Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, in all the hubbub over the significant legislation and the debt limit last week, I think this body let the founding of Earth Day pass.

Of course, the father of Earth Day was none other than Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. I am sure all of Wisconsin's little schoolchildren are taught that.

Given that we are celebrating the 73rd anniversary of Earth Day, I think we should go back and look at what some of the founders of Earth Day said at that time.

Gaylord Nelson said that within 25 years of the first Earth Day, which was in 1970, 75 to 80 percent of the species of the Earth would be extinct.

Paul Ehrlich, biologist and author of the best-selling book ``The Population Bomb,'' predicted that 100 to 200 million people would be starving per year in the 1980s and that 65 million Americans would die in the 1980s.

George Wald, a well-known Harvard biologist, predicted that civilization would end within 15 to 30 years unless action was taken quickly.

Barry Commoner, another windbag who was on television all the time in the 1970s, also predicted that all the oxygen would be used up in America's freshwater rivers.

The lesson is: Go back and see what those founders of Earth Day said and see how little they really knew about what the future held for us.

Madam Speaker, we are here to commemorate another police week, and I think the average American never has an opportunity to see what the average policeman goes through and the risks they take.

Fortunately, as a Congressman and, as you mentioned before that, a State legislator, I had an opportunity to try to do a couple ride- alongs with local police departments and local sheriff's departments.

I think until you spend time with law enforcement, you don't realize the risks that they go through routinely and without complaining. Whether it is a domestic situation where they are going up to a door not knowing if one of these people is armed, not knowing what you are going to confront, but having to knock on that door and go in there anyway.

Doing a routine traffic stop--because if you are in a squad car, no traffic stop seems routine--you have no idea whether that person is armed, whether that car is going to take off, or what is going to happen. Every night, due to the job, the average law enforcement officer will be involved in, I would estimate, three or four incidents. During these incidents, the officer is faced with the unknown. Who is the other person in that car? Who is the person behind that door?

I encourage all my colleagues to take advantage of their position, do a ride-along, get to know a little bit more about your police so you not only respect what they are doing, but know how incredibly professional they are. See what a great job they do. You will quickly realize that the few naysayers in this building who run down the police, it is not consistent with the statistics at all.

In fact, there are few occupations as noble, respectful, and make you feel good about yourself and your accomplishments than what a policeman does every night.

I will make another comment, Madam Speaker. It is good to spend a shift with this batch, as well.

Mr. Speaker, I think the next 2\1/2\ months of this institution are going to be consumed with the budget and the amount of spending. I don't think the press has done an adequate job of alerting the public to the crisis we currently have.

As we have talked before, we are headed towards the Federal debt of $31 trillion being 100 percent of GDP. Of course, over time as the value of the dollar changes, it sometimes makes it difficult to see exactly how bad that is. The last time the debt was as great as the Gross National Product was the end of World War II.

Now, at the end of World War II, America was very economically strong because Japan and Europe were flattened by the end of World War II, but even more, we knew at the end of World War II that we were going to lay off hundreds of thousands of military personnel. We knew the factories would stop building the ships, the planes, and the tanks that were necessary for World War II, and therefore, we knew we were heading into a time of dramatically decreased spending.

That is exactly what happened. At the end of World War II, slowly we dropped from 100 percent of GDP debt ratio down to a little over 20 percent. Things were really getting under control. We were a little bit over 20 percent during the Presidency of Richard Nixon. Then things began to slowly rise again. Recently, in part with COVID and in part the completely reckless spending under President Biden, we are headed back to 100 percent again.

The American public has to stop and think. While we knew at the end of World War II spending was inevitably going to drop, we live during a time of an aging population in which the amount of money we are spending on Medicare and Social Security is going to continue to go up if we do nothing else.

Now, we sure should never, ever cut Social Security. I will not do that. We should not be reducing any Medicare benefits. That means we have to look at the rest of the budget.

What do we see is President Biden's vision for America?

Let's look at the budget that he has already proposed for the calendar year beginning October 1. Line after line after line does not show the cuts that are necessary that the Republican Party is prepared to make.

The Department of Agriculture is up 14 percent. The Department of Commerce is up 11 percent. The Department of Education is up 13\1/2\ percent. The Department of Energy is up 13\1/2\ percent. The Department of Interior is up over 9 percent. The Department of Labor is up 11 percent. The Department of State, which is wasteful, is up 11 percent. The Department of the Treasury is up 15 percent. The Department of the Treasury, of course, includes a nice equity advisory board. The Environmental Protection Agency is up 19 percent. The National Science Foundation is up 18 percent.

Wherever you look, President Biden has responded to the greatest debt-to-GDP ratio in my lifetime by raising spending 8, 9, 10 percent. The only areas without significant increases are the military, despite President Biden, as far as I can see, doing very little to

try to end the war in Ukraine, and the southern border.

By the way, I want to repeat an anecdote to let the Chair know exactly the mindset of the Biden administration when it comes to Homeland Security.

I was down on that border 2 weeks ago. I have been a fan of drug dogs, which are so necessary, given that the majority of drugs that flow across the border, killing 107,000 Americans, are very handy for the Border Patrol and ICE.

I asked a member of the Border Patrol union down there what he thought of the dogs, figuring he would, of course, want more. He said, no, they don't need more dogs because the last time the Border Patrol got more dogs, under President Biden--they bought 38 new dogs, not to sniff out drugs, not to prevent the killing of over 100,000 Americans a year. What did they do with the new dogs? They got therapy dogs because they heard the Border Patrol was stressed.

Of course, the Border Patrol is stressed. You have so many people coming across the border, and the administration is not acting or making the policy changes necessary to control the border.

What can you say for an administration when, presented with the possibility of new dogs at the border, it feels the priority is therapy dogs? If the Border Patrol agents feel stressed, they have a dog to pet.

That is a true story of the priorities of the Biden administration at the border.

In any event, you can see virtually many agencies with over 10 percent increases, with the major outlier there being defense and homeland security.

We should comment a little bit more on the equity advisory board at Treasury. Not only does the Department of the Treasury have new bureaucrats designed to determine how we are going to treat people--by race, sex, or sexual preference--these new boards or commissions are put throughout the new budget. The function of these boards, I feel, is to divide America.

Rather than being the America that is the meritocracy that our forefathers envisioned in which everybody is being treated equally, the Biden administration, in the name of diversity, is including bureaucrats everywhere to determine who gets hired, who gets promoted, and who gets the relevant grants.

This is something that people are afraid to talk about, and I don't like to talk about it, but do we want to head into being a country-- other countries have gone down this path--in which they say X number of people of this background have to be government employees here or grants have to go there.

It always results in very hard feelings. When you begin to hire people by that, you are not always hiring the best people.

I think Americans have to ask themselves, as we train the new generation of doctors, as we train the new generation of air traffic controllers, as we train the new generation of engineers, which determine the viability of our manufacturing as we compete with companies abroad, are we going to continue to hire the best and allow the best to be promoted? Or are we going to fall back into some sort of Third World country in which we divide our Nation by what other countries would call tribes? They might be religious or whatever.

I will repeat an anecdote I talked about last week, which I don't think the national press corps has picked up on, but they should pick up on.

Not long after President Biden took office, two Democratic Senators, Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono, one from Illinois and one from Hawaii, said that they would not vote for any more of President Biden's appointees if they were White men, unless they were gay.

Now, that is an awkward thing to talk about. It is kind of scary that we had two U.S. Senators taking such a divisive position.

Then, we had a legal journal that did a little bit of research a couple of months ago on the judicial appointments by President Biden. Ninety-seven judicial appointments--the author of this article, I talked to her, was not even for or against it. She really had no opinions on what she found. Of the 97 new judges, only five were White men, and at least two of those five--might be more--were gay.

At least when it comes to judicial appointments, President Biden is following the path of a kind of dislike, almost hatred, for people who used to make up the majority of this country.

I hope more studies are done along those lines, and I hope there is a little bit of outrage because I have a feeling President Biden may be following down the same path when it comes to other appointees and, quite frankly, doing all he can to get the same sort of ratios when it comes to government spending, or trying to do this when it comes to businesses that do business with the government.

We recently heard, as well, that the Biden administration is doing what they can to penalize frugal borrowers. What they want to do is, if you want to borrow money from a bank and you are a good credit risk because you are not a spendthrift, they feel that you ought to have to pay a higher interest rate because they want to subsidize people who spend all their money and don't save money. They feel those people should get a lower interest rate.

I think this diversity has gotten out of control. There is a huge cost related to it. We have heard in the committee that I am on that there are bureaucratic diversity professionals who are making $200,000 a year in our universities. More of these people are going to have to be hired by private business.

It is, first of all, at a time when we have a labor shortage insofar as there are people looking for new jobs. Those jobs should be in manufacturing, construction, agriculture, and even tourism. Wherever you look, we need more people, not more highly paid bureaucrats who, when they look at people, solely view people by race, gender, or sexual preference.

In any event, I hope the press does a better job of going through President Biden's recommendations line by line in the budget and see where there are the types of things we would look to see for a country that is in deep danger by the overall amount of debt we have. Particularly, I hope the press corps homes in on these new bureaucrats as to exactly what they are doing since their job is not to do anything productive but just make sure that everybody in the Federal Government looks at people as a token of race, gender, or sexual preference.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington).

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 41 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Tuesday, May 2, 2023, at 11 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that everybody in this Chamber, as well as everybody around America understands the precarious situation we are in with regard to the debt of this country.

At the end of World War II, the debt was equal to about 100 percent of GDP, but in World War II we knew we were going to stop making tanks, stop making planes, stop making ships, and we were going to lay off a lot of the military folks.

Then the debt dropped from 100 percent GDP down to 20 percent, went up to 40 percent, and since the Great Recession, it shot up to near 100 percent again, near the all-time record.

The Biden administration has shown no ability to say ``no'' to anybody. You look at the budget they have proposed. The Department of the Interior, 9 percent increase; the Department of Commerce, 11 percent increase; the Department of Education, almost a 14 percent increase. Wherever you look, they still have their foot on the gas.

America has got to realize for our children and grandchildren we have got to now finally say ``no'' just a little bit.

Mr. Speaker, we have a lot of committee hearings and a lot of subcommittee hearings here every week, and the press is not able to adequately cover them all.

I highlight the committee hearing in which we examined the current assistance of the United States toward what is left of Afghanistan.

The United States, being the United States, even after we left that country, gives from $4 billion to $5 billion in aid, which should be humanitarian aid to help the Afghan people. In the hearing, we heard from the inspector general, who is somewhat of an auditor of American programs, as to what was becoming of the money.

Our wonderful United Nations, together with the State Department, together with the Department of Defense, together with the USAID, some of these agencies breaking the law, refused to open up their books and tell our auditors what they are doing with the money.

I hope, as we head into appropriations season, we do not forget that when we give money to the United Nations, they ignore our requests to find out what is happening to the money. I hope the American public also remembers what the Departments of Defense and State are doing.

Mr. Speaker, this week Congress returned from 2 weeks working in our districts, and obviously, we heard quite a bit from our constituents back home. I would like to spend a little bit of time addressing issues that I think are on their minds.

The first thing is we had another step toward the--I will call it the de-Christianization or dislike of people of faith.

It was revealed within the last month and a half that a memo was leaked from the Richmond office of the FBI saying that they were concerned that conservative Catholics may be tied up with white supremacists, and we have to monitor them. I think this is one of the most offensive things up there.

Now, first of all, their source for this was the Southern Poverty Law Center. I would ask anybody to Google the Southern Poverty Law Center and see the degree to which it has been used to enrich its founders and is a totally discredited source.

I thought nobody outside of maybe a few journalists would trust it with anything, but apparently the FBI considers the Southern Poverty Law Center a legitimate source.

Even more scary is that they are targeting conservative Catholics. Do you know why they are targeting conservative Catholics?

Because they are sincere believers in their faith, and that scares the type of people who are running the country, or they are afraid they would be an obstacle in the type of country they want us to become.

They do say that this was not up to their exact standards. In other words, what they are apologizing for is they got caught because there was somebody there who was a whistleblower who exposed the way the leadership in the FBI thought.

I think all Americans--and I am not Catholic, but all Americans who take their faith seriously should be very alarmed at this.

There have been many countries around the world which consider Christianity or religion their enemy. I thought one of the major reasons why the United States was different than these other countries is because we are supposed to be a moral and religious Nation.

We are a Nation built for people who take their faith seriously. Now we find out the FBI thinks we ought to put informants in with groups of conservative Catholics to make sure they are not up to something untoward.

I hope all Americans are appropriately concerned with the type of people we have being hired in the FBI. I hope all clergymen realize that if they can go after the conservative Catholics, the next thing they are going to do is go after you.

The idea that they would think we should put informants in with conservative Catholic groups to make sure they are not doing something untoward is truly scary.

Working Toward Peace

My next topic for tonight is a topic in which not a lot of progress has been made in the last 2 weeks, but I continue to believe people in this body or the press corps should be turning up the heat a little bit on our current administration.

I have talked before about the potentially huge problems we could have in Ukraine. We are dealing with a very advanced country in Russia, a country with nuclear submarines, a country with the ability to shut down your electric grid, and no progress is being made toward some sort of peace agreement.

This war has now gone on for over a year. I think there are, sadly, some people in this town who wouldn't mind if it goes on another 2 or 3 years.

The additional cost, as far as monetary cost, is a scandal in its own right, but that is not as horrible as the huge cost in human suffering and death that every war has.

I have talked before about the fact that Ukraine has the second lowest birth rate of any country its size in the world, behind only South Korea.

Russia itself has had a big immigration problem in which people are leaving their country. I have been at the southern border and heard stories of young Russians coming here, so it should be particularly easy to negotiate some sort of deal.

The United States is in a position to negotiate that deal, but certainly other countries that we are friendly with; Israel, Turkiye, or France, could be prodded to work toward some sort of peace deal on humanitarian reasons, if none other.

Nevertheless, we don't hear a lot of talk about that, not a lot of gossip that behind the scenes, people are working toward some sort of agreement.

Given how poorly things went with Russia when they invaded, things didn't wrap up in 3 days like our CIA was guessing, I assume it was a surprise to Russia that things are still going on this long, as well.

I would assume that, therefore, both sides would like to work toward a peace agreement here. But sadly, the United States, who I think should be working for peace--I always kind of remember when the United States negotiated the end of the Russia or Japanese war.

We should be wanting world peace but, instead, you hear no rumors in that regard. I would hope that the press corps and other politicians in this area would be asking a little bit or prodding the relevant people along to make sure that we work toward peace.

Control of the Southern Border

The next topic--I could always argue--and the most important topic for our country is the border. While back in the district, I spent 1 day--haven't been there in about 11 months, but I spent 1 day at

the Arizona-Texas border and continued to see what a complete mess we have down there.

While down there, Congressman Biggs from Arizona and I were given a ride along the Arizona-Mexico border.

The ride had to go for 25 or 30, maybe 35 miles along a very rocky trail. I don't think the car could go more than 15 or 20 miles an hour.

We saw nobody until we got about 15 miles in, in the middle of nowhere, and we came across four or five families totaling 21 people.

We were informed by this group that they were dropped off about a 2- hour walk from the American border and had to walk over this rocky land to get there.

Now, so you know, most people who ask for asylum they go to designated points of entry where they roll out the red carpet--I am only exaggerating a little bit--to deal with people and walk them through.

Why was this group of 21 people--and you have got to understand. There is some question as to the whether the border is under control.

I will assure you: The border is under control. The Mexican drug- controlled gangs have that border under control.

These folks, after having to walk 2 hours through the desert, sat for 2 hours in the middle of nowhere. It was, fortunately, a cool day, about 70 degrees, but it could have been a hundred degrees.

Finally, us two Congressmen came across them. I don't know who would have come across them if we hadn't been taking the tour at the time.

We had to call and waited probably another 30 or 35 minutes for the Border Patrol to show up and take these 21 people back.

Now, why would the Mexican drug gangs want 21 people showing up in the middle of nowhere rather than the designated points of entry?

The reason is all along the southern border, the drug gangs have spotters in the surrounding mountains. When the people come across with drugs, they want to make sure they are not caught.

One way to make sure they are not caught is you send other people across that you know the Border Patrol has to deal with, you know the Border Patrol has to process.

It took a minimum of three--I would guess more than that--big SUVs to take these people to a designated Border Patrol station so that the gangs doing the spotting in the high mountains around us knew that now was the easy time to get through the fentanyl and other drugs that stream across our border. Just a real tragedy.

I think it was very risky to have such young kids going along, in addition to the fact that is 21 more people coming in our country, who I would almost be certain do not need asylum. They are just coming here because our President does not consider the border something worth enforcing.

I want to give you one other anecdote from that trip which tells you the lack of seriousness that this administration has toward this unfettered immigration, as well as the stream of illegal drugs coming across the border.

I have been an advocate in the past for drug-sniffing dogs that can identify the horrible drugs that have killed over 100,000 Americans in the past.

I asked our guide, who was connected with the union down there, so he represented how the average Border Patrol people felt.

He said, no, not more dogs. Why didn't he want more dogs? Because right now, the Biden administration did give them more dogs. They gave them more dogs because they needed therapy dogs for the Border Patrol.

They felt that the stressful situation of being underfunded, of being miles and miles away from the closest Border Patrol agent in case something goes south, that the way to deal with the stress was to hire therapy dogs. They had 38 therapy dogs.

Wouldn't you think if you are going to hire dogs for the southern border, they would be drug-sniffing dogs and try to reduce that 100,000-plus number of people who are dying of illegal drug use every day? No.

The people who currently run our government think, well, the Border Patrol is stressed in the current situation. What should we do about it?

I don't think we should hire more Border Patrol agents. I don't think we should hire more drug-sniffing drugs.

Aha. Let's hire some more therapy dogs for the Border Patrol because they will feel better if, on their way out in the morning, they get to pet the dog.

Unbelievable. I mean, you can't make this stuff up, can you?

We dealt a little bit more with the border in the committee that I am the subcommittee chair earlier today. We remember a couple years ago, under a different President, that the press made a big deal that they felt there were some families being separated.

Those families could be only separated for, I think, under 20 days, and it was only if the parents had broken some law.

Well, today in our committee hearing, we looked at the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border. These are minors crossing without parental guidance, without parents being with them.

In the final full year before the current administration, in a whole year, there were 15,000 unaccompanied minors crossing.

That was the first half of that year, before COVID was really out there, so it was kind of an artificial count; it should have been a higher number, but 15,000.

Last year, we had 128,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the border, young people without any parental guidance coming on their own. That, by itself, should be a major cause of concern.

We had a witness today, Robin Marcos, the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a political appointee, and it was shocking what she didn't know about the young people crossing the border.

Now, I have been at the border before, and I know the Border Patrol will tell you, or other people guarding the border, that there are times they suspect that children are crossing the border and are only providing cover for other people who want to come here.

They say this is my child, but the Border Patrol suspects it is not their child. They do a DNA test and find out it is not their child.

Wouldn't you be giving DNA tests to just about every unaccompanied minor crossing the border to make sure they aren't being trafficked, or when you give them to a sponsor eventually, if they say that sponsor is an aunt or uncle or whatever, it really is?

But when you ask Ms. Marcos how many DNA tests they are giving of the unaccompanied minors, she has no idea. I would think that is about the first thing that you should know.

The second thing that you should wonder about: Is her agency adequately vetting the sponsors that are going to take over these kids who are coming here without their parents?

So we asked her how many sponsors are rejected as unfit to take care of these unaccompanied minors?

She had no idea.

Isn't that kind of surprising?

Wouldn't you think in this era of human trafficking that you would want to know that?

Wouldn't you think in this era in which a lot of these kids cross the border, and according to The New York Times, wind up working in unsafe conditions--I assume in part to pay off the debt that they have to pay for coming into this country--wouldn't you think that we would be doing a thorough investigation of these sponsors?

Apparently not.

We have no idea how many sponsors were considered unfit to come here.

Another thing that surprised me at the border was that if you really wanted to disrupt the drug trade that is killing over 100,000 Americans a year, one of the things you could do very successfully is not only try to track down people coming into the country, you could track down people leaving the country with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. After all, it wouldn't be so profitable for the drug trade if some of that cash was being intercepted.

I guess for a while, a few years ago, they tried to intercept that cash. Whether it is the lack of money or whatever, they are not doing it anymore. I guess I will take that as one more piece of evidence of the lack of seriousness that this administration is taking in trying to disrupt the drug trade coming across the southern border. In any event, we don't see that happening either.

Like I said, the new Director, who has been here since last September, really knows very little about what is going on at the border. You would think she would want to know.

We also know from The New York Times--and she didn't deny this--that there are 87,000 unaccompanied minors, and we don't know where they are.

Now, she could say it is not her job, but when we are taking people away from their parents or when people are leaving their parents and coming to America, wouldn't you think we would express a little bit of interest to see whether they are being taken care of by someone that the child would be safe with?

Apparently not.

Now, some may say, Well, this guy says it is the child's uncle. It could be an uncle that they have never met in their life. They could be making it up that it is an uncle. It could be an uncle who lives with six other guys, and he is taking in a 14-year-old girl to live with them.

Who knows what is going on? There is little concern.

I guess the only thing that drives this administration's Border Patrol policy is getting as many people here as quickly as possible because they want to change America. That is what we are dealing with.

One final thing. I would think that when somebody comes here without parents, you would want to contact the parents and let them know, We have little Mary here. She says she is 12 years old. We want to make sure that you understand that she is here in Tucson, Arizona.

Our Director has no idea how many parents have been contacted. She has no idea how many times both parents are being contacted, or maybe only one parent is connected with that child.

We have no idea. However, if we care even remotely for these kids, I would think we would be in contact with their parents: You said you are sending little Mary here to live with Uncle Joe; is that accurate?

You would try to get ahold of both parents because we like to have both parents play a role in raising their children. Who knows if we ever get ahold of both parents.

I hope, for humanitarian interests, that we have some concern over the lack of care for over 120,000 unaccompanied minors coming into this country every year. I can't help but ask myself, given that some of these kids will probably never see their parents again: Where was the press corps and where were the Democrats, who at one time were all concerned that sometimes when a parent broke the law, they would have to spend 15 or 16 days apart from their child?

That is an important story, and a story I hope people follow up on.

Affirmative Action

Now, I will deal with one of the problems the Biden administration thinks is of great concern. And I don't think it should be a major concern, but they keep pushing it and pushing it down upon us, and that is: what to do about the supposed huge amount of racism in the country?

We know that when Joe Biden was sworn in--I attended his inaugural speech--I believe if there was one theme, it was racism. He talked about racism four times. He talked about white supremacy first.

He really thought we had a big racist problem in America today. And he followed up on it in this year's state of the Union address, another time Joe Biden couldn't resist taking a shot at our law enforcement and saying how racist they were.

This, despite the fact that when they do studies of law enforcement when adjusted to criminal behavior, there is no difference of anything going the other way, as far as the chance that race will be a factor in people who die.

In any event, Joe Biden has done two things that I think require us to look at the so-called racial element as Joe Biden's heavy-handed government weighs in.

In his budget, he begins with new diversity, equity, and inclusion teams in all government agencies. That is interesting. So we have bureaucrats--I am sure bureaucrats will be involved--whose job it is apparently to poke around and educate people that they should view themselves not as individuals but view themselves racially.

One of the things I did when I was on break--I am not quite through with the book--is to take advantage of a gem that you might not be familiar with by the incisive Thomas Sowell, ``Affirmative Action Around the World.''

I don't think a lot of people in this body know that this idea of affirmative action, recognizing people by race, promoting them by race, hiring by race, is not unique to the United States. It has happened in various other countries around the world, and I think we ought to see what traits we have in common as soon as you go down the path of affirmative action.

I first dealt with this problem when I was in the State legislature many years before. Of course, with affirmative action and racial preferences and identifying people by race is not something unique to the government. To a certain extent with the government weighing in, it has become very common at universities, very common in big business.

We were in a hearing a couple of weeks ago and it was revealed that in college universities these racial police are being hired for as much as $200,000 a year. It drives me up a wall given that sometimes we talk about student loan debt. The fact that the student loan debt is going to pay for these race hustlers, I think, is entirely inappropriate.

I also believe there are certain majors we need more of in this country. We need more nurses. We need more engineers. It drives me up a wall when we have a shortage of nursing professors or engineering professors and hearing that universities think it is more important to hire the equity police.

In any event, what lessons can we learn from Thomas Sowell?

When going down this path and identifying people by race, what things happen in common when they tried this in countries around the world?

Well, the first thing is, all around the world when they have affirmative action, it usually starts out with a lie that this race preference stuff will happen for a short period of time and then will disappear, maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years.

This country began to enforce affirmative action in earnest in 1965. So the current race preference-type stuff is about 57 years old, well longer than originally thought.

Secondly, around the world, once you go down this path, you keep adding more people to the mix. And I think at the time when Lyndon Johnson really kicked off affirmative action in earnest in 1965 it was primarily for Black Americans, with an implication that slavery might have been part of it, that sort of thing.

Since then, we have added Hispanics--new word. It is kind of an interesting thing because for the purpose of affirmative action, if your ancestors came from Spain and spent a couple of generations in Costa Rica, you are considered a minority. If your ancestors came from Spain and came straight to the United States, you are considered European, which shows the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

This is common around the world. The idea of we keep adding--we added women to the mix, so we need to have affirmative action there as well.

Secondly, people begin to change their identity as soon as affirmative action kicks in. A lot of people don't realize that if you are one-quarter, say, Latin, or one-eighth Asian, you can be considered eligible for affirmative action. So they follow this stuff. Somebody who maybe before affirmative action on the census form said I am White, but because they are a quarter Cuban--which is European anyway--you all of a sudden can relabel yourself a minority.

Now, we obviously had a U.S. Senator here a few years ago, Elizabeth Warren, an extreme example of that. She was whatever, 1/64th or 1/128th American Indian, Native American, and she therefore changed her identity and miraculously said, I am a Native American; I should get preferences.

I think that is inappropriate, but that is what the current system apparently allows, and this is common. Apparently, when affirmative action is implemented in other countries, people change their identity.

The next thing that happens is, even though I think affirmative action is supposed to benefit the least fortunate of people of certain groups, it uniformly winds up benefiting the most fortunate of those groups.

In other words, if you have preferences in government contracting, it benefits the wealthy businessman. It doesn't benefit the person more at the bottom of the heap. But this is common around the world. The benefits of the people who implement affirmative action are usually the people who are the most well-off in the first place.

I do believe that--and maybe the least bad thing is it leads to resentment--in countries that previously everybody was getting along, all of a sudden bifurcate as people fight for more and more of their group. They didn't think they were part of a group before, but all of a sudden, they are part of a group.

I think everybody should read about what happened in Sri Lanka, a country that had two primary ethnic groups. They got along for apparently centuries very well on the small island of Sri Lanka, but once affirmative action kicked in, the resentment kicked in. They wound up having a civil war and over 20,000 people died. This was on an island and before they had affirmative action everybody was getting along just fine.

I would also point out that means in some cases, you almost, by definition, have to be promoting people because it is very important we have the best person there--doctors, air traffic controllers, engineers. Maybe it doesn't matter a lot the quality of professor we have in universities, but it certainly matters in these other occupations. And if we don't have the best people there, it can result in deaths.

Now, there is one thing I wish the press would follow up on a little bit here. About 2 years ago, when Joe Biden first took office, Senators Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono said that we shouldn't have any more White guys appointed by the Biden administration.

I think that was an inflammatory thing to say. They haven't followed up on it, but recently, there was an article in a legal journal pointing out--not saying it is good or bad--we had 97 new judges so far in the first 2 years of the Biden administration, only five were White guys, and at least two were gay.

Well, it sounds like this strict adherence to group identity is playing a big role in who President Biden is appointing. And I am not sure the American public knows the degree to which that is going on, but it is something that should be looked into. It is something that maybe we should look at all appointments rather than just judicial appointments. I think it is something that a shocking number of people don't know about, and it is something we should follow up on.

So there are some of the issues that were discussed back in my district when I was there. None of these issues, I think, have received the appropriate amount of attention that it should be given by our press corps, and hopefully we will hear more about all of these issues in the press in the weeks and months to come.

Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, as we wrap up this week in Congress, I would like to address some issues that I feel have not been discussed as much as they should be in the Chamber this week, and I look forward to the issues being highlighted when we return from our break 10 days from now.

First of all, I would like to discuss the very concerning memos coming out of the Richmond office of the FBI. The FBI has kind of embarrassed us over the last year, in that there are areas in which I would consider more political in nature, but the FBI, perhaps like their counterparts in China or Russia, seem to go after people for what they think more than what they do.

We found out in the last month that they have decided to equate traditional Catholics with groups that ought to be monitored so that they don't do anything too untoward.

In their memo, they implied that perhaps traditional Catholics, without evidence that I know, may be opposed to affirmative action, like the majority of Americans. They may not be all on board with the LGBTQ agenda. They may not be thrilled with President Biden's immigration policy. Horror of horrors, they might like to attend a service with Latin Mass.

I am not Catholic personally, but I have friends who I think would consider themselves conservative Catholics. The idea that they would consider conservative Catholics in line with being an enemy of the state is incredibly scary. I know traditional Catholics will not do very well in communist China today, and that is perhaps not surprising. That is one of the reasons why we worry about what goes on in China. It is very scary that this administration would be targeting conservative Catholics for additional monitoring, and it is something that we should be very mindful of and something we should insist on.

They have said that they are revoking the memo, which is nice. But when you just say that we are getting rid of the memo because it doesn't meet our exacting standards, it implies that you are getting rid of the memo because it is true and you feel bad that your true feelings about conservative Catholics have now been made public.

I have not seen any press release from the FBI, and I hope to see it, in which people are removed from the FBI, saying we don't want you there anymore. If you view your job as not one in which we are going to track down people who are counterfeiting or tracking down people who are selling fentanyl in the State but instead are going to spend your resources monitoring conservative Catholics, that is of great concern.

Like I said, I personally am not Catholic, but I will tell you, after seeing that memo from the FBI, if I was a member from an Assembly of God church, a Wisconsin Lutheran Synod church, most Baptist churches, evangelical churches, or Orthodox Jewish, I would be scared of where our country is going.

I insist that the FBI open up their files and tell us exactly who drafted these repugnant memos and whose idea it was out of Washington, out of Richmond, who knows, that the FBI should be involved in targeting conservative Catholics.

I hope the rest of the people in this body, including my leadership team, talks about it every day until we get back or until we get a better explanation from the FBI of exactly what was going on and who, in particular, were the employees of the FBI who thought it was a good idea to monitor conservative Catholics, of which apparently one piece of evidence is attending Latin mass.

Now, I think we should also have a look at a story that began about 2 years ago. We can kind of follow it along and see the degree to which President Biden's administration is following the demands made of them about 2 years ago.

About 2 years ago, when the Senate was 50/50, with a Democrat Vice President, U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono said that they were tired of confirming any White men appointed by President Biden. That is kind of a scary thing. Actually, they said it would be okay to confirm White men if they were gay.

After 2 years were up, a legal journal did a study and found out that 2 years into the Biden administration, only 5 out of 97 judges were White men. We were able to determine that 1 of the 5 is gay. We don't know about the others.

I think that is a little bit scary. I think if you are going to take the legal community collectively--remembering that you don't really appoint people to the Federal judiciary when they are 26 years old--so when we look at the community of people age 35 and up and say, we are going to try to find the best judges we can, I would think more than 5 out of 97 judges would be White men who are not gay. But that is what we have. Actually probably less than 5. It is 4 or 3 or whatever.

I think it is something for the media to pick up on and ask some more questions here.

Does the Biden administration really feel that only 5 of 97 judicial openings would be best filled with a White man?

I would be asking questions, since apparently Senator Duckworth and Senator Hirono felt it was important to give preference to gay men over straight men. I would ask how many of the few White men appointed are gay and how many are straight. I think that is something that if the media was on the ball, they would be asking that question.

We do know that there are strong elements on the left that don't like traditional families. We know the close ties between the Democrat Party and Black Lives Matter and how early on Black Lives Matter said they don't like western prescribed traditional families. I always objected to the way Black Lives Matter says that, because I think we have traditional families with a mom and dad at home through all sorts of different backgrounds, not just in Western Europe. But they, themselves, describe it as western prescribed traditional families.

I hope that beyond this rather obscure legal journal, we would have a little more investigation by the press and perhaps investigation by some of the relevant committees.

Are we continuing down the path of apparently actively discriminating against White heterosexual men?

I mean, that is clearly what these two Senators wanted. I think it is very concerning that they are getting exactly what they wanted. It is like the Biden administration is just following their tune.

Hopefully, we will see more articles about this in the paper over the next couple weeks. If I do not get what I want here, hopefully Republican leadership will weigh in and force the Biden administration to comment on this issue and the backgrounds of some of their appointees.

Given the obsession, or their apparent view of the world, the Biden administration does view people as just representative of where their ancestors lived 200 years ago.

I don't view it that way. I think most Americans view people as individuals. If you ask what do you think about John or what do you think about Mary or what do you think about Peter? You talk about their views on things. Maybe you talk about their upbringing or where they grew up, but you don't say the most important thing about that person is whether their ancestors are from Spain or England or India or wherever.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration basically seems to throw away the rest of the resume and focus primarily on ethnic background. That is unfortunate.

One way we can see it is in their proposed budget. They seem to put diversity police in all of their different agencies. It is something that is growing more and more in our universities, as well.

Some of these diversity police are making $200,000 a year, which is something that scares me in its own right. If you are going to be making $200,000 a year, a lot of people will say anything. If your $200,000-a-year job depends on the rather warped idea that we should hire, fire, or promote people based on where their great, great grandparents are from, these people are going to be running around the country telling businesses, telling students, that when you meet somebody, the most important thing is their ethnic background. We have seen the result of having these people running around the university and the obsession with this view of the world.

We did have a hearing this week looking at universities, and we will talk about universities again in a second. But there are a lot of universities, who complain that tuition is too high, who purport to care about the high student loan debt out there, who have no problem hiring people for $150,000 or $200,000 a year to preach to children that they ought to walk around with a chip on their shoulder because of their background, despite the fact that clearly people are coming from all around the world and succeeding in America.

It is kind of a defeatist thing to tell people that they are going to be discriminated against based on ethnic background. I have talked before about people from all around the world showing up at a swearing in ceremony where people become American and looking at all the people who are hitting the ground running from all around the globe.

I always talk about, in my own district we have a huge Hmong population. I look at how successful they are, how hardworking, and how they are living the American Dream. Then you hear about these people making $200,000 at our university campuses to tell people they ought to walk around with a chip on their shoulder and saying what a horrible country America is.

In any event, I hope all alumni around the country pay attention to what is going on in their alma maters and make sure they are not wasting the students' precious tuition dollars on hiring these people.

Now, we have seen the result of these people recently, or this intolerance that they promote, in two separate universities. We are all familiar with what happened at Stanford University. A judge showed up there carrying ideas that if not a majority, close to a majority of Americans hold. They weren't big on transgender people going into the other persons' bathroom and what have you.

They whipped up almost a physical confrontation at Stanford, which, when I get online, is supposed to be the second-best law school in the country, at least according to somebody. These potential lawyers, if they come from Stanford, they are going to wind up becoming Federal judges, very important jobs. They are shouting down people with views on transgender people different than the population as a whole. I don't know how these people are going to get back to home base and become productive lawyers, much less productive judges or productive bureaucrats in the future.

We did have a hearing on this the other day, but I think we should have more hearings, specifically about what is going on with Stanford.

We found similar intolerance of First Amendment free speech at Georgetown, another supposedly good law school. We had a student step forward, William Spruance, and talk about what happened to him when he questioned the guidelines with regard to masks. If you get on the internet, there are all sorts of people who will say different sort of things about masks, different things about vaccines. But apparently, because he stepped outside the orthodoxy at Georgetown Law School, he was threatened and he had to undergo a psychological evaluation.

Doesn't that sound like something from the Soviet Union?

If you disagree with the state, you have to see a psychiatrist because you must be mentally ill if you don't understand what a great guy Joseph Stalin is.

Sounds like that is what we have going on here at Georgetown; send somebody for a psychiatric evaluation if he doesn't agree with the conventional view on how to deal with COVID.

I hope that there is widespread outrage. We like to think people who graduate from college are taught to be open-minded and look at different views on things. But instead, apparently coming out of Georgetown, you are taught everybody must fall in line with the state or fall in line with the leadership of the law school, and if you don't, we will weigh in. Despite the fact that you may have spent 2 or 3 years of money and time going to the law school, we are going to do what we can to make sure you don't become a member of the bar association and you won't be able to use that degree. Because far more important than your grades or what you know is going on in school is that you know that once you become a lawyer, you wind up being obedient to the state.

It should be of great concern to the bar association across the board. I think the American Bar Association ought to look at what is going on both in Stanford and Georgetown, which--I think, maybe because of what they were 20 or 30 years ago--still have a good reputation. I am sure they will still sucker some kids into going there.

But what is going on with the intolerance at both of these law schools is something that should be looked at, and I hope perhaps individual bar associations around the country also want to monitor this, as to what we can make of the intolerance in both of these law schools.

My final comment as far as what is going on this week is something I have

talked about in the past and want to talk about one more time. That is what is going on in Ukraine.

My major concern with the Biden administration is I don't think they are trying to end this war. I mean, we are where we are, but the longer the war goes on, the closer the alliance between Russia and China goes. In the relatively recent background, we had a thousand McDonald's in Russia. I know people in my personal life who had jobs in Russia. We had Russians coming here doing jobs on our farms. The college-aged kids from Russia would come here with special visas working in the vacation industry.

Obviously, right now relationships are falling. With regard to China, over time, relationships are getting worse and worse, which is a dangerous thing. We have had peace with China for well over 60 years. I don't know why we can't do another 60 years.

President Biden is not making, I believe, an effort to wrap up this war. It shouldn't be that difficult. Ukraine has the second lowest birth rate of any country in the world. If there is any country that doesn't want to lose some of its young people it ought to be Ukraine.

Nobody can tell me that Vladimir Putin thought that when he entered Ukraine the war would be going on this long. It is another country with a low birth rate. It is a country that is losing people as they immigrate to other countries.

Both Ukraine and Russia should have motive to end this war, and eventually it will end. The sooner it will end, the better. I am afraid the Biden administration seems satisfied to just sit there, let things go on, every day more young Russians and more young Ukrainians die. Not only is that a tragedy in its own right, but every day that this war goes on, it is going to be that much harder to reach peace.

I strongly wish that President Biden would use this interlude before we try to put more billions of dollars on Ukraine that he would--if the United States can't do it, and I can understand why we can't broker peace because we don't look like we are neutral in this fight--beg the Turks or the Israelis or the French or somebody who has more standing to step in and see if we cannot find an end to this war before it becomes much more catastrophic; before maybe the United States becomes involved; before Russia decides to shoot something at Western Europe, or use its submarines off of American shores.

I strongly hope that the press, when they get a chance to interview President Biden, ask him: What are you doing or do you feel it would be good for this war to end, or are you just going to throw up your hands and pretend you are an innocent bystander? If the war goes on another 4 or 5 years, it is all fine by President Biden.

Those were four issues that I don't think we paid enough attention to during the course of the week.

I hope the press corps gives them some attention during the next week when we are back in our districts, and I hope our leadership brings more attention to them when we return from our districts in 11 days from now.

Madam Speaker, we will go for one more topic right now while my good friend returns from his office.

There is an effort made right now in America with regard to school lunches to shift from milk to sugary drinks. This is something else we don't pay a lot of attention to, but a lot of children get a lot of their food from school lunch.

I would be hard-pressed to find anybody who would say that we are better having kids drink sugary, gooey drinks than wholesome milk. Milk has been around since the Bible, right? Israel, the land of milk and honey.

Apparently, there is an anti-milk feeling out there. I do know that gooey, sugary drinks are sold by big corporations that are very active in all segments here in Washington. I hope that this is something else the press will pick up on.

Just because little children can't vote doesn't mean that this ought to be a banner headline, at least once a month, as to whether the next generation of children is raised on gooey, sugary drinks or wholesome 100 percent milk, which has been such a big part of the diet of Americans since our founding.

We hope that our bureaucracy holds the line and does good research into the good and the bad of sugary drinks, as well as the nutritious value of 1 percent whole milk.

Again, if any members of the press or the Chair want to look into this, I think it will be very important. We have spiraling out of control healthcare costs in this country. The health of the next generation is largely going to be determined--or to a large degree be determined--by what is going on with the youngest children.

We are at a precarious time in our country in which the drug companies want to prescribe en masse anti-obesity drugs to little children. I heard this week that parents are being told that sometimes their children, as young as 8 or 9, are going to begin to be prescribed anti-obesity drugs.

I can understand why that is a gold mine for the drug companies. We are such an over-drugged country already, and if they can make our young people a little more pudgy--the idea that they would have to take anti-obesity drugs for the next 70 years of their life--the eyes of some of these pharmaceutical executives must just brighten up at the idea that that has become the norm of America.

I suggest that we step back for a second, analyze what is healthier and what is less likely to make you obese, and encourage healthy foods. I think we are also talking here with regard to the WIC program. I hope we weigh in both on the WIC and the food stamps and the school lunch programs, all with more nutritious foods.

If we get back more of the nutritious foods that the average American was eating 60 years ago, we wouldn't have to worry about giving all the young children anti-obesity drugs because people of my generation lived their whole life without them.

I can understand it might be more profitable for some people, they have a lot of obese kids. We don't need that. It is bad for them. I hope the press really monitors what is going on as we try to step away from whole milk and other, what I will call, natural foods, instead of pushing their way toward sugary, processed food. I think that is one of the reasons why America's children right now are so much heavier than they were when I was a child. We look forward to that situation.

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

Madam Speaker, we have many problems today in higher education, one of which is the excessive kind of anti-God, liberal approach, leftwing approach, I will say, of the faculty in general, which, of course, flops over to the students. Some of it should be addressed, and we should try to get back to some sort of balance in higher education.

America is very divided today: about 50 percent more conservative and about 50 percent more leftwing, more progressive. Hypothetically, the faculty at America's colleges and universities ought to reflect that.

Instead, a recent trend is going to push things in the exact opposite direction, and that is the movement of colleges and universities, including the colleges and universities with the highest reputations in the country, to get rid of standardized tests.

What result will getting rid of standardized tests have on the type of people who are admitted to all of our colleges and universities, but particularly our elite colleges and universities? Right now, a standardized test is something you either do well on or don't. A lot of people are nervous about standardized tests, but in any event, some determination has to be made on how some people get into college and some people don't.

As we get rid of standardized tests, we are going to put more weight on things like an essay students submit to try to get into college. We are going to put more weight on extracurriculars or nonprofits that students work for. What effect is that going to have on the type of students who are admitted?

Given that these are subjective determinations, we know very well the professors or other people on the admissions committees will look at where you are doing your extracurriculars. Are you active in an evangelical church? Are you active in a conservative political party? Or are you active in more left-leaning nonprofit organizations?

They will look at your essay, which is purely a subjective determination. The danger is that these leftwing faculty members will say: Oh, this person doesn't look like he will fit in here. This person is a conservative. This person is a Christian.

As a result, this ought to be of great alarm to everyone. Not to mention, the scores you get on these tests do a good job of predicting how well you will do in school. As a result, it is going to lower the quality of students.

Already you hear from employers that college graduates are not as qualified, that their work ethic isn't as good as new employees they had 20 years ago. What will be the effect of removing these standards?

Furthermore, it is going to have a negative impact, I think, on people who come from backgrounds without as much money. You only have so much time before you go to college to put together your resume. If you need more money, if you have to work, say, 30 hours a week at the local McDonald's, you don't have time to put together the long resume that looks so good at college admissions.

Today or in the past, with standardized tests, the kid who has to work 30 hours a week at McDonald's and doesn't have time for a lot of do-gooder causes can do a great job on his standardized test and still get in. This penalizes the person who has to do a lot of work on the outside and rewards the student who doesn't have to make any money on the side in high school.

This is certainly not something that we want, but it will unquestionably be the result of getting rid of standardized tests.

It will also increase the importance of, perhaps, high school grade points. One more time, a grade point is, to a certain extent, subjective, as well. We hear already in high school, but all the time in college--we will come back to that in a second. Already in high school, students have to lie a little bit on the essay because the teachers are very liberal.

I had a teacher who taught at a high school in Wisconsin, a very sizable high school, and she said she was the only Republican in the whole faculty of that high school. What does that say about your grade point coming out of high school? I don't know if I believe her--it was a very large high school--but she felt she was the only one.

In other words, what you are going to wind up with, once these subjective determinations are made, is you are going to have the same liberal bias that happens once you get into college.

I talked to an English professor at the University of Wisconsin.

In any event, I strongly encourage this institution--

Mr. Speaker, I would like to call attention to a disturbing trend that is going on in our colleges and universities.

We all know--or at least anybody on this side of the aisle--from talking to college students, they feel there are certain things they just can't say. It is going to cost them a grade. When you are dealing with young professors, it is going to cost them tenure, and that is the intolerance for conservative ideas or religious ideas in America's universities.

Lately, we have had universities say they are not going to deal with standardized tests anymore, the SAT, that sort of thing. It is another way--and people have to remember this. It is fun not to take a test, but it is another way to go after people who are at all conservative.

Right now, you can be as religious as you want, you can be as Republican as you want, you can have a lifestyle that includes, for example, hunting, and if you get a good SAT score, they have got to let you in even though they don't want to, or they will let you in even though they don't want to.

As we get rid of SAT scores, it opens things more to subjective determinations, and the liberals who run our universities are going to use those subjective determinations to keep our conservatives out of the important universities in this country.

Mr. Chair, it is interesting what we hear from the other side of the aisle. I will have to depart from my prepared text to comment on what we are hearing.

I always come back to what was once put on the Black Lives Matter website, that they wanted to get rid of the Western-prescribed nuclear family.

There is this hostility to traditional values that is seeping into the public schools today. We recently read a poll showing that over 60 percent of people in the baby boom generation are proud to be American, whereas people under 25 are no longer proud to be American.

Where do they get this? They get this because some members of the schools--too many; and you can hear it from that side of the aisle--are obsessed with racism. This in such an open country. People are coming here from all over the world. You would have to be blind to think that racism is a huge problem here.

Their obsession over racism, the obsession over LGBTQ, their hostility to guns are all things that are pounding, pounding, pounding out of that side of the aisle, and we don't like our kids having to pick up on that.

When parents do show up, we have now found out that the FBI may become involved. They are so scared to death of parents sticking their noses into their own children's business.

Our country was made for a moral and religious people. Instead, the other side wants us to become a progressive group of people, whatever progressive stands for. I would have to say it is hostility to religion and an ever-growing government where the government is more and more responsible for everything in society.

Particularly in an age in which elected officials apparently side with the FBI getting involved with parents who stick their noses in their children's lives, it is vital that we pass a bill today clarifying that parents do have the right to get involved in their children's education, and it doesn't matter what the President orders or allows his FBI to do.

Mr. Speaker, GPS Education Partners (GPSEd) is a nonprofit organization that carries out innovative advancements in the development and work readiness of our next-generation workforce. The program has served Wisconsinites for 23 years, graduating over 1,100 students, 35 percent of which have either a cognitive or physical disability. The program prides itself on achieving a 97 percent graduation rate with students obtaining accolades such as industry- recognized certifications to students' pursuing full-time or part-time post-secondary education paths.

GPSEd partners with 200 students each school year serving both first- year juniors and second-year seniors. The program discovered that high school students found difficulty in connecting their education to an attainable career. As the gap for skilled workers continues to expand, GPSEd encourages the pursuance of technical careers within various industries. Bridging efforts between educators, communities, and businesses fuses the change that GPSEd strives for.

Through the utilization of an accelerated program, GPSEd is able to properly prepare students for technical careers in a more efficient and effective manner compared to traditional pathways. Each student is given a specialized, unique solution that enables them to become their own emergent leaders at the conclusion of the program. Effective employer engagement practices have assisted in the expansion of employer involvement within GSPEd's programs. Due to a lack of exposure and quality training, nearly 94 percent of students are uninterested in skilled trades. However, 85 percent of the students enrolled in GSPEd pursue technical careers following their exposure to work based learning.

It is encouraging to see organizations such as GSPEd educating our youth to the ample amount of opportunities the career and technical field can provide. Too often, students find themselves pressured into seeking four-year college degrees. It is time to reaffirm students that job training programs, apprenticeships, and career and technical education are fields that are at a high demand with employers eager to fill positions. I want to extend my gratitude to GSPEd for carrying out this important mission.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to discuss three issues. Some have gotten attention, and some have not this week, but all of them are important, and I would say none of them got the attention they deserve.

The first issue to talk about is the size of our Federal debt.

Now, I know, ever since I was a child, people have talked about deficit spending and the amount of the Federal debt that someday the children or grandchildren will have to pay off.

I think it is important to look, though, that this time things really are different. The only time the Federal debt ever got to the total gross national product in this country--which is one way to compare debt at different times in our country's history--was when it actually hit 100 percent at the end of World War II. That is not surprising.

If you know people who lived during World War II, Mr. Speaker, the entire economy was devoted to munitions, a huge percent of our population was in the armed services, and we hit 100 percent.

However--unlike now--when the war ended, it was easy to reduce Federal spending. Hundreds of thousands of troops were, in essence, laid off and sent back to work in the private sector, we stopped building the ships, planes, and tanks we needed during the war, and as a result, over the next 30 years, the amount of the Federal debt dropped from 100 percent of GDP down to around 30 percent. It bounced back and forth around that level, maybe 40 percent, all the way to about 1995.

Even then that was too big, and people commented at the time, but the debt was about 30 to 45 percent of GDP.

Then, beginning with around 2010, things began to shoot up, and in COVID they shot up even more. We are now--or within a couple years will be--where we were at the end of World War II. But there are no tank factories or ship factories to shut down, and we can't lay off hundreds of thousands of troops.

Indeed, any Congressman knows that basically our day is spent attending meetings in our offices when we are here with various groups asking for spending increases and saying that they absolutely need them.

So this time, we really are in a crisis.

Not only are we in a situation in which we are approaching 100 percent of our debt equaling 100 percent of GDP, but because interest rates are going up and the huge increase in debt the last 2 years, the amount we are paying in interest is skyrocketing.

We cannot reduce the interest. If we had interest on our debt--which we anticipate will go up in the next year from $640 billion a year to $740 billion a year--that is a $100 billion spending increase that we have no control over.

As the debt continues to go up and as the Federal Reserve feels--and I was in a committee hearing yesterday both the Republican witnesses and Democrat witnesses felt given what inflation was going on, as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates, the amount of interest that we have to pay every year goes up.

Think about that, Mr. Speaker. We have got about a $100 billion increase in the difference between what we are going to pay in interest in 2023 and 2024 before we look at anything else.

So the fact that this budget proposal contains more spending is, by itself, deeply concerning. It shows that the basic numbers have not gotten through the heads of the Biden administration, or maybe they feel that by the time we finally hit the wall and the value of the dollar will have a hard time paying off our debt, that he will be in a retirement home and other people will have to deal with it.

But the American public should know that for the first time since World War II, we are approaching having the total debt equal to 100 percent of our GDP--a complete crisis.

The next thing to look at is if we must spend more, then where does President Biden feel it has to be spent?

One place it is not going to be spent, one place that we actually have a reduction here, is homeland security. The biggest crisis we have in this country is people streaming across our southern border. But we can find over a 10 percent increase for the Department of Commerce, we can find almost a 10 percent increase for the Department of the Interior, an 11 percent increase for the Department of Labor, and a 19 percent increase for the Environmental Protection Agency, but when it comes down to the one thing that you turn on the TV every night and say, wow, we have to spend more money there, on the Department of Homeland Security there is a 1 percent reduction.

This is where our President is.

We are going to continue to have increased spending across the board--some of which is necessary--but the one place we don't have an increase is homeland security. That and transportation. I take that to be because we just had the huge infrastructure bill and, therefore, we don't need an increase in the spending on transportation.

The other thing I would like to point out, as you dig deeper into the budget, with regard to any agency you look at, Mr. Speaker, you have more money for bureaucrats devoted to dividing America by race: We have to do more to favor this race or that race or this gender or that gender.

That is so offensive and un-American. I am going to address it a lot more in a few minutes. But it is interesting that at the time we are getting the highest amount of debt as a percentage of GDP in my lifetime, the President responds by saying that the one area that we absolutely have to have more in is hiring bureaucrats whose job depends on telling America we have a racist problem and we have to identify people by race. That is a big problem.

So I encourage the American public to pay attention to the budget, pay attention to the fact that we are hitting in our lifetimes the greatest debt ever, and pay attention to the fact that even before we argue and quibble about how much the Department of Education should go up or down or how much we should spend more or less on defense, we are going to have a $100 billion increase in the amount of interest we pay next year.

The next area to look at--and I mentioned that the Biden administration actually feels we can reduce the total amount we are spending on homeland security--is I wish the press would spend more time seeing what is happening with the children at our southern border.

There was, in retrospect, a relatively small number of children who had to be separated from their parents who had

broken the law, and by court order those children were returned to their parents in either 15 or 30 days. It was a relatively small number.

Now you look, Mr. Speaker, and it varies from month to month, but it is not unusual to have 8,000 to 10,000 unaccompanied children enter this country every month.

Where are all of these people who, a few years ago, were alarmed that some young people would have to spend 2 weeks without their parents, and now we have 8,000 to 10,000 kids a month entering America?

We don't spin them back around and say: Go back to your parents where they belong.

Instead, we look at an address that perhaps is attached to their shirt that says 123 Elm Street, Portland, Oregon, and the Border Patrol or the agencies, like Catholic Social Services, find some way to deliver that child where it says on the address.

Does anybody feel that is outlandish?

I know the individual Border Patrol agencies think how horrible that is.

We do know that sometimes when children come with people who they believe are their parents, the Border Patrol gets suspicious and does DNA tests. It is not unusual to find that people try to bring children across and say that they are their children, you do a DNA test, and you find out they are not. So we already realize there are sketchy things going on down there.

What becomes of these children whom their parents send across the southern border?

Some of them have to go to work. The New York Times had an interesting article about that recently. When parents send their children to work then the children perhaps are supposed to send money back to Central America and to South America.

We know that people who are crossing the southern border--depending upon where they are from--the drug gangs are taking advantage of the open border policy by President Biden, and the drug kings are demanding payment, perhaps payment coming back from America. Is it right that a young child without their parents gets shipped somewhere in America and has to work in some factory, and some of the money is sent to the drug cartels, other money is sent back home to the parents? Is that good? Is that what America wants to encourage? America is responsible for allowing this system to continue. And what do the kids do?

At least The New York Times says they work in factories--maybe there can be safer factories--but they work in factories. How many are working, for example, in the sex trade? Who knows? This is something the press ought to be paying more attention to. I intend to have a hearing on this topic sometime within the next 6 weeks, and hopefully we can find out a little bit more about what happens to these individual kids.

If the people, including the media, who is so alarmed that the kids of parents who have broken the law had to spend a couple weeks apart from their parents, if this media would wake up a little bit, they would find a lot more kids are being permanently separated from their parents or at least separated from them for years and years at the border. If the press would wake up, they would be able to apply the pressure that we need to get these children back to their parents.

I will give another example along the lines of keeping families together. I know that there are devotees of Black Lives Matter who don't believe in the traditional family, they would rather have families without a dad at home, but I still believe that is best. What happens when a child shows up at the southern border with only one parent?

Now, we know in the United States in our court system if the parents are separated, frequently there are court orders. Both mom and dad have to stay relatively close to the child. We don't let one parent grab the child without the other parent signing off and run to a different part of the country.

Nevertheless, the Border Patrol is worried--and they are on the ground--they are worried when they see children show up with one parent and not the other parent. Has anybody adjudicated this? Have any social workers determined this is okay or is it just one parent who doesn't care about the other parent bringing their children here? The United States apparently takes no interest as families are being torn apart.

Again, this is something that my subcommittee will look at, but it shouldn't take that long. It should be the comatose American press corps who right now is paying attention and saying where is the legal documentation that allows you to show up with your parents and the other parent be gone? This desire to get rid of the nuclear family or deprive children from south of the border of their mom or dad is offensive, and the United States is part of it.

I hope that the Biden administration does something about it, and I hope when we ever get around to an immigration bill or that a new President gets in office that the policy is such that we are not going to take one child unless we know where both parents are.

Now, the third issue is an issue that is so dear to President Biden's administration. When he was sworn in as President--I actually attended his inaugural speech, being the bipartisan guy that I am--President Biden addressed racism four times and white supremacy once. I think it is unusual when we obsess over racism in this country. We are obviously about the least racist country that existed, right? People come here from all around the world. People back in the eastern hemisphere fight Tribe against Tribe in Africa. They fight country against country in Europe. Different states or different religions fight and kill each other in India, but they all come here to America, and they get along just fine.

Nevertheless, Joe Biden is obsessed with the idea that we have a horrible racist country, and we have to weigh in and perhaps give preferences to people one way or the other. So we get the drum beat of racism, racism, racism. We heard it again in his State of the Union speech. In his State of the Union speech, Joe Biden couldn't resist but go after the police in this country and say that Black parents have to tell their children to look out for the horrible police. Even the studies that are now years old show that when adjusted for criminal behavior, adjusted for arrest, there is no greater danger of Black people in the population as a whole in confrontation with police, but Joe Biden, I can only assume because he wants to tear apart America, keeps getting up on the platform saying we have got this racist problem, we have got to look out for the police. It is not true. What is the result of this mindset that we have this horrible racial problem and we have to do something about it?

Joe Biden obviously wants this narrative to continue. The first thing he wants to do is hire a bunch of bureaucrats--more certainly in his proposed budget--hire bureaucrats throughout the Federal agencies to deal with the supposed racial problem and dive in looking for the people you hire, the people you deal with. Let's look at it through the racial prism.

As it so happens--and I think this should be more publicized--America has had a policy of affirmative action since 1965 in this country. That is when President Lyndon Johnson, I think in part in response to the Jim Crow era which had just ended in the south, began a policy of affirmative action. Today, every American business with at least 100 employees or any business with at least 50 employees that does $50,000 worth of contracting with the government is affected by the affirmative action order that was begun by Lyndon Johnson over 50 years ago.

Obviously, the purpose of affirmative action is to put the thumb on the scale when a company does hiring, when they do promoting, when they do firing. The stated purpose of this massive bureaucracy is to give what was a practical matter amongst the preferences to Americans who basically descend from anywhere around the world other than northern Africa and Europe. I should point out recently President Biden wanted to--or gave notice--that he wants at least people to fill out forms differently. Right now you are considered, I guess, what we will refer to as ``white'' if you are from north Africa, but President Biden wants to take people from Egypt and Syria, whatever, and give them a new place on the form. I would assume--I am not sure but I would assume--that means more affirmative action for people in that part of the world, as well.

Insofar as companies change their policies to make these forms come up

better or more what they like, it means that you are giving preferences to one group over another group. Even more absurdly, frequently the group you are giving preferences to are immigrants who weren't even here in the United States. I wish we would have hearings on this topic, and I wish the press would delve into this topic and ask: Why if you move here from, wherever, Peru, Pakistan, Philippines, wherever, why in the world should you be treated differently or should a company feel that they have to go out of the way to give preferences to these groups when they have never been subject to any discrimination in this country at all, much less slavery? Why when it comes to African Americans-- assuming that we should do this sort of thing, and I am not sure it is right at all, but if we are going to have to do this sort of thing at all, why if somebody moves here from Jamaica or Bahamas or Nigeria or somewhere, comes here for a better life in America when a company hires you or when an American governmental entity hires you, why do these diversity people feel you should be given preference over people who are already here? Does anybody think that is a little bit odd? I think it is something they particular ought to look into because President Biden wants to get so many more people here, including illegally. As a practical matter right now there are a lot of big businesses who feel it will help them in the eyes of the government if they hire people who just immigrated here, maybe people who just immigrated here illegally as opposed to some of the native born.

I will give an anecdote that I repeated in committee the other day. I spoke to a gentleman whose son worked for a major American cabinet department. He was happy with his job. He went to school for the job he got. After 8 or 9 years he wondered why he wasn't moving up, why he wasn't promoted. He was doing a good job. Well, he was told: ``You are a white guy who is not a veteran.'' Of course we give preferences to veterans, too. Now, is that right? If it is right, if people feel from here on out that is the way it is going to be in the United States, shouldn't the agencies that behave this way at least be required to post something saying that if you are going to be held back because you are not a veteran, if you are going to be held back by your race that you should know this before you accept this job? I would think at a minimum we should at least alert the public. It is kind of unusual that we have this problem, but I do feel that some committee or the press, if they want to educate the public about what is going on, ought to delve into this issue a little bit more. These are questions that I think the press ought to ask.

When we embark on this affirmative action policy in which we are picking people by background, does this affect the quality of life in America? Okay. If when we determine admissions to medical schools or admissions to schools of engineering or something like pilots, when the Biden administration says we have to run all these through the bean counters, do we wind up with perhaps some people who are not as qualified? Does that affect the quality of life in America?

When is a minority entitled to a preference? Is it somebody who is half from a different country, is it a quarter, is it an eighth? Right now you self-identify. Elizabeth Warren was something like 1/64th or 128th Native American, and she claimed to be Native American, used it to become a law professor at Harvard. Good for her. Is that right? How about a quarter? Is that right? Half? An eighth? I'm not sure. Is it right that if you move here directly from Spain you are European. If your ancestors came from Spain and spent a few generations in Mexico you are somebody in need of protection? Does that make any sense? I think the press ought to ask that question.

Again, in this country I believe affirmative action was--or we were led to believe--was to a certain extent making up for Jim Crow or even slavery, but if you are somebody who comes here of African descent, from Nigeria or Jamaica, you didn't experience Jim Crow, you didn't experience slavery. Is it right that preferences be given to groups like this?

A lot of times people say it is about diversity. Well, there is such a thing as diversity in background, and maybe we learn different things with different backgrounds, but this is all--or frequently--race related. If I grow up next to somebody who is a quarter Mexican, and we have had the exact same experiences and are best friends and played together on the football team and graduated together from high school, is there really diversity in hiring one of us instead of the other of us or letting one of us in school compared to the other school? That is ridiculous, but that is what the law is currently right now. Of course, I think there are a lot of people that have a vested interest in keeping this going. There are people who, I think, want to destroy America by trying to set people from one area up against another area. There are people that want to protect their jobs, and these could be very good-paying jobs, monitoring this diversity stuff from company to company, and now in order to protect their jobs these programs have to continue to keep on going. They are good-paying jobs, and they are consultants who make well into the six figures whose jobs depend upon this diversity stuff. I hope the press looks into that, sees how much people are making.

The diversity program can favor women, as well. Right now in America, single women under 30 actually make more than single men under 30. Do we need all this paperwork and experts to delve into things to protect the women? I don't know.

I will give a little anecdote. I know a woman, she is retired now, but she was a human resources person for a manufacturing firm that did business with the government. They had over 100 employees.

There were two anecdotes that bothered her and caused her to search me out. One was the company she was with wanted to hire a new engineer. Like many companies do, they hired an independent firm to administer their affirmative action program because they didn't want to get in trouble with the Federal Government.

The affirmative action group told them--although some people say they shouldn't have told them. You want to go from hiring five engineers to six engineers? Well, right now, all five engineers in your company are men. The sixth engineer better be a woman. It doesn't have to be a woman, but if it is not a woman, you have to be prepared to be audited and prove you did all you could to try to hire a woman in that sixth slot.

She didn't really like that. She thought that was wrong. Is that right?

The same thing happened in management. There were four members of what was classified as management. They wanted to hire a fifth. They were told by the experts, who they were paying, in this field: You better look for a minority for that fifth management position. It doesn't have to be a minority, but if the Federal Government audits you, you could get in trouble. You better be able to prove you did all you could to try to hire a minority.

I was back home a few weeks ago and talked to a woman who brought this up on her own. She worked for a financial institution. She said that an opening for a position had been going on for months, but they couldn't hire anybody because all the applicants were White men. Interesting.

Is that right in America? I guess the bank felt you don't want to get on the wrong side of the Federal Government.

In any event, these are three topics that I don't feel the press has paid enough attention to, but I hope they do a better job in the future of alerting the American public to the fact that we are approaching 100 percent of GDP in our debt, the highest since World War II. Unlike World War II, we are not going to lay off or shut down tons of factories making tanks and ships. It is going to be much more difficult this time.

I hope the American public also decides to weigh in when we do have an increase in spending. Is it right? One of only two agencies--at least on this summary; three agencies on this summary of all the agencies we have. Homeland Security, which is in charge of the border, is one of the few that is actually getting a cut.

Does the American public think that is the one agency that is overstaffed and bloated? I am not sure.

I hope the American public and the press corps, which really determines our agenda, pay a little bit more attention to all the unaccompanied minors streaming across the southern border without parents, maybe never to see their parents again.

Who knows what people are doing with them, human trafficked or whatever, but that is what we do right now. Johnny shows up with a note on his shirt: Deliver me to 123 Elm Street, Portland, Oregon.

Yes, sir. We don't ask where your parents are. We are going to deliver him wherever you want. I hope the American public is concerned about that.

Finally, I think, particularly in the days of Joe Biden, where he is trying to hire so many more bureaucrats to administer affirmative action sort of programs, why don't we ask some questions about this, about this program? Who benefits? Do they benefit? Does it affect the overall quality of work in some areas in America?

I think we ought to have that discussion. I know the Supreme Court is having that discussion, but it affects, like I said, a lot more than admissions to school. It affects hiring, both in the private sector and public sector, and it affects government contracting, as well.

Three topics for the press if they are paying attention.

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 1 o'clock and 5 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Tuesday, March 14, 2023, at 4 p.m.

Mr. Chair, I also rise to speak in favor of H.R. 140, the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act.

It is unfortunate that this bill is necessary today. We all know why it is necessary.

In the past, the government weighed in on Twitter and Facebook to lean on them to remove certain posts regarding news stories regarding eventually President Biden's son and his interactions with Ukraine, as well as perhaps interactions with regard to China.

The reason the government weighed in this time is because they wanted to make sure that President Biden won the election.

This is a dangerous thing. There is a certain type of government in which the government weighs in on private businesses. The private businesses are able to stay wealthy. The owners of these businesses are allowed to remain billionaires, provided they play ball with orders from the government.

In other words, you give up your freedom; you maintain your wealth. I am afraid that is the type of country we are heading toward.

The scariest thing about this speech is when we looked at the Pew Research Center and found that 65 percent of Democrats apparently support some form of censorship by the government, which is really a scary thing as to where we head.

Soon the day may come in which a majority of Americans--I don't know the breakdown of that 65 percent, how many were young Americans and old

Americans. Apparently, our young Americans are being educated that this is okay, that the government knows best.

Apparently, whether it is on political matters like we had going on with Hunter Biden, I suppose also with regard to things like COVID and treatments for COVID, whatever it is, everybody, now we can marshal the big corporations of America and, under threats of who knows what, we can ask these big businesses, which don't exactly have monopolies but, as a practical matter, you have to use them.

As a practical matter, you have to use them, and we say: Okay. You are worth a billion dollars, to those who own these companies, but we want you to say such and such.

It is very scary that the type of young people who apparently are voting Democrat in elections don't have a problem with this.

That is why this bill is introduced today. We want to make sure that, in the future, when the government has a preferred opinion, be it on a potential President's relative, be it on a certain treatment for a disease, that the American public will be able to also get the other side of the story, the side of the story the government doesn't want you to know.

That is why it is so scary that the Democratic Party is opposing this and why it is so scary that apparently their base, if this opinion is right, doesn't have a problem with a bunch of smart government bureaucrats deciding which version of the truth you are going to get.

I realize it is difficult, apparently, where your base voter is, for the Democratic Party to vote for this bill.

I hope you vote for it anyway and I hope you correct what the young people have apparently been getting in school, that in a free country, one of the things we should all have is the ability to say what we want. The news you are getting should not be vetted by the government.