Floor Statements

Mr. Chair, I thank Ms. Foxx for making Biblical allusions. Last week, we were here talking about National Bible Week. One of the phrases that you run across again and again as you read the Bible is that God promised Abraham a land flowing of milk and honey. I will let the body decide what type of milk the Lord was promising Abraham. I think I know.

As somebody who has been drinking milk my whole life, I can tell you a better tasting milk, and a milk that I think is more likely to be consumed, is whole milk. For some reason, the current administration is waging war on milk. The USDA's current restrictions on school lunches are limiting nutritious options for kids. This comes at a time when it is found that 90 percent of Americans do not eat enough dairy to meet the dietary recommendations.

Drinking milk leads to better bone health and lower risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Additionally, milk stands as a leading and accessible source of nine essential nutrients that children often fall short of.

Proposed guidelines such as limiting milk options by age group and counting milk fat against weekly saturated allowance threaten to deprive students of essential nutrients.

It is crucial that students have access to the nutritional benefits of milk. With these restrictions, they might choose to forgo milk entirely, if you have to drink the less tasty 1 percent, or even worse, fat-free milk.

These proposed restrictions ignore several recent research studies examining the effect of higher fat milk consumption which found that it is associated with lower childhood obesity and concluded that dietary guidelines that recommend reduced-fat milk versions might not provide a benefit in lowering the risk of childhood obesity, which we are all for.

I implore each of you to consider the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2023 as a commonsense solution to ensure that we have healthy children.

Mr. Chair, I ask my fellow Members to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 1147.

Mr. Speaker, like most Americans, I happened to be in the room because I am on the committee and was a little bit startled and stunned by the lack of concern for rampant anti-Semitism in the most prominent universities in this country--the leaders who were chosen to lead those universities.

We have to ask ourselves why is it happening on our premier campuses?

I can go out in Wisconsin, all the hard workers in the factories, all the hard workers on the farms, all the people working in retail, I don't see any evidence of this. As a matter of fact, I don't think there is anywhere in the State of Wisconsin I would go and find this sort of thing.

Nevertheless, we seem to be fighting it in our universities.

The question is: Why is that so? Is there anything out there that would give an indication that you have a possibility of anti-Semitism?

Part of it, I think, is coming from recent immigrants who are carrying grievances from long ago to the United States, but the more concerning one is the spoiled, upper-middle classes that make up so many of the college students and professors.

I think what we are coming out of is what I will call the bored upper-middle classes looking for something to do and the unhappiness out of that boredom that leads them to anti-American, but also anti- Semitic and anti-Israel. Because when they see Gaza and Israel, they see one successful Western country and they see an unsuccessful crooked country, and it leads them to be so mentally muddled up that they can't see what is wrong with the horrific murders that took place.

Madam Speaker, over the next month, there is going to be more discussion with regard to what is going on in Ukraine and whether we should have more Ukraine aid. I will emphasize, again, there is not enough discussion about how this war is going to end because eventually all wars end.

Madam Speaker, I think if you talk to the Biden administration, they have no plan nor vision as to what that war is going to look like a month or a year from now. One thing I will point out is that you are dealing with two countries who already have a shortage of young people and who should want this war to end. Ukraine has the second-lowest birth rate in the world. There is also a low birth rate in Russia, and a lot of people are moving to the United States.

During the Korean war, a bloodier war than this, President Eisenhower had a negotiation with the North Koreans and Red China, arguably the two most evil regimes in the last century. Nevertheless, he didn't say: Oh, we can't negotiate with Putin.

He negotiated with completely evil people, and tens of thousands of Koreans are probably alive today because of what President Eisenhower did.

Madam Speaker, there is going to be a lot of talk around this building as far as what goes on with the future funding of Ukraine. I have voted for funding for Ukraine in the past. I think it is important that the United States appear united as we work towards peace in Ukraine.

The thing that concerns me, and I wish more people would mention it, is the degree to which I believe we are not working towards a settlement there.

Every war must end sooner or later. The other day I spoke a little bit about the Korean war in which tens of thousands of people died. Ultimately, the United States negotiated with two of the most horrific governments in existence in the last century: the Communist Chinese Government and the Government of North Korea.

Nevertheless, a resolution was reached. Tens of thousands of lives were saved, and we still have the same border that the negotiation reached in 1953.

I would remind the belligerents that ultimately the war will end. If we do not want to drive Russia closer and closer with China and Iran, it would probably be better if the war ends sooner rather than later.

Sadly, I haven't seen a lot of commentary showing that at this point anybody is working towards peace, at least not the Biden administration.

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the American public and my colleagues one more time of the biggest threat we face today, and that is the huge volume of people crossing our southern border.

Again, in the most recent month available, we made an all-time record of the number of people coming here, about 11 times the number of people crossing the border as were crossing the border just 3 years ago.

Don't let anybody tell you we have got to work on some solution. The solution was there. Just a little bit of will, and you could cut it by 91 percent.

Above that, don't forget, over a million people are sworn in legally. Don't let anybody ever tell you that we have a problem, and we have got to get more people here. A million people per year come here legally.

Don't forget that during the Trump administration, when Trump was criticized for not deporting enough criminals from this country, we were deporting about four times the number of people here today.

The American public has to wake up and tell this body to get in gear and do something about this illegal immigration.

Mr. Speaker, today we celebrate National Bible Week, and it is right that we do so. Our forefathers felt very strongly that America was fit for a moral and religious people and totally unfit for anyone else, and our forefathers frequently quoted the Bible and made reference to the Bible. I think if we are going to continue with our oaths of office to uphold our Constitution, inevitably that means familiarizing ourselves with the Bible and guiding ourselves in this institution by the Bible.

George Washington, the father of our Nation, said that it is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.

I just mentioned John Adams. I should mention Benjamin Rush who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a Representative of Pennsylvania at the beginning of our Nation.

The Bible contains more truth than any other book in the world. John Jay was our first Supreme Court Justice. For some who think there is a separation of church and state, John Jay, our first Supreme Court Justice said: ``Let us therefore persevere steadfastly in distributing the Scriptures far and near, and without note or comment. We are assured that they are profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.''

John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams, said: ``The Bible is of all books in the world that which contributes most to make men good, wise, and happy.''

Of all the books in the Old Testament other than, of course, Psalms, which is a very long book, the book quoted most by our forefathers was Deuteronomy. It is kind of interesting because normally, Mr. Speaker, when you hear somebody quote something in the Bible, you never hear Deuteronomy. Nevertheless, what I take it to mean is that Deuteronomy was kind of the book laying out the type of government that our Lord expected the Jewish people to have when they left Egypt and established their land even before they had a king.

Therefore, if you look at it that way, Mr. Speaker, it is not surprising at all. In any event, I do think it is time for the American public--there are some churches that do it more than others--to read some of the Bible, to try to live by its precepts, and insofar as we raise our younger people in this country, familiarize them with the Bible and have them live by its precepts.

I thank Congressman Lamborn for yielding to me to talk about the Bible. I hope Members of Congress, when they return after this week to their districts, make a special point of reading parts of the Bible.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to talk about some issues that our press corps has not adequately covered. All of these issues will be brought to the fore sometime in the next 3 months, and well-informed citizens should have an opinion on them. That means that, to a degree, the press corps has to do a good job of educating the citizenry on these issues.

The first issue I am going to talk about one more time is immigration. There is some time in the next 8 weeks in which an agreement is going to have to be reached regarding the huge problems we have on the southern border. These problems have been largely ignored under the Biden administration, and it is time that something be done.

I want to recount right now that, in the most recent months, we are having about 240,000 people cross the southern border. Every month, we hit new records for that month. In October, we again exceeded where we were 12 months ago and 24 months ago.

In addition to the fact that we have about 240,000 people crossing the southern border, we have a situation in which about 9,000 unaccompanied minors, people under the age of 18, are coming here without either parent.

We also have a situation where of the about 240,000 people who are crossing the border, about 60,000 are what they call got-aways. In other words, they have had no contact at all with the officialdom of the United States Government. Of course, these people are particularly dangerous because they haven't even gone through the perfunctory check that other people go through when they show up at the southern border.

It should also be pointed out that the United States is not being pikers at all when it comes to allowing other people into this country. The American citizenry should know that, in the most recent year available, over 1 million people were sworn in as new citizens to the United States. This is the third highest on record at a time when we are following a year that was over 900,000. We are kind of in unprecedented territory for a 2-year period.

When I was a child in the 1960s, by comparison, about 100,000 people a year were sworn in in the United States. We worked that way up in the 1980s to be about 200,000.

So, when we say 1 million people a year are being sworn in as citizens of the United States, we are really changing things in this country. As a result, nobody can say or should be able to say that we are not doing our fair share in welcoming more people into the United States.

It should also be pointed out that the number of people who are being deported from this country is now a fraction of what it was a few years ago. In fiscal year 2019, about 270,000 people were deported. In the most recent year available, that number has fallen to 72,000.

On one level, we are multiplying the number of people coming across the border by a factor of 10, and then once people come here and break the law or whatever, we are now kicking out or deporting about one- quarter of the number that we were 4 years ago.

The Biden administration has not cared about this at all. However, there are going to be multiple discussions with the Biden administration not only with regard to appropriations bills that are coming up but supplemental bills that are coming up.

This is the biggest crisis facing America today. We are permanently changing the United States by allowing this many people to come across the border.

I want to point out to the American public that John Adams said that our Constitution was fit for a moral and religious people and totally unfit for anybody else.

Insofar as we are allowing people in our country who do not have a love of freedom and who want to turn their lives over to the government, we are going to ruin our country. It will no longer be the wonderful country that we grew up in. When we invite this many inappropriately vetted people, that is a definite concern.

There is also a concern for the American Government. We are right now in a position where we are borrowing 22 percent of our budget. A significant number of people crossing the southern border are going to have to be taken care of by the Federal Government. They won't be able to find jobs. Not only will they not be able to find jobs, but they are coming here without complete families. Their children are going to be educated. President Biden promised during the 2020 election that he would provide free healthcare to people coming here illegally. We are doing that. That is also very expensive at a time when we don't have money for more.

As a result, I think it is a situation that has to be cleaned up and finished before we pass any more of what we call supplemental bills in this Chamber.

In particular, people are asking for tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. I think everybody would like to see them get that money, but at a time when we are having to flood money in to take care of people crossing the southern border, I don't think we have that money until that problem is cleaned up.

I hope the American citizen is paying attention to this.

Again, to summarize, 10 times as many people are crossing the border as there were 4 years ago. The number of people being kicked out, usually for breaking the law, being deported, is about one-quarter of what it was 4 years ago. The number of people who are being sworn in legally--when people say, oh, we ought to let some people here--there are over 1 million right now. We are near historical highs on that level.

I hope the American press corps reports these numbers. They should certainly be in the paper. It should certainly be in the paper when eventually we get new information on the number of people who have come into this country in November.

Mr. Speaker, all you have to do is look on television to see it is getting worse and worse. That is an issue that not much attention is being paid to.

The next thing I want to talk to the American public about is what we call appropriations bills. Here in Congress, if things are done right, we do not pass one budget at the end of the year. We pass 12 separate bills as we divide the government into 12 separate agencies.

There are disagreements between the House and the Senate regarding each one of those bills. However, one of the things that touches all of these bills is the degree to which the Federal Government is going to get involved with diversity regarding what we could call affirmative action--or an obsession with judging people by their race or judging people by their gender. This is a debate that is going to be had between the Republican-led House and the Democratic Senate right down the line.

We have had a situation where we have been identifying people by race since Lyndon Johnson really kicked this into gear in 1965. At that time, companies that had at least 50 employees and did over $100,000 of business with regard to the Federal Government had to submit information annually to the government.

As a practical matter, it meant that businesses were advised to pay attention to race when they hired somebody, when they promoted somebody, and when they let somebody go.

It also meant that the Federal Government was paying attention to race and gender when government contracts were let, and we have a bureaucracy that is advising American big businesses that are doing it in-house.

Right now, President Biden's goal is to greatly increase these roles of bureaucrats when hiring decisions are made in Federal agencies so that when we do government contracting and government grant writing, we are paying increasing attention to where people come from or where their ancestors came from.

In another area, the Biden administration is currently trying to set up a new ethnic group to get preferences or special consideration, and that is the group called Middle Eastern and Northern African people.

It is a little bit unusual, but the American citizenry should be aware of this. They should be aware that the government is currently in the process of adding this group to the number of people who are going to get preferences. Before they do that, there should be an open debate of whether this is necessary or not.

It is kind of interesting in that I read some information on this topic. Historically, I think the reason for this type of thing was the feeling that people had been taken advantage of or were not given a fair shake in the past. Right now, people who are considered Middle Eastern and North African actually make considerably more than the native-born American. American median household income across the board is slightly under $100,000 a year. Middle Eastern and North Africans are making about $115,000 a year.

Mr. Speaker, even if you buy into the idea that the American Government should be looking at people not on the basis of who they are today but on where their ancestors came from, we are really not in a position where we can say that these people have been put upon or not been treated very well.

When I go home and talk about these issues, I find that almost no people that I know are aware that we are about to add Middle Eastern and North Africans to the affirmative action mix, which means, of course, the American press corps is not doing its job. It is kind of a fundamental change in a given group if they apply for a government job, if they apply for a government grant, or if they are getting a government contract. If there are going to be preferences, then it is something that should be openly discussed on editorial pages, on talk radio, and what have you.

I think the American press corps has largely hidden this fundamental change in the way we do things, and it is time we have an open debate with regard to this.

It is a little bit interesting because other groups that are supposedly subject to discrimination or supposedly are different also do better than the average American. Right now, the wealthiest subgroup of Americans are Indian Americans. Also very wealthy are people from the Philippines, people from China, and people from Cuba. All of these people, in the mythology of the left, are people who are apparently being discriminated against, but actually, they are doing better than the average American right now.

I wonder why we would set up a bureaucracy to keep track of what these people are doing or making sure they somehow get preferences.

A debate is going to be had throughout putting together these appropriations bills, and in each one of the bills, that debate will, to a degree, focus on whether President Biden gets his new committees or commissions in every government agency doing all that he can to highlight differences between people and judge people by where their ancestors came from.

Before I move on from this topic, I should point out that these people self-identify. Insofar as you hear that diversity is important to have a well-running company or a well-running government agency, in order to buy into that, the government, in determining whether or not you are a member of a preferred group, allows you to be a member of that group if you are maybe only a quarter or a half of that ancestry, which seems a little bit unusual.

You can be, for example, a quarter Mexican and have yourself classified as a person bringing a diverse view to the world, even though you perhaps have never set foot in Mexico and grew up in an average American suburb and even if people didn't know that you had a different background.

I think in a desire to cause more importance for this occupation of these diversity bureaucrats, and in an effort to drive up the number of people who supposedly need help from the government, we allow people to self-identify. People who are one-half or one-quarter members of a group get preferences of that group.

We allow the fiction to come into play that even though you have never stepped foot in the country of your ancestors--somebody comes here from the Philippines, and their grandchildren never step foot in the Philippines. They know very little about the country, but for diversity's sake, we are supposed to make sure we have a given number of people who apparently have the Filipino-American viewpoint of the world.

I think that is something that ought to be discussed, as well, before we continue down this path and give the Biden administration any more victories in these appropriations bills by hiring new bureaucrats to enforce the new laws.

These bureaucrats, people with majors in diversity, are not all hired by the government. They have become increasingly common in large industry. I think they are afraid of lawsuits or whatnot, so big businesses hire these people and decisions as to who is going to be hired are increasingly made in big business to meet the targets that these diversity specialists give people.

Of course, it can result, first of all, in hard feelings as people are judged not by their skills but, to a certain extent, by their ancestry.

I have talked before about what happens in other countries where we have affirmative action. Hard feelings develop over time. Sometimes they result in civil wars, as they did in Sri Lanka.

In any event, I think the efforts that the Biden administration is making to bring in new groups and to increase the apparent number of people who are advising our government agencies as to who to hire, before this goes up, it ought to be subject to an open debate.

It is not being debated. I think it is not being debated because the mainstream media has not explained to the American public the huge role that these groups play or these occupations play in personnel decisions, both in private businesses and in the government.

The other thing that I want to bring up is kind of a leftover from President Biden and his last State of the Union Address.

President Biden has talked about his respect for members of the trans community, and he has done what he can to highlight them in a positive light.

I want to bring to the public's attention a book I have read, ``When Harry Became Sally,'' in which a discussion is made as to how we should handle people who come out as transgendered, particularly when they are young.

I think it is of interest when our society is deciding how to deal with these people in school, to deal with them medically, what the compassionate thing to do is. I think one thing that is not brought up enough when we talk about the transgender situation is that, left to their own devices, over about 90 percent of the young people who identify as transgender work their way out of it.

I don't think it has been adequately reported in the news media that other countries that went through this transgender situation just like America--I am talking about Great Britain, Sweden, Norway--have all backed away from embracing transgenderism in young people, which can include not just puberty blockers but things up to and including physical surgeries, having body parts removed even while people are minors. I think even a lot of people who have this done when they are adults regret it.

Nevertheless, the mainstream media and our President have largely encouraged people down this path and say they are fighting for them, giving people, I think, still more attention.

Mr. Speaker, when you consider that over 90 percent of the people who begin down this path break their way out of it, you would have to say that positive attention is going to slow down the decision of so many young people to stop going down the transgender path.

I don't think this has adequately been talked about in the media. President Biden and his Department of Education are doing what they can to try to force acceptance of this lifestyle on school districts. By forcing it on people, they have to realize they are going to create a situation in which more young people wind up doing medical things, some of which are irrevocable, cannot be undone.

I hope that President Biden will change his mind on this. I wish he would stop highlighting this community in a positive light because when you do that, I believe, you are causing people who are going to change their minds to not change their minds. One has to look at the long-term effect these people are having, particularly when you consider that over 90 percent of the people will not continue down that path unless perhaps they are encouraged to do so by people like the President of the United States.

In any event, those are three issues that I think we read about in the paper. I think only one side of all these three issues is too often presented, but I leave you, Mr. Speaker, with statistics on the number of people crossing the border and whether we can continue down this path. I also leave you with a little bit of information as to the increasing role these race specialists play in society and a little more information regarding the efforts by the President and his administration to, I would argue, encourage people to go down the transgender path.

Mr. Speaker, these are my comments for the week, things that I hope the press corps picks up on a little bit to educate the public.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was in a meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 692 and ``yea'' on rollcall No. 693.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the current situation in what used to be called the Gaza Strip.

I believe looking at American polls prior to the invasion that took place in October, there were too many segments of the American population who--insofar as there were disagreements between, I guess, what we will call Gaza and the State of Israel or Palestinians in the State of Israel--sided with the Palestinians. They felt somehow Israel was doing something wrong.

I still run into some of these people when I go back to my office across from the Capitol building because sometimes they are out there protesting or making some sort of a case.

I believe that all Americans should realize that--until what they did to themselves about a month and a half ago--that the people in the Gaza strip were fortunate to belong in an area right adjacent to Israel proper.

First of all, in that part of the world, there is probably nowhere where you would want to live more than Israel.

As far as basic freedoms, which we take for granted in the United States, those freedoms are available to people living in Israel, and the freedoms, to a large extent, came from a Western culture which was brought to that part of the world as Jews moved there from other areas around the Middle East and from Europe beginning before World War II.

Indeed, that land was largely a wasteland. It is interesting to read Mark Twain's comments when he toured that part of the world. It was largely a wasteland until the great Jewish migration.

At that time, it not only eventually benefited the Jewish people who came to Israel from Europe, but it benefited the Arabs, as well.

Indeed, between about the year 1900 and right prior to World War II, as the number of Jewish people in that area went up from about 100,000 to 600,000, the number of Arabs in that area moved up from 600,000 to 1.3 million people.

In other words, Arabs from the other areas around Israel, as more people moved there from Europe, they moved there as well to take advantage of the economic opportunity that became available as more Westernized people moved in there, and that continues to this day.

I don't think it is reported enough in the press that many people from Gaza who were working worked in Israel, and the economic opportunities in Israel were far greater than the economic opportunities in Gaza.

Indeed, I believe something like a person who left Gaza to work in Israel may be making four times as much than if they tried to stay in Gaza and work for the employers in Gaza. Again, they are very fortunate that Israel was right next door.

Now, why is Gaza not well off in other ways? Because they are getting huge amounts of aid from around the world, and particularly aid from European countries.

Well, the problem is that the people they have elected, Hamas, grabs that money. There are people who are billionaires, not because they have done anything worthwhile or thought of a new way of doing something or opened a chain of hotels or whatever, the people who are connected with Hamas have become billionaires, taking money off the top that comes from the very poor people who are living in the Gaza Strip.

Indeed, they not only take the money and skim the money off the top, but they then don't recycle the money in the Gaza Strip. They live in Qatar, or maybe they live in Turkiye. This is what Hamas does to the local people.

By the way, I think if you look around the globe, the biggest difference between the prosperous countries and the not prosperous countries, is are the people that are running the not prosperous countries, are they siphoning off the money themselves?

In other words, we have a crooked government.

Nobody could not say that when left to their own devices, the Gazans have elected themselves, Hamas, I guess I would say, a very crooked government, which insofar as they don't have as much money as they would like, it is caused by who they have elected themselves.

Remember, I think there is some feeling out there that Hamas is this fringe group that happens to be running Gaza. Hamas was elected overwhelmingly by the Gazans.

Now, we can feel sorry for people that make such a stupid choice but we also have to say that you are guilty, to a certain extent, by electing such people.

Another indication of how lucky you would think people should be for being in that part of the world, in a region on the beautiful Mediterranean Sea, is that the people from all around the globe are coming not just to be next to Israel, but to be right in Israel.

One of the things that surprised me, as you read about what is going on, is that apparently some of the hostages were from Thailand. I thought, why in the world are hostages from Thailand being grabbed by these horrible Hamas militants?

Well, I looked into it. People, particularly from Thailand or Philippines but sometimes from other places as well, are coming from halfway around the globe to live in Israel.

Now, ask yourself that. I assume that these people from Thailand or Philippines are not Jewish, but, nevertheless, things are so good in Israel that people come from halfway around the globe, from Philippines and Thailand, to work and live in Israel.

If you know anybody who says how horrible it is and how the Israelis are picking on these people, ask them: If it is so bad there, why do these people come from all over the globe to work there?

Another point to be made, Gaza is not the freest country in the world, but they live next to Israel, which probably has as many freedoms as anywhere else in the world, as far as freedom of speech, freedom of religion; things are about as open as they can be, which is another benefit. They have an example of a modern western state right next door.

The next thing I think the public should consider as far as these poor people on the Gaza Strip, is apparently no one else in that part of the world will take them.

I mean, there are all sorts of people who feign interest in them, who feign sympathy toward them. How many of these people are being invited into, say, Qatar, a Muslim country, in that part of the world that presumably needs people to do work.

I have a feeling there are a lot of people in Qatar from Asia as well doing the work. Why don't the Qataris say, oh, you are wonderful people. Why don't you come to our country?

What do the Egyptians think? The Egyptians are right next door.

If this is such a sympathetic group of people, why don't the Egyptians say: Come here, we can easily take another 1 to 1.5 million people in Egypt. We can even take over that part of the world.

You don't hear that from the Egyptians or from any of the other Muslim countries in the region.

You don't hear Turkiye saying we want these people.

You don't hear Syria saying we want these people.

You don't hear Iran, who is funneling some of the money toward this terrorism, you don't hear them saying we want these people.

So before you have too much sympathy for this group--and I guess we can have sympathy for all human beings--you have to ask yourselves, why do none of these other Arab-Muslim countries in that part of the world, or in the case of Iran, a Muslim country, why aren't they taking them?

Mr. Speaker, I ask the American people who are out there, the demonstrators and such, before saying how horrible things are for the people in Gaza, look at the history. Look and see the benefits that these people are getting from living next to Israel. Look and see the number of Arabs who moved to what is today the Gaza Strip, or Israel as a whole, moved there from other parts of the Middle East after--not before--but after the big Jewish migration that took place in the first half of the last century.

Illegal Immigration Across Our Southern Border

Mr. Speaker, the next issue I think is the most important issue facing the United States today, and that is the illegal immigration across our southern border.

We have new numbers that came out for October. Again, we hit records, as far as the number of encounters, of people coming across the southern border.

The most recent number shows 241,000 encounters at that border, up from 1 year ago at 231,000; up from 2 years ago at 164,000; up from 3 years ago at 72,000 when we had a different President.

So again, we hit records on the number of people who are coming here.

We have 71,000, what they call got-aways, which are people who come across the border and do not check in with the Border Patrol.

Most people who come across the border ask for asylum. They don't need asylum but at least they ask for it, and there is a perfunctory check on things.

We hit another near high of almost 62,000 got-aways who won't even check in and ask for asylum crossing the southern border.

This is a disaster waiting to happen. You are permanently changing America. Our forefathers anticipated that America be a country for a moral and religious people. We have no idea what the background of these people is.

Are they going to stand with our Constitution?

Do they understand the natural ideal that our forefathers wanted independent people coming here, not people who would view the government as giving something to them?

So I would hope that the press--it is still not too late--think about running a banner headline rather than focusing on some of the less- important issues around here to educate the American public. We, again, are getting record numbers in our country.

By the way, when you look at migrants who stay here--not just encounters, but who stay here--they are estimating 235,000 in October; 1 year ago, it was 178,000.

So what is that? That is about a 35-percent increase over the last year. Doesn't that merit a banner headline given that Joe Biden isn't hardly kicking anybody out?

After Joe Biden became President 2 years ago, that number was over 100,000; 3 years ago, at the end of President Trump's term, it was about 19,000.

So from 3 years ago in October when we had a different administration, we have gone up by about a factor of 12. Think about that; 12 times as many people crossing the border in October 2023 compared to October 2020.

Mr. Speaker, America had better wake up or we are going to lose this country. People back home tell me that we must let some immigrants in here; we are a country of immigrants.

I attended a ceremony in Milwaukee of over 250 people, in one day, in one city, who were sworn in to be new citizens. We are now swearing in over 1 million people a year that do things right, that are vetted, that we know are not breaking the law, that almost always have jobs; sometimes they have opened a business by themselves.

It is not like America is saying you could never get into America or we are so xenophobic, that we are no longer a country of immigrants. No. We have over 1 million people every year coming here, that are sworn in. That is not including children who are born here to parents who are non-immigrants. Right now our government wrongly is saying that if you are born in this country, you are automatically an American citizen.

It is also not counting the tens of thousands of people who are on visas that have expired. So we are flooding America with new people.

America, again, has to remember, and I want to repeat those figures one more time, in this October compared to three Octobers ago, we have about 12 times as many people coming into this country and being let in across the southern border than were in that short time period ago. I encourage America to wake up.

Appropriations Bills

Mr. Speaker, one more issue I would address so that the American public is aware, is that when we put together what I think a normal person would refer to our budget, we try to break it into 12 different parts, which we call appropriations bills.

The Senate has an appropriations bill--we are trying to get them to break things up--and the House has separate appropriations bills, and then negotiations take place between the House and the Senate to see what the new law will be.

Now, there are a variety of the things that the press should be paying attention to in these bills. A lot of things are details with regard to spending.

We have to remember that right now we are borrowing about 22 percent of our budget. I hope all Americans are paying attention as debates are being had over every item in these appropriations bills, as to whether we are spending more or spending less.

Remember, the reason we have these high interest rates, which are making it almost impossible for young people to buy a house, is because of inflation, which comes from excessive spending. That is one thing for people to look up.

The thing I want to address today is that in almost every one of these bills there are efforts being made to increase the number of bureaucrats who are involved in diversity.

In other words, people are going to get into these agencies, and rather than doing something productive, they are going to stick their nose in and say when we hire somebody, when we promote somebody, when we fire somebody, whether we give somebody a grant or not, one of the things to look at is that person's ethnic background.

This is an incredibly divisive thing to do. These people add nothing--by the people, I mean the diversity bureaucrats--add nothing to the wealth of our country, but they do create divisiveness because they begin to cause people to view themselves not as Americans first, but they begin to say: What are you going to give me because my ancestors are from Africa? What are you going to give me because my ancestors are from Southeast Asia? What are you going to give me because my ancestors are from India? What are you going to give me because my ancestors are from Bolivia?

That is a very dangerous thing to do. Also, this is something that is going to result in kind of lower standards, because rather than just saying we are going to hire the best person for the job, you begin to look at people's ancestry.

There are going to have to be debates on every one of these 12 bills in which we say, are we going to let new committees into these bills? Are we going to let new bureaucrats into these bills who use their power to judge people solely by ancestry?

I hope that, again, our press corps, which is sometimes missing the boat on these issues--and in there, I will even include the conservative press corps--I hope that they pay attention as each one of these bills move forward.

Since now is the time of year when we appropriate money, in other words, now is the time of the year when we spend money, are we going to allow an increase or any of these diversity bureaucrats to be hired?

Nowadays, you are getting college degrees and these sorts of things saying I want to spend my whole life trying to divide people and trying to cause Americans to view themselves as an ethnic group; an ethnic group from a country where not only their parents or grandparents or maybe even great-grandparents have never stepped foot in.

I talked about Bolivia. Are they going to identify as Bolivian, even though they may have never seen Bolivia, their parents never saw Bolivia, their grandparents never saw Bolivia, or even though they have never spoken a word of Spanish? Maybe they think it is important that they be part of this agency so they can bring a Latin-American viewpoint to this agency or represent other Latin Americans. It is just a completely ridiculous idea.

That idea is taking root. I think the only reason I would push it is if I wanted to destroy America, if I wanted Americans to turn to a fight between each other or a contest between each other, which is sure to end in the weakening of America.

Again, we ask the press corps to pay attention as each one of these appropriation bills moves forward and educate the American public, which is what the press corps should be doing, educating the American public on the degree to which we are hiring more people to judge new hires, promotions, and grants or government contracting, who gets the contract based on their ancestry.

Those are three new issues that I hope the press covers.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 1 o'clock and 31 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, December 4, 2023, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, in the last few days, a new threat to American freedom has arisen.

We all know today that most people, or many people, get out their views on social media. There are positives and negatives to that, but there is no question it is true.

Particularly with today's intolerance, in which people can be fired for their views, I think it is very important that people be able to voice their views anonymously.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, it has become apparent that some people want to bar you from expressing your views anonymously, which I think in many jobs and many occupations today could mean you are going to get fired. There is no other way to express your views other than anonymously.

As I understand it, our forefathers sometimes had to put out their words or their ideas of a future government anonymously to escape detection from the British. Voicing things anonymously is a long-held American tradition.

Mr. Speaker, I hope the American people are aware that, like so many other of our liberties, it is an attack by some politicians who want to make sure that your employers and your college professors have the ability to

know the way you think so they can take revenge on you.

The American people must keep the right to post their views anonymously.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment, which is an increase/decrease in prioritized money for the CDC to do a study on the effectiveness of vitamin D against COVID-19.

Vitamin D has long been associated with a healthy immune system, particularly when combating viral and respiratory infections. It is evident that maintaining adequate vitamin D levels can dramatically improve outcomes for patients who are infected with COVID.

I was incredibly disappointed during the entire COVID scare, when over a million Americans died, that the public health establishment did very little to encourage people to take vitamin D.

There are many studies out there--they vary from one to the other-- from Spain, from Harvard, from the University of Chicago. In some, they say that the chance of death can be reduced by 60 percent. In others, they say for people with adequate vitamin D levels, 2.3 percent pass away compared to 25.6 percent. In other words, you are 10 times better off with vitamin D.

In any event, the public health establishment did very little to push this. In my heart--I have read a lot of this stuff--I believe we could have cut the deaths by over 80 percent had they done it, which is why I want to require some sort of study out of the CDC to show this.

The other thing that should have been done during this COVID thing is if you went in for a checkup, you should have had your vitamin D checked. That should have been automatic. If you would have had levels, say, under 20, your doctor could have said that you are in much worse shape now and that you have to take vitamin D right away. They didn't do that, I think, because they couldn't make enough money on it and because, today, the medical establishment is too money driven.

Hopefully, if we do a study and something like this comes back, we can put our public health establishment a little bit more on the ball. I think it was an identical thing to COVID. I think it would reduce the number of deaths by over 80 percent.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, let me point out that there are many scientists in different countries who feel overwhelmingly that vitamin D would have reduced the number of deaths.

I believe, sadly, that both our research establishment and medical establishment kind of tilt toward something that will be more profitable.

If they would have gotten vitamin D out there in the almost year before vaccines were available, I think it would have saved a lot of lives, and it would have probably saved lives even after vaccines became available.

It is a mystery to me why the public health establishment does not get involved and, quite frankly, encourage people to take vitamin D well beyond the normal supplement level. You should probably take four or five times the amount of the supplement.

In any event, it is frustrating it wasn't done. It is frustrating we wouldn't check vitamin D levels when the cost to check them is, from what I could tell, if you go through a mail order thing, like, 50 bucks to check.

Nevertheless, it wasn't worthwhile for the medical establishment to do that. I don't see any harm in doing a

study, and it could result in a massive benefit.

Let me also point out that, disproportionately, people of color were dying from this disease, and a lot of people feel the reason they were dying far in excess of the population as a whole was because people with darker skin don't have as much vitamin D. In particular, it would have helped people of color.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have nothing more to say other than that I hope the amendment passes, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I request the press corps one more time that sometime, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps sometime next week, to release the new numbers of people coming

across our southern border, what we sometimes refer to as illegal aliens.

It is a story the press should never get tired of reporting, but apparently, they are. I remind them that every month lately 230,000 people cross our border, about 11 times the number of people who were crossing the border a little over 2 years ago. Of those, 70,000 are got-aways, which means they don't even go through the perfunctory checking in that you do if you ask for asylum. About 9,000 are unaccompanied minors.

It seems to me, about 5 years ago we were screaming bloody murder about families being torn apart when people were held apart from their parents who were breaking the law for just a couple weeks. Here we have 9,000 people who are permanently coming across the border without their parents, and apparently, we don't even care. Indeed, the Biden administration has stopped asking for DNA tests to sometimes see if they are related.

We are told by the Border Patrol that the people coming across are more aggressive than they have been in the past.

No issue is more important than this. If the press corps is on the ball in this country, we should be reporting every day, every week, the number of people coming across the border, as well as the countries they are coming across from.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 32 minutes a.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday next, November 13, 2023, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment eliminates funding for the Department of the Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.

This amendment, if passed, would save $280 million in fiscal year 2024.

Let me emphasize one more time that in putting together all these appropriations bills, the goal of all Members should be to reduce the level of spending.

In the year that has just wrapped up, we are borrowing 22 percent of every dollar spent. If you are borrowing 22 percent of every dollar spent, you have a big problem. Even if we stick to the numbers that we agreed to in raising the debt limit bill, next year, the amount we are borrowing will be equal to 23 percent of every dollar spent.

Mr. Chair, we have a real crisis here. Things are getting worse and worse as we go through these appropriations bills, so we should be looking for fewer ways to spend money and return it to the Treasury.

The CDFI Fund provides grants to community development financial institutions, community development entities, and other private financial institutions. As a result of that, this amendment not only saves money but saves money by taking away money from a fund that frequently results in public-private partnerships.

I think there is nothing worse than public-private partnerships, because it means what you are doing is you wind up enriching already wealthy people at the expense of the taxpayer and allowing people in the community to become wealthier, not by necessarily doing something that is better for the community or successful in the free market. You become wealthier by schmoozing with the local elected officials.

I think it is corporate welfare. I don't like corporate welfare. I think over time, more and more people are getting wealthy, not by providing something that would be winnable in the free market, but they do something by taking advantage of grants and credits offered by the government.

I will quote The Heritage Foundation: ``The only rigorous empirical assessment of the NMTC to date found the program to be largely ineffective at meeting its goals of increasing community investment and development. The study found that most CDE investments were relocated investments rather than new net investments''--in other words, transferring one business to another area--``suggesting that `all NMTC investments do not likely represent new funds to low-income communities.' ''

President Trump tried to eliminate this in his 2021 budget, showing that President Trump was sometimes a President who was pushing for less spending. In his budget, they noted that the CDFI fund was created to jump-start an industry at a time when CDFIs had limited access to private capital. The CDFI industry now has ready access to capital needed to extend credit and offer financial services to underserved communities, eliminating the need for such grants.

In the interest of ending cronyism, saving some tax dollars, stopping government waste, and getting rid of a program that I think too frequently makes wealthy development types still wealthier, I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I will just make one more point here. Assuming some of this money benefits Americans, not just the wealthy wheeler-dealers, we right now--at least if Wisconsin is any indication--have huge surpluses in our State coffers. If it is a good idea, it should be handled by the States, not by the Federal Government that is broke out of its mind.

One of the reasons we are so broke is too many of my colleagues don't look at the Constitution and realize that some things are supposed to be handled by the State and local government and other things are supposed to be handled by the Federal Government. By the time you drip the money down from the Federal Government, there is a huge amount of waste there.

In any event, in the interest of trying to keep our dollar the strong currency it has been throughout our lifetime, I urge adoption of this amendment and send these programs back to the States.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.