Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5110) to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to clarify that the prohibition on the use of Federal education funds for certain weapons does not apply to the use of such weapons for training in archery, hunting, or other shooting sports, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 5110, as amended.

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

I rise today in strong support of the Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act, H.R. 5110.

Last year, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. While most Republicans weren't in favor of its provisions, the few that eventually voted for the bill voted with the assumption that the Biden administration would not try to misconstrue the language to end the vital hunter and archery classes in our K-12 schools.

Now, due to the overly antigun Department of Education, the law is being used to pressure schools rather than enhance their security. Republican negotiators feel frustrated by the Department's actions. Democrats feel let down by the Department. Above all, the American people feel wronged by the Department and scared that at a Federal level it would take such actions.

This is because the Department has taken the funding ban for the provision of or training in the use of a dangerous weapon and misinterpreted it as a funding ban on archery, shooting, and hunter safety programs--some even speculate culinary programs.

How do I know that this anger is widespread? Look no further than the commentary from Democrats over the past few weeks. Without explicitly naming names, Democrats have called the administration overly ambitious, simply mistaken, and with a blatant disregard for the law. Too many people on the other side of the aisle are looking for any pretext to prevent American citizens from using firearms, even if the purpose is to increase safety.

Archery and hunting safety programs are not dangerous. They instill core values in schoolchildren--values like responsibility, patience, and discipline. In fact, our society could use more of these values and more of these programs.

Moreover, education programs such as hunting and archery foster a sense of connection and belonging among classmates. They are a win-win for our schools and communities. In Wisconsin alone, we have 272 schools offering archery programs, 37 of which are located in my district.

What we have here is yet another example of Federal bureaucrats who are out of touch with the American people. I know my constituents back home support these programs, and so do I. Therefore, I urge passage of H.R. 5110, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the author of this bill, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Green).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Allen).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Owens).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Moran).

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

Mr. Speaker, overturning the funding ban on hunting and archery programs is a no-brainer. I was glad, as a member of the Committee on Education, to see that when this bill passed, it came out of committee unanimously 42-0. That is because the value of these programs is universally recognized. They are certainly not unsafe. In fact, the best thing we could do would be to expand them, offer more of them, and teach more children how to handle recreational tools appropriately.

Furthermore, just like when the effort was made by the Governor of New Mexico, there is a bipartisan consensus that the people who were trying to restrict ownership or restrict acquainting themselves with firearms were shot down on a bipartisan basis.

Because of this administration's actions, however, many schools were proactively nixing hunting and archery programs to comply with the Department's wrongheaded and heavy-handed reading of the law. That is already going too far.

Congress should respond quickly with swift action and pass the Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act.

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

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I call attention one more time to the Members of this body about the lack of respect for the Second Amendment that took place in the State of New Mexico recently.

We all know where the increase in crime rate came from; probably three things: first of all, the breakdown of the family, which was encouraged by Lyndon Johnson's war on the family; secondly, liberal judges, who are not predisposed to put criminals in jail; and finally, liberal district attorneys who do not want to put members of the criminal class in jail.

As a result, we wind up with an increase in murders and an increase in crimes committed with guns. We have to rally and make it impossible, politically impossible, for anybody else to do what the New Mexico Governor did a few weeks ago.

The Second Amendment is designed to keep the power in this country with the people. Just because we have a family breakdown, together with ultra leftwing judges and district attorneys, is no reason to give up on our Second Amendment.

Rally, America. Rally around that Second Amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I think probably the single most important thing done in this body is when we uphold our oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

I, therefore, would bring to the attention of the body two instances while we were on break in which the Constitution was under attack, and I don't think enough Americans know about it.

One of the things was in the State of New Mexico, the Governor of New Mexico decided to declare war on the Second Amendment on the grounds that there was an uptick or maybe a big increase in murder in the Albuquerque area.

The Second Amendment is absolute. We don't get rid of the Second Amendment if the murder rate is up 30 percent. The reason we don't get rid of it is our Forefathers wanted the power to be with the people, not the government. But it is particularly ridiculous in that it is obvious why we have had an uptick in murder in the last 3 years in this country. I think there are three obvious reasons.

One, the government is mucking around where they shouldn't, as was mentioned by the founders of Black Lives Matter. People around here wanted to disrupt what they refer to as the Western-prescribed nuclear family. In other words, they want to get the man out of the household.

We also have people trying to elect district attorneys who don't like to put people in jail, judges who don't like to put people in jail, and antipolice forces who make the police timid. When all these things get done, you wind up having an increase in murder.

I would point out that John Adams said that America was built for a moral and religious people. We have to get back to that moral and religious people so they don't abuse their right to guns. In the interim, the idea of leaving guns in the hands of the lawbreakers, which of course is what will happen, and taking guns from the people who are law abiding could not be worse. It is almost hard to believe that at this time in our history we have a Governor--a lawyer no less-- who wants to enact a law, taking away the guns from the law abiding but presumably leaving in place the policies which resulted in increase in murder in the first place by not taking action against the type of people who are breaking the law.

The Second Amendment was under attack. A decision was made in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in which the Biden administration had tried to weigh in on social platforms that were giving a narrative of the COVID epidemic that was not in line with what Pfizer and their political allies wanted to say.

We have a First Amendment in this country, and we expect decisions to be made based upon a free exchange of ideas. We beat people in the court of public opinion. We don't say the government shouldn't weigh in and say we are not going to let people who disagree with us have a public platform.

The Biden administration chafes at the idea of free speech. They wanted to get only their way in dealing with the pandemic, and they decided to restrict free speech here in America. That should scare everyone to death, that we elected a President of the United States who wanted to restrict free speech.

Another thing that really concerned me about that, in an article by The New York Times, which I think is still viewed as an important paper by some people in this body, said the Court decision, which was a slap down of the Biden administration, was a victory for conservatives.

In other words, today, the people who write for The New York Times have said that upholding free speech is something conservatives do, implying it is not something that progressives or Democrats or liberals, or whatever, do. This is a scary thing.

When I was very young, I was a Democrat, believe it or not. At that time the Democrats were perceived I think even more boldly in favor of free speech than Republicans. So everybody was in favor of free speech. Nobody disagreed with the First Amendment.

Now, we have a decision in which truly the paper of record of leftwing America is saying that when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds free speech or slaps down the Biden administration for trying to restrict free speech, that is a victory for conservatives, implying it is a defeat for the progressives. Think about that.

I hope The New York Times reconsiders its position and does some sort of apology to America and say that they are going to try to do what they can to make progressives or the left, or whatever, advocates for free speech again.

In any event, we have two examples of the Constitution under attack. I hope the public demands that we stand united behind the First and Second Amendment.

Mr. Speaker, today we return from about a 6-week sabbatical back in our districts. I would like to address some more evidence of the moral decline that is coming over our country. I am talking about the cities, including Columbus, Seattle, Milwaukee, and New York, that are suing Kia and Hyundai because of car thefts in their district.

They are not blaming the breakdown in the families encouraged by the government, not blaming the weak DAs they elect, not blaming the weak judges they elect. They are blaming the car companies. How must we look to the South Koreans when they pick up their newspaper and find out the Americans are suing their car companies because our young people can't be prevented from taking them?

Wake up, America. Please stop this horrible moral decline before it is too late. Please, please, American cities, don't sue car companies anymore because we are doing such a bad job of raising the young generation.

Mr. Speaker, we have a few issues that ought to be debated on the floor and brought to the attention of the news media to help them with articles that would educate the American public a little bit on issues of importance.

I haven't spoken on Ukraine lately, but I will point out that Congress has not received a briefing on what is going on in Ukraine since December. That is way too long to go on the first significant land war in Europe in over 70 years. I ask the Biden administration to send its officials over to allow Members of Congress to at least get their opinion as far as what is going on.

As I have said before, this war should not be that difficult to end. Ukraine has the second lowest birthrate in the world. The Ukrainians, who have such a shortage of young people, should be especially ready to end this war. The Russians also have a low birthrate, and even prior to the war a lot of young Russians were emigrating.

Over 2 years ago, before the war started, I was in San Diego, and in the San Diego sector the Border Patrol and the immigration folks told me during the prior 2 weeks or month or whatever, in that segment, only in the San Diego segment, the second largest nationality to be crossing into America was Russian. You have two countries with shortages of people. It should be ripe for reaching some sort of settlement.

I think the United States is perceived to be, maybe rightfully so, overly partisan in this war, but somehow we should be prodding the Israelis or Turks or French or somebody to reach a conclusion here, for one, on humanitarian terms. I mean, for whatever reason, it is hard to find exact numbers of people who died in this war. I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war. They could give you the number of Americans who died right down to the individual digit, but for some reason you get wildly different numbers on the number of people who have died in this conflict.

However, either way, there are a significant number of people dying, and the Biden administration should be looking for a way to wrap it up. It wasn't that long ago that we seemed to have good relations with both of these countries. The longer it drags on, the more we drive Russia into the arms of China, which isn't in anybody's best interests, and it is a little frustrating that we are not getting a rationalization by the Biden administration why we wouldn't try to end this. The American press maybe ought to spend a little bit of time asking the Biden administration whether they feel there is any end to this war.

In any event, I call on the Biden administration to give us a new update in the auditorium, and I call on the press corps to start asking, is there any time when we are going to end this war.

The next issue I think I should bring up, because they keep talking about it on the news without giving us any new information, is the transgender situation. Usually when we talk about it, we talk about it with regard to biological men going into the women's locker room or biological men competing in women's sports.

However, I think a more significant question is: Why are there apparently more transgender people now than during the rest of my life? It seems to me the Europeans have reached the conclusion that one of the reasons for this wave of transgenderism is, people keep talking about it on TV and in academic settings. The more one talks about it, the more people begin to think that this is perhaps the route they should go.

I talked to someone about a month ago, 6 weeks ago, who, I guess I will call a recovering transgender, a woman, who now regrets it. She had the surgery, breasts removed at age 15, the whole ball of wax. It is not something that would have occurred to her, but she found something on the internet which informed her that maybe the reason she was unhappy is that she really was a boy. She went down the path. She went to the gender reassignment doctors, who apparently make a living on this. They talked her into the idea that, yes, the reason she was an unhappy little 13-year-old girl is because she was really a boy. She went through testosterone treatments, puberty blockers, and eventually even had her breasts cut out, which is a true tragedy, and now she regrets it.

I think the thing we ought to take out of it--and I have read this in another places, as well--people who are--

nobody should ever be mean or that sort of thing, but people who are overly solicitous or overly accepting of this transgender lifestyle wind up encouraging more people, other people to adapt this lifestyle.

Every study out there shows these people wind up very, very, very unhappy and miserable, and sometimes even wind up committing suicide. So I would hope that the American press corps would put a new narrative out there rather than just persuading people that this is all a positive development.

They ought to take about where people wind up who wind up going through the surgery. They ought to spend a little bit of time talking about why it appears there are so many more transgender people today than there were 30 years ago, and the answer is obvious. It is presented favorably as a lifestyle for a lot of young people, and when it is presented favorably, a number of young people get on the internet, read about it, decide to adapt this lifestyle, which is obviously only going to lead to misery and which does lead into misery.

I would ask the press corps to be a little bit more open-minded or publish a little bit more as to why we seem to have more transgenders than the pass. Is it like the Europeans have discovered, a matter of the more we talk about it the more we have people like this.

Maybe then we will realize that the goal should not be to have dramatic surgeries on young people's bodies. The goal should be on pushing this kind of to the side and not have so many people adapt the transgender lifestyle in the first place.

The next topic I am going to take up, which we haven't taken up this session, but I think should be taken up next session or sometime in the near future because it has such a big influence on America is that of the breakdown of the family and the lack of fathers in homes, which is bad, not only for the children, but it is bad for the father, as well.

In the 1960s, in which I think it was maybe the biggest domestic policy blunder in this country's history, under Lyndon Johnson, tons of money was aimed at families with children, but because the percent of poverty was determined by your income level as a practical matter, this money was conditioned upon not having a man in the household.

In other words, if you had mother and father both working in the household, by definition, they were not in poverty. But if father was somewhere else and mother was alone, say, with two or three kids, and mother did not have a job, she was considered in poverty.

This program said that if you are in poverty, or the programs, the Great Society, as it was called then--they should have called it the war on marriage--under the war on marriage, people who did not get married were given free housing at the time. So then they dialed back a little, given a check. They were given free food. They could be given free education. They would be given free medical care and given all these free things.

Basically what they did is they set up the family without a dad as a self-contained unit. Only 7 percent of the births in the United States at the beginning of the sixties were born without a mother and a father in the home. Now, we are over 40 percent.

I think, well, there are parents of all backgrounds doing yeoman's work, doing a tremendous job raising their children, and we don't want to denigrate them at all.

But the statistics would show that whether you are looking at crime rates or educational achievement, depression, children, in general, are happier with both parents in the home because not everybody is up to raising kids in that environment.

You would have to be blind not to realize the reason we have gone from 7 percent to over 40 percent is the great society and all these programs in which to get benefits, or you do get benefits if both parents are not around, and almost always that means the man is not around.

Other programs like earned income tax credit, which was, I think, not a very good program thought up by the Republicans and Jack Kemp, were also conditioned upon getting the check. You don't want to have two parents working in the household.

I would hope that we would do a subcommittee or something on this problem, get back to the good old days where depression and youth suicide was less than it is today, drug use a fraction of what it is today and, in order to do that, we have to change the incentives that were put into place by Lyndon Johnson.

This, by the way, was known by the end of the 1960s. I hate to cite this study because it is so overcited, but Patrick Moynihan, by the late sixties, had pointed out what a disaster it was to have incentives in which the father wasn't in the home. So this is not new things I am talking about today.

We knew this was a mistake by 1967, by 1968, by 1969, but Congress, either because they did not have the will, or because there is a radical element that Black Lives Matter represents, in which an element, a Marxist element wants to get rid of what they call the western prescribed nuclear family, and this is certainly a way to do it, but, for whatever reason, we have not adequately changed incentives in the 1960s.

Made a little think to the right direction under Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton in the 1990s, but since then it has all been downhill. I think we have to ask ourselves, was it a good idea to do all we could to set up the single parent as the sole parent in a child's life.

I realize this is little bit different than a divorce situation, a little bit different than a widow situation, but there is no question there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of men in children's lives beginning in the 1960s.

I want to point to something else, too, about this issue that a lot of times people don't take into account. This is something that George Gilder, who was a great sociologist--he is still alive today--but he wrote a book called ``Wealth and Poverty'' in 1980. At the time Ronald Reagan was sworn in, the book received a lot of positive press at that time. It has now been forgotten.

What Gilder pointed out is not only are two parents important for the child but it is also important for the man because a lot of times the man's self-worth comes from--just like the woman's self-worth--comes from raising children. It is the most important thing in life.

As a result of all these welfare programs in the 1960s, you have a lot of families without men in the household; the man had no purpose. This is why I think you see so much crime lately, so much drug abuse, because I think a lot of these men who were supposed to get self-worth out of children have kind of been kicked out of their home. If they actually did try to work and support their family, they may be materially less well off, or their children would be materially less well off than if dad wasn't around at all.

Like I said, that goes for all the different benefits. There is a benefit called section 42 housing in which people taking advantage of section 42 housing, not only do you have to be in poverty to get it, but section 42 housing is frequently superior in quality to what people who are not on government programs get.

Because section 42 housing is usually very new housing because the government pays for so much of the housing or to build the housing, people build section 42 low-income housing nicer than regular old apartments that are being built now; but that would be an example of a bad program that has bad results.

The next topic that I would like to take up, the final topic, which I seem to address every week, but I think we should address again, because every one of these appropriation bills that comes before this place is subject to debate, either on this floor or in the Rules Committee, with regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This country has, for the last 50 years, at least with regard to universities--it looks like it is going to end or to a degree end because of a recent court decision. For 50 years, we have had programs designed to hire people or promote people or fire people or let people into colleges and universities or give businesses government contracts based on people's race and gender too.

There are two rationalizations for this, but the press never spends any time determining whether these rationalizations are right or wrong. One

rationalization is that certain groups of people were discriminated against all the way back to slavery days, and, more recently, Jim Crow, that sort of thing.

The other rationalization is that in a workplace setting, diversity is a good thing and that we should, therefore, force or mandate businesses to hire people based on where their ancestors came from 200 years ago.

First of all, the idea that we owe people something--when you look at the people who are beneficiaries of these programs, many of them do not have any ancestors who were in America prior to the institution of these programs.

If somebody, say, who is Black from Jamaica immigrates to the United States in 1965, after Jim Crow ended, well after slavery, is there any reason why that person should receive preference?

Recently, the Biden administration has tried to give preferences to what they call North African or Middle Eastern people. So if I come here from Egypt or Syria or Algeria today, and I am not even a citizen, according to the Biden administration, we should make sure--kind of weigh in on companies, universities I think they would like to weigh in on admissions, and make sure we give preferences to people from Algeria or Syria who are not even in this country yet.

I don't know why we don't have that debate. We also ought to have a debate whether we ought to add a new so-called minority group of North Africans and Middle Easterners.

With regard to diversity, I think we also have a problem. I guess the idea behind diversity is a pure racist would say that someone's view of the world or the way they tackle a job is going to be dependent upon where their great-great-great-great-grandparents came from.

Now, I reject that idea. The idea that if I were to--I am not--but the idea that if I had a great-grandparent who was born in Peru, I would have a different view of the world than my next-door neighbor whose great-grandparents were from Germany. That is kind of a racist thing on its face, but that is what the diversity argument boils down to, that we should look at people, not on their viewpoint today, not on their personal experiences to this point in life.

If we have two people who both grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in houses next to each other, and one was one-quarter Mexican and one wasn't Mexican, that they would carry different viewpoints into the workplace, and it was important to get both viewpoints, even though, perhaps the person from Latin America had never been to a Latin American country in their life.

But the idea behind this program--and, by the way, you self-identify as to what your group is--the idea behind the program is it is important to get the viewpoint of somebody whose grandfather or great- grandfather happened to be from a different country. Again, even though in the case, say, of a Latin American, people would not even know that that is true.

But this is a rationalization used for these rather high-handed programs that, as a practical matter, causes both the government people who are hiring and the businesses who do business with the government to hire based on ancestry.

I want to point out that I was actually talking to somebody from India today--of Indian ancestry. He wondered about this program because he was from India, and in India there are many different subgroups that sometimes don't get along. He thought the United States was alone in that we got along so well and it was such a wonderful thing we have going here, why in the world with us getting along so well would we try to duplicate countries like Nigeria or Sri Lanka or Iraq? Why would we try to duplicate what they are doing in other countries where the elections are contests between ethnic groups? These diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are designed to cause people not to view themselves as an American but view themselves as a Cuban American or a Mexican American or an Asian American or a Pacific Islander.

In other words, they are going to view themselves when they vote and at other times as a representative of where their ancestors came from perhaps even decades, if not, centuries ago.

I am afraid one of the reasons for these programs I ran across recently, I heard of someone who--I don't really like the phrase, but would today be considered by people who are proponents of these programs as a person of color--and this person, because they were from south of the border, their employer, once they asked them where their ancestry was--before I was in an elected position, the places that I worked, we never asked people where their ancestry was, but nowadays we ask them--and this large employer decided to hold breakout groups of people based on their ethnicity.

We are going to have the Black group meet over there and the Hispanic group meet over there and the Asian group meet over there, and what happened is the diversity consultant--an occupation which shouldn't exist in America, by the way--the diversity consultant tried to tell this person that they were put upon and how they should think because they had an ancestor from south of the border.

Now think how ridiculous that is. This person, who was just a fine, regular American never viewed themselves any different from anybody else, is being told because of where their ancestors came from, south of the border, that they ought to have certain beliefs, including certain political beliefs, which I think is the reason why the Biden administration is pushing this sort of thing.

They want to tell people that if you are from Mexico or you are from Colombia or you are from Nigeria or you are from India that you are put upon and that you ought to have certain political beliefs.

It is better to cut this thing right away. We have a shortage of people, workers in this country. The idea that we have people going to college to be diversity experts is appalling. I am glad my colleagues again and again are trying to take these diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats out of the Federal bureaucracy, but there are way too many of them in the bureaucracy of individual big businesses around the country. It is the wimps who run these big businesses who feel that they have to kowtow to the diversity lobby, the special interest group, and they are instituting these programs by themselves.

I think it is time we had a public discussion here as to whether this whole diversity, equity, inclusion thing makes any sense. I can go through topics that should be brought up by talk show hosts, by service clubs, what have you.

Should we identify people by where their ancestors came from? If they self-identify, should we be identifying people by where their great- grandmother or great-grandfather came from? That is an interesting question.

If we are going to give preferences based upon where your great- great-grandfather is from, should we see if there is any true diversity there before you say you should take my contract ahead of the other guy's contract or you should hire me ahead of the other guy? Tell us what you bring to the table because your great-great-grandmother was from Mexico. How do you think different than the other guy?

Let's have that discussion. We are not having that discussion.

Should you, again, be able to self-identify? If I am seven-eighths German and one-eighth Mexican, is it right that on the form I can put down that I am a Mexican and I should be able to say I bring the view of Mexican Americans to my engineering firm?

They can also talk about, in certain jobs, what is the benefit of diversity? If we are talking about an engineering job, is the way I engineer the building of a bridge any different because I am one- quarter Mexican? That doesn't make any sense, but that is the position of the people who push these programs.

Let's have a discussion on that. Another discussion is, before we get this divisiveness going on forever, how long is this going to happen? This began in earnest--I think under John Kennedy, but it really began in earnest under Lyndon Johnson in 1965 and at the time I am sure nobody in a million years dreamed that we would still have this stuff almost 67 years later.

Should we have a discussion? How long are we going to do this? Again, let's have a discussion. If part of this is supposed to be a way to make up for past sins, why are we giving benefits here to people who may not even be citizens yet? Why are we giving benefits to people who just moved here from Syria? Should that be considered a different sort of person subject to benefits?

Let's have a discussion there.

In any event, I hope as we write more and more about the Supreme Court case and preferences in college admissions, I hope people begin to ask some of these questions as to whether or not they make any sense at all whatsoever.

I leave here hoping that our news media and this Congress spend a little more time updating themselves on what is going on in Ukraine. I hope they spend a little bit more time wondering as to whether we have this transgender crisis even a little bit. Just because we talk about it, if we weren't talking about it so much, we would have a fraction of the number of transgenders in the first place.

I think we should spend some time looking at the premise that the diversity, equity, and inclusion is built upon and answering questions like, should we be adding Egyptians and Syrians to the mix? Should I be able to label myself a minority if I am one-quarter a minority? Should I be able to label myself picked upon if my parents have given me $5 million?

These are questions that should be asked on the diversity level. I think we should be asking is it time to stop government programs which have resulted in an increase in fatherlessness from 7 to 40 percent, programs I think which hurt people, and particularly hurt men, have been around since the 1960s. There is no reason for these programs to continue forever.

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

Mr. Speaker, I also rise today to comment on the two appropriations bills before the House this week and to point out that I would like to thank the Appropriations Committee for doing a good job on both bills.

We are going to take up, this week, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act and the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.

I am proud to say that the U.S. has the strongest military in the world, but I recently ran into someone on break and heard about the horrible conditions, almost embarrassing conditions--you have to kind of wonder about the military--that they had to live in.

In any event, when we put together this bill, we had to make sure that the living conditions for the military were such that they are, first of all, appropriate for such brave fighting men and women, and, secondly, that we continue to attract and retain our people who signed up for the military.

It is apparent, therefore, that of all the appropriations bills that will come up, the military construction and veterans affairs bill, contrary to what we have been hearing around here in partisan attacks, does contain an increase in funding over last year's bill--just about the only segment of the government that does.

Meanwhile, I am glad to say that the agriculture bill contains a significant reduction over last year. Why do we have to spend less? For one thing because the excessive spending is where the inflation comes from. With too many dollars sloshing around the U.S. economy, those dollars have led to the spiraling, out-of-control cost of housing and the out-of-control cost of automobiles.

The Republicans have done a good job of, at least with regard to discretionary spending, finally saying we should have a year in which the overall level of spending is going down.

First of all, I would like to point out some of the things that are funded in the agriculture bill. We continue to have critical investments in agriculture research and rural broadband.

I will tell you, I have a rural state. I have 10 counties. When I show up at my town's association, again and again, I hear about the need for more rural broadband for health purposes and also to keep up- to-date on all research and anything else that we have to do to help people in the rural areas.

I am also glad that we are going to prevent the purchase of agricultural land from foreign countries that will inevitably lead to a loss in this country of our sovereignty.

We are going to, even more importantly, eliminate the USDA's diversity, equity, and inclusion office, which I think requires a little bit more of a discussion. It is not that huge of an office, but I think the effort of President Biden to continue to emphasize this equity, diversity, is misplaced.

The goal of these offices is to, I think, encourage people to view people by where their ancestors came from, not where they are now. Their goal is clearly to persuade the American public that we have racial problems.

If you look at the statistics, that just plain is not so, and I want to point these things out for everyone, including any children who may be getting the wrong idea from television or education areas.

During the last year, the 10 countries that saw the greatest number of people sworn in as Americans were, in order, Mexico, Philippines, India, Dominican Republic, China, Cuba, Colombia, Vietnam, Haiti, and El Salvador. None of these countries are European countries. In other words, people from everywhere else around the world are trying to get in here. Obviously, we do not have a big racial problem in this country or all these people would not be trying to come here.

Another interesting list is the most successful, in terms of income, people coming to the United States. Number one, people from India--I know a lot of very successful people from India. Frequently, they came here not even knowing how to speak English, but they succeed by hard work and strong families. People from the Philippines, Taiwan, Cuba, and Pakistan are all doing better than the native-born.

I am very pleased that the Appropriations Committee removed this DEI funding. I intend to vote for these bills.

Madam Speaker, I am going to address a topic I have addressed before this time earlier in the week, but it was brought up again yesterday in the Oversight Committee, entirely inappropriately. It is something that is brought up with each authorization bill or appropriation bill, and it is apparent that the other side of the aisle desperately wants a new bureaucracy dealing with what I will call preferences.

It has been in the news lately because there was a Supreme Court decision saying that, for the first time in 50 years, in the United States, we could not discriminate or use--I guess they were primarily focusing on race but they could have used sex as well--in university admissions. It put an end to 50 years of discrimination at universities.

It has also been in the paper because we have a Secretary of Labor appointed, not yet confirmed, that believes that this country was built on white supremacy, and we have a proposed new head of the Joint Chiefs who believes that we should cap the number of White male officers at 42 percent.

Of course, this gets into other areas as well that the Court did not touch. It gets involved in the area of government hiring. It gets into the area of hiring by businesses that do business with the government.

I think a lot of Americans are not aware that if you have at least 50 employees and do business with the government, you are required it submit a statement every year to the government called the EEO-1, listing the race and sex and the amount of money all your employees make.

It also goes into play with government contracting. Frequently, government contracts are reserved for certain people.

It will continue to be an issue as even after this decision, individual universities have gone down the path of not using tests for admissions. Historically, for example, to get into medical school you had to pass a test called the MCAT test. I had always felt when I was in my teens and twenties that we had the smartest kids go on to become doctors.

But the medical schools are shifting away from tests, which are an objective measure of intelligence, and using things like essays to determine who the next doctor is.

I want to make several comments about this preference idea and why it is so important, as we work through our authorizing bills and our appropriation bills, that we do not slide into this.

First of all, for people who claim, like our Secretary of Labor, that we are a racist country, or a Eurocentric country, I want to point out that the most successful ethnic group in America today are people from India. The second most successful are people from the Philippines. Other groups like Chinese, Japanese, if you look at Latin America, Cubans are all more successful than the average American, at least judged by income earned.

According to Thomas Sowell, the children of immigrants from the West Indies, the children of immigrants from, say, Jamaica or the Bahamas are more successful than the native-born.

If all these people come here and are successful, why in the world would we want the government sticking their nose in and establishing a whole new bureaucracy?

I also had an experience over the weekend with regard to the Hmong. The Hmong are perhaps the most--the largest number of so-called minorities in my district. I talk to a lot of the Hmong at their festivals. It is always enjoyable to be at their festivals. And, it gives me a chance to eat Hmong food, which allows me to become more used to very hot food.

It is always enjoyable to see such happy people as the Hmong are in their festivals. They had a festival in Sheboygan last week.

One of the things I like to ask the Hmong, since if there was ever a group that would have felt like a minority when they came here it would be the Hmong; obviously not European. When they came here they didn't know the language.

I ask either the older generation how many children plus nieces or nephews they have and they all smile. When they get done adding it up, it seems like it is 30 or 40.

I ask, have any of them had any trouble with the law? No. Do all of them graduate from high school? Yes. Do all of them have jobs? Do all those that have children, were the children all with the mother and father at home? The answer is yes.

I find the same thing when I ask the younger generation, and I ask them about their siblings or their cousins. They have to add up in their mind how many there are. There could be 30, 35, 40.

All of them have had no problem with the law. All of them, when they have children, there is a father in the house. All of them are living the American Dream. Again, it drives home the idea that in America we do not have a problem in which we have a European class that is preventing other people from succeeding. Indeed, the new people who come here do better than the people who have been here all along.

That would be one indication that we do not need these new bureaucrats running around labeling people by their racial background.

The next thing I will point out that inevitably all of these programs have is what I will refer to as, ``stupid rules.''

Let us determine, for example, who is Hispanic and in need of help. If my ancestors were in Spain, came to Cuba for

a couple generations, and then moved to the United States, they would be considered Hispanic in need of help. If my ancestors lived in Spain and came to the United States, they would not need help. They would not be considered a group in need of preferences.

If you are, for example, one-quarter Native American and one-quarter Hispanic and the rest, say, English or German, you would, again, be considered a minority.

A minority that needs help, even though nobody in your life even knew what your ancestry was, but according to the diversity bureaucrats, you get to check off a box and are in need of special help.

There are a variety of reasons they claim we need affirmative action, one of them is to make up for past injustices, but all of these ethnic programs or whatever we want to call them, apply to people who just moved to the United States. Does it make any sense to say someone who moved here directly from Morocco or Nigeria or Haiti gets preferences when they had nothing bad happen to them in America?

As a matter of fact, it is even more ridiculous than that. They get preferences over the native born. For the purposes of filling out the form, if I move here from Peru and I am not even a citizen, but I have a green card, I get preferences over a person who has lived in America all along. That is, obviously, a potential for a lot of divisiveness.

Along these lines, there are two rationales. One rationale is, we have to make up for past injustices, which makes no sense when you are giving preferences to people who just moved here. The other one is supposedly to show diversity.

Now, let's look at our examples again. If I moved here or my ancestors moved here from Cuba, I don't know any Spanish, I have never been to a Spanish-speaking country, and I have grown up in a northern suburb in the United States. What diversity do I bring to any company? What diversity do I bring to any school? I bring no diversity at all. I don't know why that is not talked about by people who want to push these programs.

As I mentioned, these programs also affect grants given or who gets government contracts. The government sticks their nose in, and if a husband owns a business, he is penalized. If a wife owns the business, that may be considered good in creating diversity. Is that fair? They both have similar backgrounds.

It does encourage lying and crookedness in America as you run across people who put their business in the wife's name so they can get the government contract, but is that something we want to do? I don't think so. Nevertheless, that is an inevitable result of this diversity.

The next question that has to be brought up is for a lot of jobs, probably for the vast majority of jobs, is ethnic diversity really something that matters?

If we are hiring a new engineer, if we are hiring a new brain surgeon, does it matter whether you are from China or Cuba or Morocco or Poland? You want the best person, the one who has done best in school, the one who has demonstrated just an innate intelligence to do these jobs. Diversity or where your ancestors came from does not help as well.

Now, let's look at another big reason why it is important that the Republican Party fight these diversity bureaucrats every step of the way. These diversity bureaucrats have to justify their job, and to justify their job, they will do things like have little classes in diversity in their businesses or colleges or governmental areas.

These diversity bureaucrats, to justify their existence, will tell young people, or older people, that there is a huge amount of racism in America, and they need the diversity bureaucrats to even things out.

This is one way to destroy America.

You are going to cause people to walk around with a chip on their shoulder who should not be walking around with a chip on their shoulder.

Worse, you are going to be dividing America. One of the things that has made America so great is, out of many, one--E Pluribus Unum.

The diversity bureaucrats want to go the other way. They do not want people from all around the world considering themselves one united group. The diversity bureaucrats want to take what was one united group, tear it apart, and have people angry at each other or fighting with each other. This does not work anywhere else in the world.

When I read about elections in other parts of the world, one thing that makes them so contentious, sometimes violent, is that the elections become a contest between two different groups.

Look at what has happened in Sri Lanka over a period of years between the two big groups there. What has happened in Nigeria between the different tribes there. Of course, in the 1970s, it wound up there were tens of thousands of people dying as the ethnic groups or the tribes in Nigeria separated and wound up fighting.

Why in the world would we want elections in America to be a contest between groups? That is sadly what these bureaucracies are going to want.

I will close with a couple anecdotes, so people back home know what is going on in America.

I know somebody who worked for a manufacturing firm and that manufacturing firm had four engineers. They all were men. They had to hire a fifth engineer and they were told by the diversity firm they contracted with that their fifth hire had to be a woman.

It didn't matter if they had found a perfectly good candidate for the job. They were afraid that the government would come in and penalize them in some fashion or audit them if the next person was not a woman. It clearly is not right.

The same company was going to hire a new person in management and their first four or five members of management were all of European descent. They were told they had to go out of the way to hire somebody who wasn't European in management rather than just taking the best person that they could.

I don't think most Americans would agree with that sort of thing, but that is what has been going on in America for the last 50 years. I strongly encourage the Republican Party to draw a line in the sand.

Joe Biden wants to insert these diversity bureaucrats in all government agencies, and they will stick their nose in hiring decisions, in promoting decisions. They will stick their nose in who gets grants around the country.

This is a way to divide America. America has become the greatest country in the world by viewing people as individuals. We should keep viewing people as individuals. We do not need diversity bureaucrats throughout our government.

I encourage all Members of this body to treat everybody equally and look at everybody as an individual, not as a representative of where their ancestors came from years and years ago.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 40 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, July 24, 2023, at 11 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk a little bit about a hearing we are going to have tomorrow in the Oversight and Accountability Committee regarding members of President Biden's family.

It is a hearing I don't want to have. I think the President has done a pretty bad job, and politically he has made a lot of mistakes that have made him unpopular, but what we are dealing with here is significant sums of money, tens of millions of dollars, that appears to have flowed to his family from other countries around the world--in particular, China and Ukraine.

It is very difficult as a Congressman to know exactly what American policy should be with regard to these countries, but it makes it even more difficult if it is apparent that the President of the United States or his family may have received significant amounts of money and may have even been subject to blackmail if the worst had happened.

I strongly encourage the American public and the Chair to tune into our hearing tomorrow because we are going to unveil a new witness whose name has not been publicly revealed, and I think it is important for all Americans to pay attention and see exactly what is going on.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the President or the Members of this body to weigh in with the President and try to come to some sort of conclusion on the war with Ukraine.

It seems to me that there are two groups: people who want us to pull out and people who want us to be all in for years and years. However, the longer this war drags on, the worse long-term relationships get between Russia and the United States.

Russia has a very low birthrate and has had a lot of their young people leave for the United States and other parts of the world recently. Ukraine has the second lowest birthrate in the world. Neither of these countries can afford to lose any more of their young people to this war. The sooner the war wraps up, the better.

I am very disappointed that the press is not asking questions of the Biden administration and that the Biden administration seems completely uninterested in negotiating some settlement of the war.

I am aware of the fact that the U.S. cannot appear an impartial broker, but we should strongly encourage Turkiye, Israel, or France to step in and try to negotiate an end to this war. I do not know why it seems like the Biden administration does not want it to end.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman from Indiana for introducing this amendment.

I think it is a commonsense amendment. Right now, there are all sorts of rumors out there that when people are admitted to the service academies--who, after all, are going to wind up running our military, the one part of our government that cannot fail--preferences are being given and they are not always taking the best people that they can.

I want to point out something that is a little bit offensive about this whole diversity thing. Diversity for people like the Democratic Party, sadly, is solely determined by your genetics or your DNA or where your ancestors were 200 years ago.

I will give you an example to show the foolishness of it and that the real goal here, I think, is to divide Americans.

If I am one-quarter Peruvian, I can identify as Hispanic. I can identify as Hispanic despite the fact I have never spoken a word of Spanish and never been south of the border in my life. The people who just want to divide America would say that I have a unique perspective growing up in a Milwaukee suburb, despite the fact that I am one- quarter from a different part of the world.

This is preposterous on its face, and it will inevitably lead to division as we are educating our military that they should look at people by where their ancestors came from, not as individuals.

This true racism, which is what it absolutely is because that is how they determine which silo you fit into, has to be ripped away from our society and the military, in particular.

The idea that we have different viewpoints because of where our ancestors came from despite the fact that we have not been there and know nothing of them is preposterous.

Like I said, in addition to the divisiveness, you are going to wind up with people who are not necessarily the best people to lead our military. Anybody familiar with military history knows the important decisions that have to be made during wartime. We want those decisions made by the brightest people we have, not by people who have been picked based upon where their DNA was 2,000 years ago.

Mr. Speaker, I won't keep you here for 60 minutes.

There are a couple of issues I think that I have dominated discussion here the last couple of weeks, or should have dominated the discussion, that I think deserve a little bit of attention today.

I am going to address, one more time, our crisis at the southern border. I am a little bit afraid that, as the weeks and months roll on, people are being accustomed to what is going on at the southern border. But as with every tragedy that happens in our society, if a tragedy happens every week or every month, we ought to talk about it every month.

Now, recently, the Biden administration changed the way we allow people from certain countries, Cuba, Haiti, one of the Central American countries, to be able to come in here. But we have to look and see how many people are crossing the southern border and, if we look, including people coming across in the new administrative fashion, every month we continue to hit all-time records of people coming into the United States.

The most recent month available is May. We are still waiting for the June numbers. There we have a total of 227,000 people crossing our southern border. If we compare that to last May, it was 142,000; and if we compare it to the first May under President Biden, it was 74,000.

So things are going up dramatically, but it seems as though the press is not as appropriately concerned as they should be. In other words, we are succeeding in getting them bored; the greater the concern should be.

I want to point out as well that as the total number of people come across, different subgroups continue to come up. We, right now, have unaccompanied minors at approximately 7,000 people.

Now, recently, The New York Times reported we have lost tens of thousands of young people coming here. We have almost 7,000 people crossing the border every month, not being supervised by their parents or, quite frankly, any other adult. The Border Patrol will tell you that sometimes if you do a DNA test, children that are coming across with people who purport to be their parents, purport to be their aunts or

uncles, are not. This should be a cause of great concern here in this Chamber.

When children were left to spend a week or 2 weeks apart from their parents, that was considered a major concern and something we all had to bring up.

But no, I believe that there is a new committee formed, and one of the things we will have to look at is what we can do to make sure that people who are entering the United States have not one but, in most cases, both of their parents with them.

It is not a good idea for the United States to be part of a system which is causing people, young people, to be separate from, in many case, both parents, in other cases, one parent. Hopefully, we can change our policy down there, a little more family oriented, and the United States will not act as a kind of coconspirator with the drug cartels in breaking up these families.

I think it is also important that we not only check this out when people are crossing into our border but check them out when our Department of Labor finds young people, as they do, working maybe third shift, maybe working illegally. We had a committee hearing on this. It wasn't publicized as much as it should have been, but we find the Department of Labor expresses no interest at all, as far as we can tell, when they find a child working third shift, when they find a child working in such fashion against the law. They do not look for the parents at all, and this is something that should change if the administration was all concerned about these parents.

Nobody can tell me if a child was working illegally, working too late, working at too young an age, and they were an American citizen, and this were found out, the appropriate authorities would not be contacting the parents and wondering what was going on. But, under the Biden administration, we don't care.

Of course you are setting up a situation of human trafficking. When you have children who are unaccompanied by parents, that is an obvious result.

We always refer to human trafficking. We should--frequently, I think the phrase ``human trafficking'' is used to kind of nicen up what is really going on, and that is prostitution.

In any event, I call on the press corps to report on the new migrants coming in in the May numbers and sometime in the next couple of weeks, we should get new numbers in June. Last year, in June, we had 140,000 people cross across the southern border, and I hope the press corps takes a little bit of notice as to whether one more time we hit a record for the month.

Right now we have numbers for the first 9 months of this fiscal year. Every one of the 9 months has hit a high in the number of people coming here, at least in recent history. We will find out within a couple of weeks whether we are on the tenth month in a row of record number of people coming in.

The next issue that I would like to address--it was touched upon this week in some of the diversity talk--is that with regard to the transgender issue. It is an issue I never thought we would discuss here in Washington. It is an issue I don't think that even crossed people's minds 15 or 16 years ago.

There are a variety of topics that people bring up here. Do transgenders get to use a girls' bathroom?

Do transgenders get to use a girls' locker room if they are in sports?

Do transgenders get to play on women's sports?

But I think the most important issue, and it is one that should be more obvious, is what is society doing to reduce this problem?

What they found out in Europe is that over time, the number of transgenders go up. If we didn't have this obvious increase in number of people, we wouldn't have anywhere near the problem in the first place.

Now, why is it going up? I think the more you read, one of the reasons it is going up is this subgroup of our population is kind of held up as heroes.

I would suggest that some people interested in this topic read an article by a woman by the name of Heather Mac Donald in which she discusses the transgender situation and the fact that all of the coverage in the press and all of the favorable comments from American politicians, particularly our President of the United States, referring to people who question the proliferation of the transgender movement, he says they are motivated by hate and fear.

I don't know anybody who is hating anybody. I do think there are people who feel sorry for these people.

But obviously, the number is increasing the more politicians and the news media pays attention to this subgroup and makes them out to be some sort of heroes. It gives people attention and, of course, all young people like attention.

It gives people a sense of belonging, a sense that they are part of a cause. And, of course, young people like to be part of a rebellion of some nature.

But the people who are being hurt by this more than anybody are, of course, the people who would not have gone down this path but are going down this path and it is brought to people's attention more and more. This is a group that was nowhere near as common in this country in the past and, quite frankly, I do not believe this is common in other nonwesternized countries. That is because in these nonwesternized countries it is not discussed as something that we ought to do.

Now, I recently met with a young lady who was convinced that the reason she was unhappy is because she really should have been a boy. She now credits it entirely to looking on the internet where they told her if she was unhappy--and many, many young people are unhappy. They told her the reason she was unhappy is perhaps she should be a boy.

So they took this young lady and, at the age of 12 or 13, they gave her powerful puberty blockers. They gave her testosterone, and eventually they removed her breasts. She, of course, came to regret it.

I don't know what sort of doctor would look at a 15-year-old, knowing very well that people's opinions and idea of the world change so dramatically between 15 and 20 and 25 and 30, and decided to do something as irrevocable as remove this young gal's breasts. But this is happening all the time in this country.

This gal was from another State, but I know of two hospitals in Wisconsin who would make this dramatic change to somebody. They wouldn't--I don't know why. Money. I can't imagine why they wouldn't say, why don't you come back when you are 23 or 24 and we will talk to you then. That wouldn't be a good idea then--but to a 15-year-old?

Again, the reason she did it is because she got a lot of affirmation on the internet, people encouraging her, people telling her she is a hero, people telling her that she should be so proud of herself if she was going down this route.

I think it would be good if we would start in this Chamber, among politicians here--and, hopefully, even the President--and stop encouraging people that this is an option.

By the way, if people have these surgeries, they have to continue to take medications costing a great deal every month. If it were really true that this gal should have been a boy, she wouldn't have to continue to take medications even after she had the surgeries; however, she would have to take these medications for the rest of her life.

I hope, in the future, people in this Chamber are a little bit more measured in their words before they imply to people that they are some sort of special heroes by getting their sex changed.

So, in any event, these are two topics that I will say the other side has not been brought up to the degree in which it should be by the mainstream media and not brought up enough by my colleagues.

So I hope when we return from our break over the weekend that these issues are brought up a little bit more in the future.

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 43 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, July 17, 2023, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, I will address one of the very important Supreme Court decisions which came down in the last couple weeks and some of the comments that have been made critical of that decision. I am talking about the one that dealt with a policy now known in the United States as affirmative action.

What that policy does is it gives, as a practical matter, preferences both on

the basis of race and gender in university admissions. Actually, the public debate should go beyond that because in this country not only do we have a policy in which we try to have certain groups jump ahead of other people based on test scores or grade point average, we also have preferences, or encourage, as a practical matter, preferences in hiring for government jobs as well as hiring in jobs working for a private organization, if that private organization has at least 50 employees and does business with the Federal Government. There are also preferences with regard to government contracting.

As a practical matter, we have had these preferences since 1965. We are talking about things that are 67 years old.

I will point out that sometimes with regard to government contracting, it encourages lying. I have talked to people in my district who talk about their colleagues putting businesses in the name of their wives so they can get the preference for a woman-owned business even though the guy continues to run the business.

My friend doesn't like it because he is an honest person and he refuses to lie. He doesn't like the fact that people who are lying move ahead of him. He is in the construction field.

There are two ideas put forth as to why we need these preferences: One is to undo past injustices from years ago, going all the way back to slavery in the 1860s; and, secondly, the idea that somehow we should ask businesses or government to have a more diverse task force. I am going to deal with each of one of these separately.

First of all, with regard to past injustices, the benefits in universities and the benefit in government affirmative action goes to people who were never even in this country. We have to ask ourselves, why, if my ancestors came here from Peru in the 1990s and never experienced a period in this country, assuming there was such a period in which there was a lot of prejudice, why would we be giving preferences to people who moved here in the 1990s?

Also, Madam Speaker, Black people who moved here from Jamaica or the Bahamas in the 1990s, well past the era of Jim Crow, much less well past slavery times, why would we be giving them preferences?

The Biden administration, most recently, is trying to add another group to get preferences, people from the Middle East or northern Africa. Why, if someone moves here from Algeria or Syria today, they may not even be citizens, why would they be given preferences? What is the underlying rationale?

The other thing to point out here is that we are hypothetically giving preferences to people who are doing better than the native-born population. This is something people should remember before they advocate for this or if they have children or grandchildren making the pitch for this.

Right now the ethnic group in America that is doing the best financially--and money is not the most important thing in life, but nevertheless, that is frequently what we look to when we determine these programs--are Indian Americans who are the most successful group in America today. Behind that, we have people from China. I think the number two group right now is from the Philippines. People from Cuba are doing better than the native born.

According to Thomas Sowell--this is a book somewhat dated--according to Thomas Sowell, the second generation after people move here from the West Indies, Jamaica, and the Bahamas do better than the average American.

Given that, like I said, we are dealing with people who came here well past the time of prejudice. Why in the world would we be giving preferences to these people?

The next thing I will point out is that some people fall back on the idea that we need a diverse group of students or a diverse workforce. This is kind of a bizarre argument, and it is something people should have to defend.

Let's say I am one-quarter Peruvian--I am not, but let's say for the sake of argument I am one-quarter Peruvian. I have never been to Peru. I don't know a word of Spanish. I have never been to a Spanish-speaking country. Why in the world would we be giving me preferences to bring the Peruvian viewpoint to an engineering firm, let's say?

It makes no sense at all. I have no connection other than DNA with people that are Peruvian.

These are some of the ideas that I think people should have to respond to before they are critical of that decision, or people who want this sort of policy to continue.

Mr. Speaker, I am here today to highlight the important work the House is doing in the 118th Congress to hold the Biden administration accountable.

My colleagues are familiar with all we are doing with regard to looking at student loan agreements, the abusive pandemic-era policies, but today, I want to focus on something the administration is doing at the southern border that it has no business doing.

Their new unlawful use of the CBP1 app is allowing an even greater number of people to come across our border. In addition to people, the got-aways, in addition to the family units, in addition to the unaccompanied minors, we have people using an app to sign up and wind up coming into our country.

In the current fiscal year, in each one of the 9 months, we had for that month an all-time record number of people coming here. I think in part because of the use of this app, the slumbering press corps is not paying attention to that.

Let me repeat that one more time. In each of the last 9 months, we had an all-time high in the number of people coming into the United States.

This is an absolute scandal. I am glad our committee is taking it on, and I

hope the press corps pays a little bit more attention to this invasion.