Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I know normally this hour is taken up with speeches that I think are not bipartisan enough. I have decided to take this time to congratulate President Biden on his decision not to veto the bill we are sending over to him, which will prevent the District of Columbia from decreasing the penalties for severe crimes committed in this city.

I think what President Biden has done is finally recognized what a lot of us have been saying over the last few years. The District of Columbia is just plainly and simply not capable of self-governance at this time. I am glad President Biden agrees with us on that topic.

Right now, the District of Columbia has the second-highest spending per capita in the country on its schools, trailing only New York. Nevertheless, its test scores are abysmal.

The over 200 murders last year in the Nation's Capital is also an embarrassment, and that number has skyrocketed this year so far as of mid-February.

I will tell you, this is the Nation's Capital. There is no city we should care about more than the District of Columbia. It should be a shining light to represent the United States. People come here from all around the world.

I remember once I took a trip to Taipei, the large capital city of Taiwan. I was there with some friends. I asked our tour guide if there was anywhere at night we should not go, expecting there were some places we could not walk to without danger. We were told there was nowhere in Taipei we can't go. Nowhere in Taipei is not safe.

I was kind of embarrassed about my country because I thought, well, I was safe going to Taipei, but if I had visitors coming from Taiwan to Washington, D.C., I would be talking for quite a while, explaining all the places we couldn't go here.

I don't know whether people are aware that Vladimir Putin makes fun of our country for allowing such decline in the District of Columbia, not only how embarrassingly high our crime rate is but how embarrassingly low our test scores in the schools are, how embarrassing it is to have so many homeless people wherever you look.

I hope President Biden builds on this new conversion in which he is admitting the District of Columbia is not capable, apparently, of setting appropriate punishments for crimes here.

I look forward to working with President Biden on perhaps things we can do to improve the decisions by the local school board on their schools, maybe make some changes in their welfare policies that lead to so many homeless people here.

In any event, like I said, I would like to end tonight's speeches on an upbeat message, thanking President Biden for his conversion to the understanding that the people here in the District of Columbia, who, by the way, he is not a perfect man, but they voted 6 percent for Donald Trump in the last election. I kind of wondered what type of people would do that, but they did.

In any event, hopefully, President Biden will be happy to meet with us and think of other things we can do to improve life in our Nation's Capital.

Mr. Chair, I was delayed in a meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall No. 125.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad this House joint resolution is before us today. We continue to march toward a different sort of government, and part of that different sort of government is the ESG ideology being imposed or encouraged on America's corporations.

This is an ideological push on corporations, of which there is too much already. Already, particularly big corporations have seminars giving the leftwing view of the environment, the leftwing view of race, the leftwing view of agenda.

This is to further push down on them and say: Here you are, Mr. Big Corporation. We will give you a nice pat on the back if you use all of your stockholders' money to promote a political agenda.

Obviously, that should be offensive to any freedom-loving person in America.

Of course, in addition to that, studies from UCLA and New York University show that the average corporation that engages in this ESG stuff, their market goes up 6.3 percent instead of 8.9 percent, so the shareholders have to pay a price.

To me, secondarily to the shareholders paying a price is this pound, pound, pound that we already get from the universities, that we already get from the popular culture and Hollywood, and now we have to get it from big business, that the traditional, freedom-loving moral values of America are something to be stepped aside, and we, big corporate America, are going to ingratiate ourselves to the leftwing bureaucrats in Washington by following the ESG standards.

I am very grateful that my good friend from North Carolina has let me give this speech, and I sincerely hope everybody stands up for freedom.

The other side of the aisle would not like it if the people who decide what ESG was, was written by Jim Jordan, okay? Maybe someday that will happen. I don't know.

I liked it better when the big corporations stayed out of this thing, but you want to put the sword over their throat and say: This is the view of the world that you must adopt. You must have seminars and shove it down the throats of your employees.

It will be a bad day for America if this thing doesn't pass.

Mr. Speaker, I would address the same article that one of my Democrat colleagues mentioned earlier today about an article that was published in The New York Times over the weekend addressing what is going on with a segment of some of the people who have come across the border inappropriately over the last few years.

Now, things have changed with the parole policy. We don't know how that is going to shake out. We have multiplied by 11 or 12 times the number of people coming to this country illegally since President Biden took office. We have gone from about 20,000 people a month to just short of 240,000 people a month.

Mr. Speaker, I will address a subset of that population, and that is the young children. Approximately 9,000 to 10,000 unaccompanied minors are coming across our border every month without either parent.

What becomes of these 10,000 children every month who don't have either parent with them?

Well, The New York Times found out what happens to some of them. They wind up working in very dangerous working conditions. That is what happens when you let people cross the border without their parents being able to look out for them.

Mr. Speaker, 10,000 children left to cross the border unaccompanied.

Others, like the little girl referenced in the article in The New York Times, came here with a relative she didn't even know before this--if he really was a relative. This is something that bothers the Border Patrol.

Mr. Speaker, I really wish some of the Democrats would come down to the border and find out what is really going on down there. The Border Patrol and Republicans have been complaining repeatedly about all these unaccompanied minors. In the past when we had to separate parents from their kids for 2 weeks, for a month--and I believe there was only a total of about 4,000 kids there--the Democrats were screaming bloody murder.

How dare you separate these people from their parents for even a couple weeks.

Now we have children, over 120,000 last year, separated from their parents, perhaps permanently, and that is at least 120,000.

The Border Patrol feels that sometimes when people are bringing children across the border, they are only pretending to be their parents.

Sometimes the Border Patrol does DNA checks, and they find still more children who are being separated from their parents.

We wish they had the time and the money to do DNA tests on all the parents because I am sure The New York Times number is actually greater than that.

Then they are spread around the country. We would not allow that for our children, right? If somebody from this country--and what they do, so you understand, is the children show up at the southern border with an address--maybe it is written on their shirt or something--I want to go to 123 Elm Street, Portland, Oregon. Our U.S. Government will deliver them to 123 Elm Street, Portland, Oregon, even though neither parent is there, even though we haven't done thorough checks on the people who are there.

We have no idea--we do, we have some idea, but not enough of an idea, who these young kids are being told they have to live with.

Interestingly, The New York Times and my colleague on the other side of the aisle, they are concerned about the working conditions, but they mention nothing at all about the fact that these children are separated from their parents--neither parent. Isn't that something that should be a concern?

I realize you are the party of Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, we condemn the nuclear family, da, da, da, da, da.

I assure you: A child is better off with its parents, better off with both its parents, and this idea that apparently it is okay to let children cross the southern border if only they have a nice job when they are 16 years old is ridiculous. The United States ought not to be part of breaking up these families.

Now, the other thing I would like to point out that The New York Times doesn't mention at all: A lot of times kids show up at the southern border with a single parent.

In this country, if there is a divorce, we do what we can to try to make sure the child has some experience or contact with both parents.

I am sure the Central American countries would like it. I am told by the Border Patrol the Central American countries do not like the Biden policy of having young people come here, because they feel they are losing their future. They don't want to have all their young people come to this country.

I realize that Biden is all about, you know, changing America, getting apparently as many people here as quickly as possible, from far away as possible. We don't care if the parents are separated.

Believe me--and just a little bit of racism here, maybe--in this country, we would not want one parent taking a child without the other parent signing off and moving to another country or moving to a different part of this country.

Apparently, when it comes to children from Latin America, the Biden administration and The New York Times is okay with that.

I intend to hold hearings in my subcommittee. Please look out for the children at the southern border.

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be able to be the last Congressman to speak in this historic State of the Union week here in Congress.

There are several comments that have to be made about the State of the Union because if you are just going to listen to what President Biden had to say, you would have a very warped and distorted view of what is going on in America today.

I think the most harmful thing he said is he one more time talked about the talk and implied that America's police force is a racist police force and a stain on America's reputation. That is a lie. It is a lie. It has been disproven year after year, study after study.

Nevertheless, President Biden, I think in an effort to scare Black Americans into voting for him, claims that we have a horrible racist society in general and a racist police problem in particular.

I will mention two articles which came out right after the unfortunate

events, the tragic events, the horrific events that happened in Minneapolis 2 years ago, for those of you back home to google. One article is by a very perceptive gal by the name of Heather Mac Donald, appearing in The Wall Street Journal, and one is by a gentleman, who happens to be Black, appearing in the City Journal at that time.

They both looked not at the number of people who died across the board but looked at a percent of people who committed felonies, a percent of people who committed crimes who wound up in a confrontation with police and wound up passing away. In both instances, they found that, if anything, Black Americans were less likely to die in a confrontation with police.

Again, I will mention these articles, ``The Myth of Systemic Police Racism,'' Heather Mac Donald in The Wall Street Journal in June 2020, and ``Stories and Data,'' Coleman Hughes, in the City Journal of June 2020.

This is something that is a stain on America. Joe Biden is doing all he can to divide America by using his State of the Union Address to claim that the police are racists.

Does this have an effect? It has an effect. It has an effect twice.

First of all, I think it has an effect in that it causes some people to believe him. After all, we have a White President. Why would he be lying and telling us we have all these racist police if we don't? And the effect is that it is causing, sadly, some anger in the Black community, which is resulting in more and more deaths of police.

I thought of this when, earlier this week, I think maybe on the exact day that we had the State of the Union, if not the day earlier, one more policeman, who happened to be White, was murdered in Milwaukee.

Is this myth that is going out there, talking about racist police, racist police, racist police, causing more police to die? I don't know, but it is something to look at.

I think it also causes the police, understandably, to be less aggressive and less effective because they are always afraid of being called out for being racist.

If President Biden is lying and telling everybody that we have all these racist police, it is surprising that the police themselves are a little more afraid to be aggressive or engage in I guess what I will call traditional policing.

Last year, in Milwaukee, a city which is just adjacent to my district, the number of murders went up I think about 25, to an all- time high. It was the third year in a row that we had an all-time high number of murders in Milwaukee, and that is despite the fact that the population is drifting down. Why are we at an all-time high number of murders in Milwaukee?

Generally, I think the police, first of all, are not adequately funded. To a certain extent, they are not adequately funded because politicians like Joe Biden get out there and tell us how horrible and racist the police are. Is it any surprise that the Milwaukee City Council would not want to hire many police?

Secondly, the Milwaukee police are afraid to go into certain neighborhoods, sometimes high-crime neighborhoods where they are especially used because they are afraid if they do confront the criminal element, they will get labeled as racist. Rather than worry about some cheap politician like Joe Biden calling them racist over time, why not just stand back, not be aggressive, and not get labeled?

In any event, I felt of all the lies of President Biden, his drumbeat of racism in society in general and racism with regard to police is the most damaging.

Mr. Speaker, the next thing that I thought was very scary for the country as a whole, I think probably the biggest crisis that has developed in the last 2 years, is the crisis at the border. Admittedly, if you don't live in Arizona or don't live in Texas, you might not see the full import of the crisis.

President Biden implied that this is, at best, something that just miraculously happened out of nowhere and, at worst, was happening because the Republicans aren't doing enough to help him close the border.

I would like to leave America with some numbers. These are both numbers from December. In December 2020, a grand total of 21,000 people crossed the border. In December 2022, 2 years into the Biden Presidency, 238,000 people crossed the border, an increase of 11 times.

This is not something that just happened. It was a problem when we had 28,000 people crossing the border under the Trump administration. When it goes up by a factor of 11, it is not because the Republicans aren't negotiating. There are all sorts of things we negotiate whenever we put together the annual budget, and a given number of Republicans vote for it.

No, it is because Joe Biden changed the policy at the border. He is making it much easier for immigrants to cross the border. For whatever reason, he wants to apparently change America by entering in the people who receive no instruction, no education on our Constitution and the values that you are supposed to adapt if you are an American citizen. As a result, we are over 11 times as many people crossing the border as 2 years ago.

He didn't mention at all the number of people that are deported for committing crimes. The number of people we are deporting right now is about one quarter the number of people who were deported when President Trump was in office, as well.

Now, President Trump wasn't a perfect man, but I will tell you, even at the time, a lot of people were not being deported. What we have is, we have a President who, even after people prove themselves unfit to become Americans by committing crimes, they are not deported.

I want the American public to ponder those numbers. We have gone from 20,000 a month to 238,000 a month.

I also want to point out the huge number of unaccompanied minors coming across the border. There was a time when the mainstream media felt it was horrific if, even for a few days while their parents were being processed, children were without their parents.

We have gone in the last 2 years from around 2,000 to around 8,000 every month of unaccompanied minors crossing into our border.

Where are their parents?

We apparently don't care. We are told: we find sponsors for these young people.

I am told by the Border Patrol that particularly the Central American countries do not like the current policy of the United States of taking in unaccompanied minors here. After all, they believe that is the future of their countries. They do not like us grabbing all their minors.

Where are the advocates?

We let over 8,000 young children into the country every year and we may have no idea whatsoever where their parents are.

Do their parents know where the new sponsors are?

Do we know if these children are being human trafficked?

What do we know? Nothing.

There are 8,000 children, not without their parents for 2 or 3 days, but could be without their parents for the rest of their lives.

I hope America takes away the moral stain on our Nation of allowing the separation of 8,000 or 9,000 minors every month from their parents. I hope the American public does not fawn to the idea that somehow the reason we have 230,000 people every month crossing the border is because of Republican inaction.

Good grief, in the last 2 years, we didn't have the House, we didn't have the Senate, and we sure didn't have the Presidency. The reason for that is because he has changed policy from what it was 2 years ago.

It is not rocket science to get back down to 20,000. You just have to go back to what the laws were 2 years ago, but President Biden clearly doesn't want to do that. He wants as many people coming here as possible. Like I said, the clearest evidence of that is not only letting everybody here, but he is not even deporting people who break the law.

In any event, that is, I think, what we have to look at when we look at the southern border and the policies that are going on down there.

The next thing that I don't think he spent anywhere near enough time on--but it should be required to be addressed by, quite frankly, every politician, in part, because of his inaction at

the southern border and, in part, because of his hatred of the police or as labeling police as racist--we now have over 100,000 fentanyl deaths in this country every month. As I have said before, we have more people dying of illegal drug use in this country every month, twice as many people as died in the Vietnam war collectively.

Now, I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war. I remember the media pounding, pounding, pounding that we had to get out of Vietnam because, by the time it was over, 57,000 Americans had lost their lives.

We are now at 180,000 deaths from illegal drugs each year and what do we get?

We get less focused on the border than ever before, we get attacks on the police for fear of being called racist, and, as a result, that number keeps going up and up and up.

When I think of all the parents who have lost children, people who have lost their siblings, people who have lost their parents because of these drug overdoses--frequently people who are taking drugs don't know fentanyl is in the drugs--I think, why isn't the government doing anything?

To be honest, it kind of stumps me.

Why does the Biden administration not care that over 100,00 people are dying?

Why doesn't the news media make that a banner headline? Wouldn't you think?

Over 9,000 people are dying every month of illegal drug overdose, most of it fentanyl, the press doesn't report about it.

I am more than appalled that President Biden didn't spend more time talking about the huge drug problems we have in America and the huge number of deaths rather than focusing on, what I would consider in some cases, rather minor issues.

The final thing to talk about is President Biden mentioned Ukraine. He did not talk about what we are going to do to end that war. And as more people die over there, admittedly not Americans, but as more people die, one would hope that the Western nations, and the United States in particular--who didn't seem that concerned when the war began, after all, it was predicted that next month Russia is going to invade, blah, blah, blah--but President Biden didn't seem to care that the war was starting.

Then the war started, and we really haven't made much of an effort to end the war. At the end of every war, unless there is complete victory on one side or the other, usually every side gets something and loses something, and has to sell the fact that all these people died for a reason or for a purpose.

The United States is not, from what I can see, making an effort to end this war. Again, we are told thousands of soldiers are dying every month. We know Russia is a very powerful country with regard to nuclear weapons, but also tactical nuclear weapons, the ability to shut down electricity, the ability to use hypersonic missiles.

Nevertheless, it seems as though the Biden administration would be perfectly happy if this war were going on another 2 years from now. That is just intolerable.

As I said, it is a human disaster for Russia and Ukraine, and the possibility that this war will bleed into the United States--or, even more likely, bleed into Poland and bleed into Germany--is something that should concern us all.

But for whatever motivation--and one can only guess at motivations, this is where conspiracy theories come in--the powers that be in the United States--the one-world-government types--don't seem to be bothered by this war at all.

It is something that demands more speculation, and the next time President Biden wanders into some microphones, he should be asked a little bit more: Do you have a plan for wrapping this up?

The answer to which appears to me right now is that, no, he does not.

There are a few issues that I think we should have spent more time on addressing, or that President Biden should have spent more time on addressing. I hope just because it is not a State of the Union Address doesn't mean he can't give speeches. He runs around the country.

First of all, I would call upon President Biden to apologize to the police of the country and admit that the studies that are out here in The Wall Street Journal and in the City Journal are accurate and the police are not racist.

Please, President Biden, stop lying to the American public and tell the American public that Black people are not disproportionately being harmed by the police.

I hope President Biden does something on the border. Above all, he has got to change his policy and send more people back to Mexico, although more Border Patrol agents wouldn't hurt. If he cared about drugs, more drug-sniffing dogs wouldn't hurt.

But, please, President Biden, pay a little attention to what is going on at the border before we lose this country.

I ask you to spend a little time seriously focusing on the fentanyl crisis. We should not be losing over 100,000 citizens every month.

Please, I realize we can't do it, but you can allow Israel or Turkey or France--push them a little bit--to work towards some sort of final agreement with Russia. I think it is obvious Russia probably regrets invading Ukraine given the huge number of people whom they have had die. I can't help but think Ukraine, being the smaller country, the number of people who die is a bigger proportion of their population. Plus I believe they have had tens of millions--or at least they claim-- a significant number of civilians who have died in the war.

I think economically it is going to take both Russia and, in particular, Ukraine quite a while to recover from this. It would be nice if President Biden displayed a little bit of humanity. He didn't try to stop the war right before it started. His intelligence agencies predicted it. There were things he could have done. He didn't do them, but I wish now he would step forward and display a little humanity there.

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for this time to speak, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 56 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, February 10, 2023, at 11 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I don't intend to use the full 60 minutes, but first, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), the wonderful chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.

Denouncing Socialism

Mr. Speaker, I guess, after hearing the last speaker, I should kind of readjust my remarks and comment about the importance of free speech and the current flight from free speech which we have going on in the United States.

I have here a little graph, which I viewed with total alarm when my staff was able to come up with it. Of course, freedom of speech takes many forms in our society: the ability to write books, the ability to get on the radio, and now the ability to post things you want on the internet.

I hope my good friend from Texas looks at this--he left the floor right now--and sees how precarious the right to free speech is in America today.

We look here, and there is a question: The U.S. Government should take steps to protect false info online, even if it limits freedom of information.

Of course, we all can disagree about a lot of things. We can disagree on politics. We can disagree on elections. We can disagree on medical facts. That is why when we have something wrong with us medically, we sometimes get a second opinion, because one doctor thinks different than the other.

Of course, we all know people, you know: Should I take the shot? Should I not take the shot? Should I get surgery? Should I not get the surgery? Should I get remdesivir? Should I not get remdesivir? A lot of questions are up in the air.

There was a time when it could have had an effect on an election if the people found out that Hunter Biden took a lot of money from people in other countries and maybe had an underlying goal.

The question is, is free speech what this country is about or not?

With the Democratic Party--and this alarms me because I was a Democrat until I was 20 years old, and I thought Democrats were out in front on free speech and Republicans were the staid people.

We have a situation right now, over the last few years, in which 65 percent of the Democrats, a clear majority, almost 2 to 1: The U.S. Government should take steps to restrict false info online even if this restricts freedom of information.

Only 28 percent of Republicans do.

Now, this graph shocks me. This weekend, I am going to be speaking to some Republicans back in the district. I will tell you, I am going to tell them how disappointed I am that 28 percent of the Republicans responding to the poll apparently don't want freedom of information.

I would hope my colleague from Texas goes back home and explodes at the people back home that 65 percent of the Democrats, or people leaning Democrats, want to restrict the free flow of information.

You could say they only want to prevent false things from being put out there, but, of course, who determines what is false and what is true?

If you look at the next one, another sign of if you believe in free speech or not: Should tech companies take steps to restrict false info online even if it limits freedom of information?

We all know things that some people agree with and some people don't agree with, and sometimes things we once thought were false turn out to be true.

Here again, it scares me. The Democrats when I was a Democrat and 20 years old, I will tell you, wouldn't have thought this way, but the Democrat Party has changed a lot. Seventy-six percent think tech companies should restrict false info even if it limits freedom of information. Only 37 percent of the Republicans feel that way. That is a very scary thing, scary for our country.

It comes down to what I think is the scariest thing of all: the way people think. It is not even things that the governments do. I don't know if we have bad schools out there or whatever, but the way people think is kind of scary.

We know in Canada, to the north of us, which we thought was kind of a country like America, right now, they crack down on churches, if maybe they disagree with the party line on sexual behavior.

We mentioned in the last election, things began to come out about Hunter Biden taking money from foreign outfits, presumably just being given money because of the access he had to his dad. Oops, better not let that out there online, better not talk about that on TV. Oh, my goodness, that might affect the way people think.

So we have this restriction going on right now, like I said, on the COVID stuff. I don't know the degree to which it is influenced by campaign contributions from companies like Pfizer. I don't know whether it is the pride of the public health establishment.

But we are entering into an era in this country in which we are not going to be able to say certain things unless the American public realizes that the First Amendment is borderline absolute. The fact that such a huge party,

overwhelming majorities, have no problem with know-it-alls in the government restricting what you can find online, is very scary.

I hope and pray that the American public wakes up on this dangerous trend. I know we are late here on Thursday. I hope my friend who just got done speaking weighs in here.

I will talk to Republicans this weekend, but I really hope that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle come down strongly with their rank and file that apparently is against free speech and tell them the importance of free speech.

The Situation with Ukraine and Russia

Mr. Speaker, the next thing I am going to address is Ukraine. Again, I don't think the American public or the American press, the mainstream media, are asking the right questions on this vitally important topic.

It would be better for Ukraine, it would be better for Russia, certainly their young people, and better for the stability of the world, if a peace agreement was reached. But there are too many people in this Capitol who I don't think, for whatever reason, consider peace a priority. Among those people, I will label the Biden administration.

Eventually this war is going to come to an end. All wars come to an end eventually. The only question is: Will the war come to an end in 2023, 2024, 2027?

As the war goes on, obviously more and more people die, more and more people are injured, more and more property is destroyed. You create hard feelings such that more and more people in both Ukraine and Russia will have anger toward each other for years and years in the future.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration, I get when I talk to them, is not aggressively looking for peace. Now, the United States has obviously weighed in very heavily on this war. It is hard for anybody to believe that we would be an impartial broker. But there are countries like Turkey, like France, like Israel that can be encouraged to step in and put an end to the war going on here.

I have said before, war between any two countries, they should want to look for peace. But between these two countries, that is particularly so. It is not talked about enough.

Ukraine has the second lowest birthrate in the world. I mean, if you have the second lowest birthrate in the world, you ought to be doing all you can to protect the few young people you have for the next generation. So among all countries, Ukraine especially should be saying they want this war to end.

Russia also has a very low birth rate. If my district is any indication, I think a lot of the young Russians that are there are leaving Russia for other countries, I think in part because of the bad economy they have in Russia and because we still, despite all our foibles, have a free market economy in the United States and a much more honest government.

I have no problem finding Russians in my district. Over a year ago now, when I was in the San Diego sector on the southern border, during that 2 or 3 weeks I was down there in just solely the San Diego sector, the second most common nationality coming from Mexico were Russians. Which means not only does Russia have a low birthrate, but they have a lot of their younger people with their children coming to the United States to get away from Russia.

So we have two countries that their number one priority really ought to be making sure we have as many young people as possible and making sure they have more children, or these two great cultures, Ukraine and Russia, are going to end. Instead, this war goes on.

Like I said, for these two countries, it ought to be especially easy to find some sort of compromise and stop the killing.

It is especially important, to not only just stop the killing right now, but we have got to remember, Russia has hypersonic capability and they have nuclear weapons. Maybe you can say things will go on for years and years and they will never use the weapons. I am not sure that is true. There are obviously people in this Chamber who hope that Vladimir Putin is going to be forced to step aside. There is no indication that his replacement will be more to our liking, and there is some indication that it will be worse.

So I hope the American press corps, the comatose press corps of the United States of America, spends more time asking all of the principals in that war: Are you for peace or not?

Would you negotiate for peace or not before any more people die?

And I would hope people on all sides of the aisle would be in favor of that.

There is another one that is kind of funny. When I was a Democrat, before I was 20 years old, I thought the Republican Party was the party of war. But now it is kind of the other way around. You talk to these Democrats, and they have no desire to have this thing wrap up. I hope maybe the Democrats who were around when I was in high school can step forward and say: Hey, wait a minute here. The Democrats used to be the party of peace, or at least they fancied themselves the party of peace. Maybe they never sincerely were.

The Plight of Ahmadiyya Muslims

Mr. Speaker, the next thing I would like to talk about is, in my district, I have a mosque of Ahmadiyya Muslims. They believe things different than a lot of the mainstream Shiites and Sunni Muslims believe. But that is not the major reason I bring them up today. I bring up their plight because worldwide other Muslim groups are persecuting them and sometimes killing them.

Recently, in Burkina Faso, nine men were murdered before the women and children there. They are frequently persecuted in Pakistan. There are probably about 15 million Ahmadiyya Muslims in the world. About 4 million of those are in Pakistan. Pakistan is not exactly the most forgiving, tolerant country in the world, and it is no surprise that Ahmadiyya Muslims are sometimes murdered there.

Algeria is another country in which we have mosques, and they are not treated that well.

It is one of the wonderful traits of the United States that while we not only believe in free speech--or at least we did until recently-- particularly speech is protected when it is religious in nature. It is important for all Americans to learn the lesson of what goes on in Algeria or Pakistan or Burkina Faso, that there are countries in which not only is religious speech suppressed, but people are killed for saying things that are disliked by other groups of people.

I wish my best for my friends who are Ahmadiyya Muslims. I wish the best for the mosque that they currently have in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and I hope the rest of the world is supportive of them in their plight.

The Topic of Immigration

Mr. Speaker, I have spoken many times from this platform about immigration, and I am going to speak about it again today, because I think it is even more important, if that is possible, than what is going on in Ukraine.

In the last month that we have information, we hit another all-time record in the number of people coming in the country. I think whether it is because they don't care or whether it is because they are for unlimited people coming here, the American press has kind of fallen asleep on this topic more than they should have.

More than a year ago, in kind of the final month, December of 2020, the final month that we had a different administration, there were about 21,000 people who came here. That was a big deal, 21,000 people coming across the southern border who probably shouldn't be here. We are now at 238,000. The all-time high, 238,000 people coming across the border. Of that 238,000, 67,000 are got-aways.

So our listeners are aware, there are two groups of people, when you hear about the number of people coming across the border. There are the people who check in with the Border Patrol. They look for the Border Patrol. ``We want asylum in the United States.'' They probably don't have a valid asylum claim, but once we let them into the country, they disappear into the country.

There are other people called got-aways that don't check in with the Border Patrol. They are probably more dangerous, because they are more likely to have drugs with them, since they aren't turning themselves in to the Border Patrol. They are more likely to have criminal records because we don't

have an opportunity to do a background check on them and see whether they have committed crimes in the U.S. or see if they have committed crimes in Canada. The number of got-aways, more likely to have drugs with them, has gone up from 21,000 2 years ago to 67,000. It tripled.

And what do we hear from the Biden administration? Nothing.

There is another subgroup called ``unaccompanied minors.'' There was a time early on in the Trump administration when people were worried about families being separated, even though they were trying to keep them separated for a minimum amount of time and only when people broke the law. We have now gone from 2,000 unaccompanied minors every month to 8,000 unaccompanied minors.

Now, isn't that amazing? Minors are coming here without their parents' protection, without their parents knowing where they are?

I mean, if our goal is to keep families together, isn't the first thing we ought to do, if we find a child, is spin them around and send them back to their country of origin rather than allow them to negotiate the trip from wherever, El Salvador or Brazil or wherever, to somewhere in the United States?

I hope the American public--somebody has got to look to find it on the internet, because the mainstream media is not going to tell you--I hope they familiarize themselves with the growing number of people who are coming here who are not adequately vetted.

I want to point out something else. When we talk about the number of people coming here that aren't vetted, the other side of that coin is, once people come here and once we find out we made a mistake, once we find out that they are perhaps committing crimes, how many of those people are we kicking out of country?

That should be fairly automatic, right?

If we have people who aren't American citizens coming here and committing crimes, out they go. I mean, really nobody should be let in here illegally. But if they commit crimes, wow.

Well, what do we find? In the last year before COVID, 267,000 Americans were deported. A fair number, close to that, were deported even under Barack Obama. But about a quarter million a year illegal aliens were deported, primarily because they broke a law of some nature.

In the most recent year--and this is well into COVID, so it shouldn't have as big an effect--we are down to about 72,000. So at the same time, the number of people coming here illegally has gone up by like a factor of 10. The number of people that are being deported has dropped by about 3 quarters, there we are dealing with people who broke the law.

I was talking to a guy who was a U.S. attorney that I ran into, and he was stunned. He was a U.S. attorney at the time. We have changed administrations. He was stunned at the new guidelines from the Biden administration, the degree to which people in the past would have been deported. It is no big deal.

So this must be a priority. The American public should wake up. I am going to blame my Republican friends, too, for a little bit.

In the last election, I think the Republicans should have spent more time talking about illegal immigration, an area where there is such a stark difference between the parties. But for whatever reason, I don't think they talked about it enough.

Now, there are so many reasons I talked about people who are criminals coming here. I am one more time going to talk about all of the illegal drugs coming across the border. There are 108,000 Americans a year dying from illegal drugs, primarily fentanyl, almost all of those coming across the southern border. Sometimes big numbers glaze over. The number of people who die of illegal drugs--I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war. Every year, the number of people who die of illegal drugs is twice the number of people who died in 12 years in Vietnam. Think about that.

I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war. I am old enough to remember all of the students protesting: Oh, too many people are dying, too many people are dying. And too many people were dying. But now, of illegal drugs, twice as many people die every year as died in the 12 years of the Vietnam war.

Those college students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, they ought to be marching up and down State Street, around Bascom Hall, protesting the 108,000 people who are dying and wondering what in the world their government is doing to prevent it.

Now, I think a lot of it is there is something wrong if you are taking a drug that is so powerful you could die.

But in any event, 108,000 deaths are too much. I suggest to all my colleagues, over the weekend, if they run into their district attorneys, if they run into their sheriffs, ask in each county how many people died last year of illegal drug overdoses.

We are way over the number of people who die in car accidents and homicides combined--way more. And if somebody dies in a car accident, it makes the paper. If somebody dies in a homicide, of course, it makes the paper. But way more people die every year of illegal drug overdoses. You don't read about that at all.

To a certain extent, I blame these 100,000 deaths not just on the politicians, and particularly President Biden who do nothing, but on our comatose press corps who are not ringing the bell, saying it is time to do something about this illegal immigration and time to do something about these illegal drugs.

Now, my final little area that I am going to address today is a bill I am introducing called the Responsible Borrowing Act.

One of the crises we have in this country is the huge number of amount of student loan debt that is out there. It is much worse than it used to be years ago. I guess a lot of the blame has to go on the universities who are selling college degrees or maybe admitting people who weren't going to get a college degree anyway, and they wind up with these huge student debts.

If you plan on paying off your debt, maybe you delay having children, maybe you never have children--what a tragedy--maybe you put off buying a house or your student loan debt is so great that your credit rating is such you can't get a loan given the amount of student debt.

I have what I would think is a minor bill, but I am shocked that it is going to be considered controversial if we bring it to the floor.

There was a time in this country--in the 1990s, I don't know if it was legal or they just weren't enforcing the law--if you were a student loan officer at a university and a student was taking out a student loan, that person was able to say, I think you are taking out too much of a loan. Maybe they would say, I think you ought to get another job. Maybe they might say, you are living too high on the hog. You are spending too much money. You do not have to take out a $5,000 loan; you should make a go on a $2,000 loan. Maybe they could say, given the major you are getting, you cannot expect to make enough money to pay off this loan.

Today, believe it or not, it is against the law for these loan counselors or these financial aid counselors to say, you ought not take out this loan. That is almost beyond belief. We began this little lecture by talking about free speech, and now we have a situation in which we bar loan counselors from saying you ought not take out a bigger loan.

By the way, I think across the board way too many Americans are in debt on a variety of things.

My bill will go back to the days in which financial aid administrators are able to tell students, this is going to be too much of a loan. It may feel good to get that big check in your hand when you are 20 years old, but when you are 30 years old, that debt is not going to be so great.

If you would not spend so lavishly in Congress, or would get a better degree, or maybe delay going to college for a couple years to make sure you are confident that you are going to complete a degree.

This was brought to my attention from somebody who runs a university. They were appalled with it. They have been running the university since the early 1990s and remember the good old days when they prevented students from taking out excessive student

loans by telling them, what a dumb financial decision. The good old days are gone.

Now, when supposedly we are concerned about excessive student loan debt, we tie the hands of the financial aid officers, and tell them, you cannot discourage people from taking out debt. At a minimum, shouldn't that bill just fly right through here?

I bet it won't fly right through here because, for whatever reason, too many of the universities don't like to rain on the students' parade, and tell them, oh, maybe you shouldn't go out on so many Saturday nights or maybe you should get another job bartending or waitressing or what have you. Some universities will fight this.

But I encourage my colleagues to pass the Responsible Borrowing Act and go back to the days in which the colleges cared about their students.

There are some colleges who aren't going to take advantage of this, they don't care about their students' financial health at all once they leave. It is sad to see, but I have come across it.

At least we want to give the responsible colleges the right to tell their students, hey, wait a minute, you don't have to take out any more debt.

I would like to thank you for listening to this. I hope you all learned a little bit about Ahmadiyya Muslims and a little more about the huge volume of people crossing the southern border.

I think you learned a little bit more about the huge number of people in our country, and particularly Democrats--I can't believe I was once a Democrat--who want to restrict free speech, and we have to be on the lookout for that and educate our young ones.

We learned a little bit about the Responsible Borrowing Act and how it is high time we let universities tell their students, you don't have to take out any more. We also learned a little bit how our government is not working for peace in the Ukraine.

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 3 o'clock and 6 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, February 6, 2023, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I have been waiting for this day for quite a while. Whenever I go back to my district, I talk to my staff back there. Again and again, we hear stories that they want something done with the VA; they want something done with the IRS. It can't get done. They are behind.

It is time for people to get back to work. When I think of my district, I think the vast majority of people, their work schedule never changed even in the teeth of the epidemic.

Obviously, in Wisconsin, there are a lot of cheese factories in my district. Man, I would go home every night and there would be people there at 11 p.m., 12 a.m., 2 a.m. All of a sudden, we hear how horrible it is for Federal employees to have to go in.

In the current situation, what it tells you is--and this is true of many other programs, as well--the government works for the benefit of the government not the benefit of the people.

That is why people on that side of the aisle are trying so hard, so desperately hard today, not to have people come in.

I talk to a lot of employers all over my district. There were times that any given number of their employees worked from home, but they know it is not the same thing. Why in the world the government should be operating on a separate schedule, I don't know.

I will give you an example. The National Personnel Records Center is an egregious example. The NPRC is a large warehouse containing paper records of military members from before World War I to the 1990s. Veterans need access to these records in order to receive VA healthcare, disability pay, and home loans.

Despite these records existing in paper form only, the NPRC still decided to have its employees work remotely, a perfect example of the employees' interests put ahead of the

public's interest. This time, the public is veterans.

You can't copy paper records from a warehouse if no one is there to pull the records to make copies to satisfy the request.

These employees were paid, but since they were not at the NPRC, they were unable to fulfill their duties, and veterans were forced to wait to receive their benefits.

The SHOW UP Act will require these Federal agencies to return to pre- COVID levels of telework.

By the way, I don't bring this up back home. We are talking about it today, but I think it is such an insult to all the people back home, many of which are whole factories that never took any time off, to be told that they have to wait for the Federal Government because their people are, I mean, my goodness, still at home almost 3 years after this thing.

Do you know any private businesses that are still having their people stay at home?

Mr. Speaker, as I go about my district, I like to meet with the average Wisconsinite to see what is on their mind. It is so much more illuminating than hanging around Washington and meeting with lobbyists.

Whether I stop in convenience stores or food stores, which I do between my meetings, inevitably the talk turns to abuse of the EBT card. I hear stories again and again of people selling EBT cards for 50 cents on the dollar, which apparently means that some people don't need them. Another complaint is some clerks are able to look at the card, or it turns up on the receipt how much money they have left on the card, and there may be thousands of dollars there, which is also a problem.

I thought: What can we do to prevent some of this abuse? We have introduced a bill called ID for EBT Card, in which a person's photograph would have to appear on the card.

When I speak to the clerks in my convenience stores, they unanimously believe that this would be a good idea and be a step toward fighting the fraud and abuse in this program.

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that this week things have--the quality of intellectual thought in this country has declined to the degree that we have to bring a resolution to the floor condemning socialism, but that is the way it is.

Recently, polls have shown among young people, about half have a positive view of socialism. Now, of course these are young people whose opinions are largely gathered not by personal experience but by what their schoolteachers tell them or what they see on television, so that may be part of the problem, and hopefully, they will grow their way out of it.

Nevertheless, I do feel it necessary to make some statements as to why socialism is an inferior way to govern and is completely incompatible with people who want to live in a free society.

The first thing you need to know about socialism, of course, it leads to material goods which are not as good as those under a free market system. A lot of that means because the government controls everything, you don't have an opportunity to have competition. The poor restaurant, the poor manufacturer is never forced out of business, never forced to improve, and as a result it means a poorer society. A lot of times the material goods by themselves is one of the reasons throughout history you see people leave the Marxist, socialist sort of society and flee towards the free market system.

Cubans leaving to come to the United States. When I visit the southern border, the Border Patrol always talks about the Cubans. There are a lot of Cuban doctors coming here--wealthy by Cuban standards--but still they can become much more wealthy in the U.S.

In the old days of the Cold War, people left from East Germany to West Germany, from North Vietnam to South Vietnam to get to a country in which there are more goods and more quality. But I always feel it is a little bit wrong to overly focus on the fact that the free market inevitably means much better material wealth.

It also deals with the freedom to do anything else. When you have a socialist society, the government in a pure

socialist society employs everybody. And even in a partially socialist society, a much higher percentage of people wind up working for the government and have to work for the government.

Like all Republicans, in my political career, again and again, I have had people come up to me and tell me things privately that they can't say publicly because they work for the government.

Schoolteachers who come up to me and give a Republican perspective on things or things they may disagree with that the school board is doing. But because they work for the government, they can only talk to me quietly like they were in the Soviet Union or Communist China.

When I was in Wisconsin and we changed the laws to give more flexibility on how we deal with public employees about 12 years ago--it was under Governor Walker--all Republicans knew public employees who quietly sided with Governor Walker, but because they worked for the government, the little socialist part of America, they couldn't openly side with Governor Walker. They had to quietly whisper like we were in a Communist country.

That is what happens when you have too many people working for the government.

The Department of Natural Resources is another example of that. Again, people are coming and saying they are doing things wrong, but they dare not say so publicly because they work for the government.

Of course, in addition to employees who work for the DNR or work for the university, it is not just political beliefs that they may have to hide in the intolerance area of a very liberal political entity--I am thinking about Dane County, which is where Madison, Wisconsin is-- people, again, where the government is so big, they are forced not only to hide their political beliefs, they may have to hide their religious beliefs because they are afraid that when it comes to promotions, when it comes to hiring, when it comes to firing, it could affect them negatively because such a high percentage of jobs come with the government.

It is not just that. In a pure socialist society, because there is a shortage of goods, the ability to purchase goods can also be dependent on toeing the party line. We know that in Russia, or previously Cuba, the ability to purchase things is dependent on toeing the party line. You can work all you want but unless you are a member of the party or toe the party line, you can't get the quality of goods that are there. That is inevitably something that happens when the government becomes so powerful.

Other perks are restricted if you don't toe the party line, things like travel in a socialist state. Over time, you begin to have restrictions and maybe the opportunities to travel abroad are only given to people who have displayed fealty to the state.

One of the things I am told to look out for in Cuba is--Cuba, of course, being an island nation--you would expect to have lots of boats all around the island for people to go and fish, people just to take advantage of the Caribbean. But in fact, there are very few boats because Cuba is a socialist country and they are afraid people would use those boats to leave the country. That is another trait that you have in advanced socialism.

Other things they may stamp down on you for, they restrict your free speech because they don't want anybody saying anything that might be something the government disagrees with.

If you look at Communist China, even though to a degree they have a free market, the huge government, because they are afraid of any dissent, anybody telling the truth, cracks down on churches. It seems hard to believe that you cannot openly talk about Christianity, openly talk about Christ in China, but I am afraid you can't.

You hear about Falun Gong in China saying things that maybe aren't approved by the government and therefore people crack down on that organization as well.

In any event, when young people say they are for socialism or if you have any children or grandchildren out there who say there is socialism, point out to them the inevitable lack of freedom that comes with it, that a high number of people have to work for the government. And if you have to work for the government, they can promote you or hire you or fire you based upon political beliefs, based upon religious beliefs.

In a free market system, there are really an almost unlimited number of people you can work with. There are so many different businesses in the free market system. If you don't like to work for someone else, you can always start your own business. That is something that you can't do under socialism, or they want to make it very difficult.

So I am glad that the United States Congress, at least later this week or early next week, is going to go on record saying that we don't like socialism. It should be completely unnecessary. And the fact that so many young people think socialism might be okay is really a damning indictment of the educational, both K-12 and university, system in this country.

Mr. Speaker, sometimes the press--when a story goes on for months and months--begins to not pay attention or address things they ought to be addressing. I am going to briefly address the Ukraine war.

It sure would be wonderful if that war ended. There are different estimates as to the number of people killed in that war, but I think all estimates would put it over 20,000 people.

This--for countries that, quite frankly, have problems and a shortage of people--is not frequently commented on, but Ukraine has the second lowest birth rate of any sizable country in the world. Russia also has a low birth rate and has a lot of people immigrating.

I would hope the press, or our government would look for somebody--we can't do it--but look for some country, France, Turkey, Israel, someone to broker peace here before any more people die, and the hatred that inevitably comes with war becomes greater and greater.

Mr. Speaker, we have an ongoing saga which the mainstream media has begun to wake up to, but they are still not publicizing enough; and that is what is going on at our southern border.

I stand today because last Friday--always on Friday when the President is paying attention--the numbers for December came out as far as illegal immigrants entering the country. They hit an all-time high again. Mr. Speaker, 238,000 illegal immigrants stayed in the country from December 2022. This is not inevitable.

Two years ago, before this administration, in December of 2020, there were about 21,000 immigrants. So we have gone from 21,000 to 238,000 with, I assume, a corresponding increase in the amount of fentanyl coming across the border. Of those 238,000, over 8,000 were unaccompanied minors coming here without a family.

I don't know where these people were or are today who supposedly care about keeping families together when over 8,000 children come here unaccompanied by their parents.

In any event, I hope the American public wakes up and talks a little bit more about the all-time record number of illegal immigrants coming here in December.

Mr. Speaker, we have another issue I think that this body ought to take up and that the news media ought to be looking into--and that is another cost of the huge number of illegal immigrants entering this country.

It has been brought to my attention by property developers that we already have a shortage of over 4 million rental units or residential units in the country. When we let in another 2 million people a year, what do you think happens?

It further causes a shortage of rental units and sometimes single- family units in this country, which results in what?

The law of supply and demand is driving up rents because of all the people coming in the country. We know already--a huge, new expense for schools as we have to educate illegals. We know about President Biden's vow to pay for free healthcare for illegals, which he is fulfilling.

But for the individual looking for rental units, is their rent going up $100, $200, or $300 as we continue to have this shortage.

It is time the press got on this issue. It is time that the Congress got on this issue, and let people know--particularly in the southern United States--if your rents are going up, it is because of all these people that are being allowed in the country.

Mr. Speaker, as has been mentioned, prior to 1973, there would be what I would consider a consensus in this country that it would be horrific to prematurely kill a child in the womb.

At the time, as a practical matter, there were only two or three States in which abortion was legal, and there were times in this country before then in which every State considered abortion illegal.

We know what happened after Roe v. Wade. Over the next 50 years, over 73 million lives were cut short, people who would have had long lives and accomplished who knows how much. You can imagine how America would have changed if those people had actually lived.

Recently, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and there was a lot of elation because of that. However, since that time, I think six States have had referendums.

While it was widely believed that abortion should be illegal in 1973, despite the fact that we had ultrasounds at that time, despite the fact that again and again in workplaces we pass around pictures with the ultrasounds showing children at 3, 4, or 5 months old, American opinion was a disappointment. Even in conservative States like Michigan, Kansas, Montana, and Kentucky, the public voted pro-abortion.

What can we make of this? Because we have had the ultrasound in between Roe v. Wade and now, we have to say that, unfortunately, the people who should have been educating the public have failed to do their duty. The churches in the last 50 years allowed this shift of opinion to happen.

By the way, it should have been easy to explain why abortion was horrific because of the huge increase in ultrasounds. Instead, we are joining a handful of countries--Vietnam, North Korea, Red China--out there saying abortion should be legal in some States through birth. Is this how we repay our maker for this wonderful country that we have?

I call upon America to call upon the churches to educate the public on what is right and wrong, that every one of these children is a gift from God, and that it is time for America to wake up.

I do believe right now we have, as with so many other issues, a problem with the clergy in the country, but I hope Americans can ask their clergymen where they are when these decisions are being made all around the country and where they are when these referendums are coming before the people. We need more help from the mute clergy.