

It is a shame, but a lot of people feel they can't afford to have kids anymore, maybe they have no kids, maybe one child, and you hear it is because they don't have enough money; meanwhile, we have no problem taxing them to make sure people with a different lifestyle have a variety of things.

It is not going to change in January or February, but I hope the people in this institution begin to think about that. Was it right to set up programs and the only way you can get them is if you don't get married when you have children?

I will recount a little anecdote with regard to the Pell grants. I used to speak on this back in Wisconsin before I was a Congressman, and I would go through all the different programs which you lose if you get married and have a job. I talked to a young gal who was in the room at the time--because sometimes I think I have to know more how young people think--and when talking about the grants that went out to people of supposed lower income--of course, this also encourages working off the books. All these things do--the gal said, me and my husband got married before we had a child, but none of my friends are getting married. They get free college. I think people in this institution have to stop and think, is that right? Should we be teaching the young people that you get free college if you don't get married when you have a kid?

That is what we are teaching them right now. That is what we taught that young gal in Green Bay if she is listening. I have heard what she said, and I hope it is something that is talked about a little bit more in this institution.

The three topics for the American public to chew on over the next 3 weeks: The record number of people coming across our border and permanently changing America and bankrupting America. The obsession over identifying people where their great-great-grandparents came from as if their view of the world is the same of somebody who was born in Mexico or China or somewhere else in the 1890s. Lastly, our rather strange policy of trying to discourage people from getting married before they have children. I hope the American people chew on that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

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