Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, we are beginning November here. What does November mean? It varies from city to city, but it means the Hmong New Year.

Madam Speaker, I call to my colleagues' attention that some time during November or December, if you have a Hmong population close by, they will be celebrating their new year. I encourage everyone to show up and learn more about Hmong culture, their beautiful dress, great clothes, and great music.

Our country always has a debt to pay to the Hmong, who fought during the Vietnam war against totalitarian atheism, the most evil form of government we have ever known. Afterward, they came to our country.

Wisconsin has the third most Hmong in the country, and I have gotten to know many. I have yet to run into a Hmong family--I am sure they must exist--that was not doing very well. Everyone was getting married, having children, living the American Dream.

Madam Speaker, I congratulate my Hmong friends. I look forward to celebrating separate the new year in Oshkosh and Sheboygan. I hope that anyone listening out there finds their local Hmong New Year celebration.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, this amendment would increase and decrease the Section 8 housing program to call for a U.S. Government Accountability Office study on: first, the marital demographics of HUD- administered housing program beneficiaries;

Second, the existence and effects of any marriage penalties for means-tested housing benefits administered by HUD--in here, we are getting not only the Section 8 but also the 42 credits and that sort of housing-- Third, any recommendations and policy solutions for reducing marriage penalties within the HUD-administered programs.

In the last 80 years in this country, we have had what I believe are means-tested programs. The practical effect is to discourage marriage and, in particular, discourage men from getting involved in their children's families.

I remember touring a low-income housing project about 5 years ago, and the woman who was administering it, who was a crackerjack girl, really tremendous job, but she pointed out one of her major goals is to make sure she had no men in any of the housing units.

I can believe that a lot of those men, since they weren't husbands, were maybe causing trouble, maybe doing drugs. It brought home the fact that right now an effect, and sometimes goal, of low-income housing projects is to keep men away from their families. This is, of course, only one.

I am highlighting the housing programs because we are dealing with HUD right now. It is, of course, true of all sorts of other income- transfer programs as well. Food stamps, medical programs, and Pell grants all come with their marriage penalties.

We want to focus on this. We want to see if this is a program that largely benefits people who are not married, largely benefits families without men in them. We know that there was a powerful group in this country, whose prescribed purpose, they said, was to get rid of the Western-prescribed nuclear family. We know under Marxism, one of the goals is to get rid of the family.

The purpose here is we want to have hard statistics, a GAO study, on the degree to which we are penalizing families with both parents there.

Madam Chair, we have all sorts of statistics here. My only comment is that, A, it is a little bit more difficult for a child, a little bit more of a tough row to hoe in life if they don't have a man at home.

I think one of the problems we have in some of our inner cities today that not only affects the children, but it affects the parents, because I think for a lot of people the most important thing they do in their life and their motivation for life is getting involved in their children's families, and right now the low-income housing program as well as other income-transfer programs are designed to deny men a role in their children's lives.

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

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, let's look at the big picture here for a second.

In the year that just wrapped up, the year ending September 30, the Federal Government was borrowing 22 percent of every dollar it spent. That should shock and scare people to death.

We reached a neat agreement that I maybe think the Republicans should be

paying a little more attention to on the debt limit increase. In that debt limit increase, there is going to be a mild cut in spending, discretionary spending. Even if we stick to that amendment, we will go from borrowing 22 percent of everything we spend in fiscal year 2023 up to 23 percent, another percentage increase in the next year.

In other words, we have a pretty scary situation going on here. I think as we approach all these bills, our goal should always be to spend a little less money. It is kind of frustrating when you hear people wanting to spend more money.

Madam Chair, perusing this bill, there seems to be one area that is obviously not the Federal Government's business, which is that of the Community Development Block Grant program. I cannot imagine why it would be the Federal Government's business to get involved in housing or any other sort of construction on a local level.

We are broke, broke, broke out of our mind, and getting more broke every minute. Actually, some of our States are running surpluses. I know Wisconsin right now has a tremendous amount of money, so I thought we could look at the Community Block Grant Program. President Trump, or at least his finance director, tried to get rid of it altogether. Because I am so easygoing, I thought we would introduce an amendment just to reduce it by half, which would save $1.65 billion in the next fiscal year.

I think one would be hard-pressed to say that these programs have been effective. Like every program that is paid for on a Federal level but administered on the local level, they have all sorts of rules involved that make things unnecessary, costly, and take a longer period of time. Insofar as it is a good program, the States and locals will be able to do it.

I have a list here of things that I don't think we were anticipating when this program began: $500,000 to expand Niagara County brewing; $276,000 to fund a skateboard park in North Adams, Massachusetts; $500,000 in corporate subsidies to persuade Procter & Gamble's Natura acquisition to move to Fremont, California, probably from some other city around this country.

In any event, I think this is a small effort at spending a little bit less money and weaning the local governments off the Federal Government. If they want to do their own stuff, they can.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I love my colleagues, but the States right now--at least Wisconsin big time--are running a surplus. If the State of Wisconsin feels they need more government involvement in building things, they are perfectly capable of appropriating their funds on their own. If the individual cities want to subsidize one part of town, they are perfectly capable of doing that on their own. There will be less paperwork, and it will be done quicker and at lower costs without Federal Government involvement.

Again, I emphasize that we are borrowing over 22 percent of what we spend as it is. Our goal shouldn't be to look for more things for the Federal Government to do. Our goal should be to go through each and every one of these appropriations bills to look for less before the value of the dollar completely collapses.

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

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

Mr. Chair, this amendment would increase and decrease the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to express concern regarding the inherently divisive nature of the Diversity Council and the associated race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation-based Affinity or Employee Resource Groups.

Right now, HUD has several different employee affinity groups for different racial, ethnic, gender, or sexual orientations. These groups include Blacks in Government, for African American HUD employees; HUD AANHPI for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander; and HUD FedQ for LGBT employees.

The so-called Diversity Council is reflective of this administration's drive

to divide America. In other words, we should go to work every day, and Hispanic employees should be in one room and talk about what they have in common and Black people should be in another room and talk about what they have in common, and the gay people should be in another room and talk about what they have in common. On the face of it, it is a little bit ridiculous. It is divisive by its nature, as is so much of the affirmative action mania that has taken over this country.

A growing volume of research demonstrates that professional development programs and other trainings in DEI are abject failures.

There was a piece in The New York Times, by author Jesse Singal, that compared different DEI interventions and noted: ``Racial affinity groups, a popular intervention in which participants are temporarily separated by race so they can talk about race, have perhaps proved even more problematic. They've sparked complaints, in places like Jacksonville, Florida, where a principal was temporarily reassigned after she attempted to separate White students from students of color. . . .''

In any event, the purpose of the groups is to tell people: Because your great-grandfather or grandfather came from Cuba, we are going to put you with these other people and you are supposed to share something in common with these people. In other words, people are labeled as being different by their race or by their gender, which on the face of it is such a racist and sexist thing to do.

I am not sure we should have a HUD, but if we are going to have a HUD, it should focus on its goals of providing housing or making sure we have affordable housing for the country, not setting aside groups of people who come from wildly different backgrounds and telling them because you are a Pacific Islander, or you are Hispanic, or you are Black you should think in a certain way.

I talked to an employee who has to put up with one of these groups in private at a business. That is exactly what they are. They have some expert diversity person telling people that because you are Black, you should think such and such a way, or because your grandfather is from Cuba, you should think such and such a way, or because your grandmother is from Korea, you should think in such and such a way. It is just anti-American across the board.

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

Mr. Chair, I would comment that I think the gentleman has kind of a bizarre view of the world and I don't think is accurately analyzing what America is today.

E pluribus unum, out of many, one, is the way we view America.

When they define members of these groups, if you are one-quarter American Indian or one-quarter Hispanic or one-quarter Black, you are considered part of a group. To think that these people all have something in common because of where their grandparents were born, maybe grandparents who have long since died, is a little bit offensive on its face.

If you look at how different groups do in this country, by the way, frequently the most economically successful group today are Asian Americans from India, then from the Philippines. Cubans do better than the average American.

Like I said, they are kind of bizarre. For the purpose of identifying people or setting aside these groups, you are going to have people classified by one grandparent, supposedly of color, even though nobody under the sun even knows what their ancestry is, is divisive on its face.

I believe the only reason people keep pushing this garbage is they want to divide America and they want to have people who are perfectly happy Americans walk around and being told that because your grandfather was Native American or because your grandfather was Korean, you know----

Mr. Speaker, I am going to address today a news story that has not received probably as much publicity as it should have. Nevertheless, it goes a little bit more to the wokization of all levels of government including local government, apparently including even what you would consider to be a conservative city of Nashville, Tennessee.

Mr. Speaker, you will recall last March there was a Nashville shooter, Aiden Hale, who killed six people in The Covenant School in Nashville.

At the time we were told that nobody knew what his motivation was, that he just had a rambling manifesto, and us little people didn't have to know anything more about it. It recently came out on the internet that this murderer of six people was a transgender who was motivated in part by Christian hatred and apparently a negative on blind hatred, too. In other words, he was a superwoke person who decided to kill six people.

As scary as that is, it is just as scary that the authorities in Nashville are now investigating who leaked what motivated the shooter. In other words, our new government is scared to death of any narrative that intervenes with the overall woke agenda.

Mr. Speaker, I hope in the future the press corps does not say that it is a problem when this is exposed but encourages local police to expose manifestos of multiple shooters so we know what really motivates them even if it is something like transgenderism.

Mr. Speaker, we have had an active 2 weeks in which we have been passing appropriations bills, and the Speaker should be commended on that. Unfortunately, all the activity with regard to the new Speaker and appropriations bills has caused the press to have an excuse not to pay attention to what is going on at the border.

In recently released figures with regard to September, one more time we see record numbers of people coming across our southern border. Compared to a year ago, the number of what we call got-aways, which I think is the most dangerous of the immigrant groups, has shot up from 58 percent to 69 percent, almost a 20 percent increase over last year's already high figure. Last year they shot up to 49 percent.

I think, as well, not only do we have a huge problem with people coming across the border that shouldn't be coming across, but we should also be paying attention to the viewpoint of the people coming across.

John Adams warned that our Constitution was fit for a moral, religious people and totally unfit for any other kind. As the United States has to take sides around the world in conflicts, we should be paying particular attention to how our new wave of immigrants think.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, my amendment No. 96 prohibits funds to develop, finalize, issue, or use assessments under the EPA's Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS program.

The IRIS program has never been authorized by Congress and was created by the EPA out of thin air in the 1980s. It has been heavily criticized by everyone from former EPA officials, the National Academy of Sciences, Federal agencies, and the Government Accountability Office. Despite that, the EPA spends $20 million to $40 million of taxpayer money per year on the program.

IRIS has a demonstrated history of conducting low-quality chemical risk assessments that failed to utilize the best available scientific data and establish very real regulations for private citizens and private companies.

EPA has targeted a number of important chemistries, including formaldehyde; uranium; vanadium, a critical mineral; ethylene oxide, for sterilization of medical equipment; naphthalene, to shut down oil production; as well as others.

IRIS risk assessments have been put forth at the expense of American jobs and cost public confidence in chemistries that are critical to activity across many sectors of the U.S. economy, from agriculture to furniture making to transportation and national security.

Bipartisan concerns have been raised repeatedly in Congress about the failure of the IRIS program to utilize sound science and broad input in its evaluations. These concerns have been largely dismissed or ignored.

Recently, IRIS has indicated that they intend to use the formaldehyde IRIS rule, which is below the level in human breath and from natural background levels, as the basis for their high-priority risk evaluation and risk management rule for formaldehyde over the next 2 years.

It should be obvious that these bans on formaldehyde, certain formaldehyde-based products or conditions of use, and unachievable workplace standards orders of magnitude below OSHA or European Union requirements will be very damaging mandates for Americans.

This would include direct negative impacts on the manufacturing community, including on manufacturing of resins, wood products, adhesives, fertilizers, roofing, coating materials, electrical products, lubricants, fabrics, and other construction materials as well as energy, transportation, and agriculture end uses.

There needs to be a change in the way EPA conducts its business around scientific integrity and accountability and the way in which the Federal Government conducts chemical risk evaluations.

My amendment is in the interest of protecting American safety and jobs and ensuring chemical risk assessments conducted by the EPA are driven by the best available science rather than political and ideological agendas.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I will point out one more time that we are in a situation here in which our tolerance is well under that of European or other countries. One more time, we are going put ourselves in a position which manufacturing is much more expensive, if not impossible, in the United States compared to other countries.

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

Mr. Chair, I was involved in an important meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall No. 536.

Amendment No. 26 Offered by Mr. Perry

Mr. Speaker, I will address some of the votes that took place on the floor last week, in particular the vote regarding a continuing resolution designed to keep the government open that was taken here last Friday.

The effort to keep the government open failed 232-198. Every Democrat voted against that resolution to close the government. What I am going to address is the fact that 21 Republicans voted against keeping the government open at that time. The press, particularly The New York Times, probably other organizations as well, referred to those 21 people as hardcore conservatives.

As our country goes under, some people are going to blame the executive, some people will blame Congress, some people will blame the courts, but a lot of it has to fall on the utterly incompetent press corps of this country. Hard-line conservatives?

Let's look at the bill that we wanted to have to keep the government open last Friday. First of all, a continuing resolution is primarily about spending, and that spending bill cut spending, discretionary spending, on all but veterans, the border, and defense, by 30 percent. In other words, across-the-board, you put everything else together, discretionary spending on the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Interior, the State Department, energy, the legislature itself, a 30 percent reduction in spending.

How in the world can you say the people who voted for the 30 percent reduction in spending are not conservative? How in the world can the press corps refer to the people who voted against a 30 percent reduction in spending as the hard-line conservatives?

We all know part of that bill was not just focused on government spending. Probably the biggest crisis facing America today is the massive group of people coming across the southern border, over 200,000 a month. In addition to that, we have all the unaccompanied minors, 8,000 to 10,000 children, coming across the southern border with no adult accompanying them at all.

In that bill, we also tried to add 22,000 new border agents, end catch and release, so people showing up at the southern border would be kept in Mexico, and the policy of inviting unaccompanied minors into our country. In other words, we were dealing with the immigration crisis.

We had two parts of the bill: A 30 percent reduction in discretionary spending on so much of the budget and, in essence, closing down the border to prevent all of these people coming here illegally, as well as to prevent the drugs coming across that kill over 100,000 Americans a year. The press corps in this country has the nerve to say that the people who sided with the Democrats to kill this bill are hard-line conservatives.

I call upon the slumbering press to wake up and pay attention to what is in these bills and tell us exactly what you mean by hardcore conservatives if they vote against the bill.

There may be a variety of motivations to vote against a bill. There may be personalities. Maybe you want to fancy yourself a hardcore conservative and you count on utter incompetence in the news media.

I beg the press corps in the future to pay attention to what is in these bills

and only use the phrase ``hardcore conservative'' to describe people who are voting for hardcore conservative bills.

The next thing that I think we should point out here today and the importance of having that large reduction in spending--and I don't mean to bore you with numbers--is the degree to which, on a daily basis, our country gets in worse and worse shape. That is because the interest rates go up. That is no vote that we take here in Congress. I mean, we fight trench warfare here on a variety of bills. Sometimes the bills are just minor bills that have a few million dollars in them. In the last 2 days, because of an increase in interest rates, the amount of money we are going to have to spend on interest, just interest in the next year, went up $12 billion.

Since April, when interest rates were like 3\1/2\ percent, the cost in interest has gone up over $100 billion. We have serious problems here, and the costs in interest should also be reported by the press.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today because we think the government is going to shut down on Sunday. That is because there are supposed to be 12 separate bills that comprise our budget that were supposed to be passed by now. We have passed the four most important. Unfortunately, the Senate has not passed any, so we have to move forward from here.

We don't know what the shutdown means. I hope the press is on the ball and pays careful attention if anything is shut down that President Trump did not shut down a few years ago. There is a lot of flexibility for Presidents to show if they are compassionate or not. If there is anything shut down that President Trump didn't shut down, it is something we have to talk about.

Let's look at the problems we have in this country right now, two big problems. The first is what is going on at the border. We used to have about 10,000 cross the border. We are now over 200,000. We are addressing it. The American public is tired of paying more taxes and spending money and seeing an open border every night.

That is one of the reasons why we have to pass the bill. The other reason is we have to make a little bit of a dent in the out-of-control spending.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 5525.

Mr. Speaker, this week I introduced legislation to rename the post office in Kiel, Wisconsin, after Wisconsin State trooper, Trevor Casper.

Now, I know many in this body may not have heard of Trevor, but back in Wisconsin he is not just the son of our State, he is a shining example of dedication and service. Trevor Casper was born in Sheboygan on May 21, 1993, to parents Kevin and Deborah.

He graduated from Kiel High School with the class of 2011 where he was active in wrestling, soccer, and coaching youth sports.

After high school, Trevor pursued a degree in criminal justice at Lakeshore Technical College, graduating in May of 2014.

During Trevor's time there, he was active in color guard and served as president of the LTC student government.

It was clear that Trevor was not just interested in a career but passionate about making a difference in his entire community.

Trevor's dream was to continue his education at the State Patrol Academy, which he did, successfully graduating on December 18, 2014.

Following his graduation, Trooper Casper was stationed at the State trooper base in Fond du Lac where he continued to serve his community with honor and dedication.

Tragically, on his first assignment, he made the ultimate sacrifice. On March 24, 2015, he was shot in Fond du Lac while apprehending a bank robbery and murder suspect. Though mortally wounded, Trooper Casper returned fire on the suspect, killing him, and protecting those in the nearby vicinity.

Trevor Casper was the youngest law enforcement officer to ever make the ultimate sacrifice in the State of Wisconsin. His bravery in the face of danger, his commitment to upholding the law, and his willingness to protect our community were unwavering.

Trooper Casper is a true hero, and he deserves to be remembered and honored for his selfless sacrifice. Renaming the Kiel Post Office in his honor is a small but meaningful gesture and will ensure that future generations see the name Trevor Casper and will hear about his great sacrifice and what a great human being he was.

Mr. Speaker, we just had another vote on this floor regarding the war between Russia and Ukraine. One more time, more money was spent on the war.

As bad as the money that is spent on the war, what is worse is the huge cost in human lives and suffering going on as long as the war exists.

I think there is a shortage of serious concern as to how this war is going to end and a shortage of desire to end this war.

Eventually, this war will end, but I believe the United States has traditionally been the world leader, and we should take our responsibility as world leader and try to push somebody, be it Israel, be it France, be it, Turkiye, into negotiating a peace.

The longer this war goes on, the more you will have wounds between countries that are not going to turn around, and the more Russians and Ukrainians die.

I remind this body that Ukraine has the second-lowest birthrate in the world. Russia has a very low birthrate as well and, even before the war, was suffering from a lot of its young people leaving Russia and coming to other countries such as the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I plead with President Biden to take a leadership role and try to negotiate an end to this war.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 41 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, September 29, 2023, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Chair, I want to comment a little bit on the last speech from the other side. They said the vast majority of fentanyl coming across the border to this country comes from designated points of entry. You hear that said, but I think what they should say is the vast majority of fentanyl that we catch comes across from designated points of entry.

There are--depending on the month--30- or 40,000 people who are got- aways who come across between designated points of entry. We never catch them because they are called got-ways, and nobody is monitoring places that are not designated points of entry.

Clearly, if you want to sneak fentanyl across the border you would do it between designated points of entry, and it would not show up on any statistics because we don't catch those people.

Mr. Chair, first of all, one comment on the people who are more likely to be victims of violence in a natural disaster. Just doing a quick Google search, I noticed that 80 percent of the murder victims in this country are men. Maybe the men are getting killed when the weather is good. I don't know.

In any event, as chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, I have had the opportunity to go down to the border several times. It amazes me what a good job dogs do at detecting drugs coming across our southern border. They are not only able to detect drugs. They also detect explosives, money, and even human beings being trafficked or smuggled.

We wonder, if canine units are so effective, why not expand their use along the southern border? To find the answer to this question, my amendment in this en bloc would express the need for a study on the expanded use of canine units along the southern border.

Mr. Chair, I would appreciate it if that amendment was included.

Madam Chair, had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 431.

Amendment No. 149 Offered by Mr. Biggs

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

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, I have been down on the border several times, and every time we are down there, we learn a little bit more.

My amendment would highlight the need for alternative methods of management for border wall infrastructure during flood season. The border wall faces a challenge when the waters rise during flood season. These floods can jeopardize the structural integrity of the wall, compromising its effectiveness and putting our border at risk.

During a recent hearing I held in Sierra Vista, Arizona, I was surprised to discover the way in which we deal with this issue. We deal with it just by opening up the gates along the wall. You heard that right. Border Patrol agents are required to open vast sections of the wall, allowing migrants to flow into the country unimpeded. This comes at a time when we are facing an unprecedented crisis.

Last month, U.S. officials encountered 230,000 migrants crossing the border; 180,000 of those migrants crossed the border between ports of entry, areas that are supposed to be protected by the wall. However, during flood season, these migrants simply walked through because we open up the gates.

To address this critical concern, we need to explore alternative methods and technologies that can protect the border wall.

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

Mr. Chair, I just reiterate, being at the border and talking to the members of the Border Patrol who are on the border every day, they feel the current situation is untenable and is allowing more people to cross the border than they should.

As far as the idea of simply climbing over a fence, I have yet to meet anybody on the border, be it Border Patrol agent, be it American law enforcement, be it people who have land on the border, who do not feel the wall is a good thing.

They all realize it is a wall system. It takes more than just a wall. They prefer if we describe it as a wall system, but they all feel we need additional barriers at the border to prevent this over 200,000 people a month streaming in here.

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