Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, 150 years ago, four young entrepreneurs--John Kimberly, Charles Clark, Frank Shattuck and Havilah Babcock--signed a partnership and invested a total of $30,000 to build a paper mill and established Kimberly, Clark & Company. Kimberly, Clark & Co.'s resulting Globe mill and its 40 employees began making newsprint on October 22, 1872. Since then, this company has invented five of the eight major consumer product categories it offers--facial tissue, paper towels, toilet tissue on a roll, feminine hygiene pads and disposable training pants. Kimberly-Clark is now a global consumer products manufacturer whose brands include Kleenex, Cottonelle, Depend, Kotex, Huggies, and Pull-Ups. Led by CEO Mike Hsu, Kimberly-Clark employs more than 45,000 people and has net sales exceeding $19 billion annually. While Kimberly-Clark now does business in 175 countries, it still has a substantial amount of its manufacturing in Wisconsin and has been an incredible community partner in the local area. Kimberly- Clark has donated tens of millions of dollars over the decades to local non-profits, as well as volunteer hours and countless product donations to help make life better for those in need. Again, congratulations to Kimberly Clark on 150 years of success. It is an honor to represent them and so many of their employees in Congress. I will continue to advocate for pro-business and pro-worker policies in Congress and look forward to seeing where this great company goes in the future.

Mr. Speaker, from time to time we talk about the crisis at the border, but we still don't talk about it enough. A lot of times I get people saying, well, maybe these are all wonderful people, maybe they will get a job. It is still a big problem because you are having people skip in line ahead of people who are doing things right.

But something came out in the last few weeks that ought to have people really mad--it maybe should even wake up the Biden administration, who has done so much, I think, to permanently damage this country--and that is news that Venezuela may be sending people here out of their prisons.

Can you imagine any quicker way to ruin America than to accept people from other countries who are emptying out their prisons?

But that is apparently what is going on.

And nothing is done. We still have over 150,000 people a month crossing the border, even now, knowing that probably we are getting people who are committing crimes, heinous crimes in Venezuela, and sending them here, and the communist government of Venezuela, I am sure, is laughing all the way.

Please, America, and, please, our comatose press corps, wake up and educate America that we may be ruined because we have criminals coming here from Venezuela and allowed to cross the border.

Mr. Speaker, there are so many things we can talk about, so many challenges for the American people over the next few months as they try to restore America to its place as the envy of the world, a great country.

We could be talking about immigration and 150,000 people a month crossing the border. We could talk about the divisive rhetoric from way too many Democrats finding racism here, there, and everywhere, and blaming all of America's problems on racism.

We could be talking about other problems. But tonight we are going to be talking about the ridiculous amount of overspending, which is debasing the value of the dollar and resulting in the inflation that is hurting and harming American families so much, be it the cost of cars, be it the cost of food, be it the cost of energy.

America must not forget where this inflation came from. It came from the American Rescue Plan, one of the first bills passed under President Biden. It was continued by the infrastructure bill, another over $1 trillion of spending. And, finally, the reduce inflation act, another $700 billion. This is in addition to the large increases in the regular budgets Congress always passes.

We have been out of control on the regular budgets, and now you hear these three additional bills, which are causing the huge increases in prices that you see at the gas pump, but even more at the grocery store and at restaurants, and when you are looking to buy a house or rent.

Where did this come from? It is not a natural thing to happen.

It came because of out-of-control spending on all three of these bills. And worse, in addition to the out-of-control spending leading to the inflation, we have where the money went. We are spending more and more money on programs conditioned upon not working very hard, programs conditioned to take the benefit of not getting married.

So in addition to, I assume, intentional desire to debase the currency, we continue down the path of moral decline as we encourage money to be spent in the wrong place.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage the American people in the future, when you decide how you want your country governed, when you go to your Representative's office hours back home, when you call your Congressman, ask them: Where do you stand on these big spending programs? And now we have another one coming down the pike, another $400 billion in student loan debt forgiveness.

Where is that money going to come from?

I will tell you where the money is going to come from. To a certain extent it is going to be paid by future generations, but more immediately it is going to be paid for by the American public again. The $400 billion will result in higher gas prices, higher food prices, higher automobile prices--that is where the money is going to come from.

Wake up, America, these things are not free. The politicians who have passed these programs in the past are responsible for the additional amount of money we are spending.

There are a variety of things that we could look at. We worry so much about this great America that was built by our ancestors, all the people who died in the wars, that we may have this great, free country, and we see it slipping away as we have out-of-control politicians--as people frequently say happens in democracies--politicians buying votes by spending more money on everybody under the sun. That is where this inflation comes from.

Please, America, wake up. Like I said, we could talk about what is going on at the border. We could talk about inflation. We could talk about the attack on the police, and with the attacks on the police the inevitable rise in crimes because the police are afraid to do what they want.

Tonight, we talk about the out-of-control spending as way too many Americans, including a lot of businesses, by the way, again and again come to their Congressmen and ask for more free money. It wasn't free. I hope the next time you go to the grocery store or the next time you go to buy a new car and you see the huge sticker shock, you remember the politicians who are bragging about all the new money they are spending.

Madam Speaker, over the last couple of weeks, there have been stories again about our southern border, which I think is the biggest crisis facing America today.

We will refresh the American public and remind them that whereas 2 years ago, 5,000 to 10,000 people were crossing our border and being let in the country, we have now, in an average month, over 150,000 entering the country.

In any event, there are rumors that, right now, Venezuela is--as there were rumors about Cuba about 40 years ago--letting people who are prisoners out of Venezuela to come to the United States.

Given that Venezuela considers the United States an enemy, a country that they are hostile to, why wouldn't they? The question is, where is the press corps? And why isn't the press corps demanding more information about the type of people that are crossing our southern border and particularly about Venezuelans who are coming in the country and whether there are any particular traits that these people have?

I beg the press corps to wake up a little bit and do a little research here.

Madam Speaker, I would like to talk about several issues which have either not been covered enough lately or not covered in the appropriate way.

The first thing I would like to talk about is the loan forgiveness program and the recent change in the law increasing public loan forgiveness.

When my constituents back home ask me, what is the biggest problem? I say, well, we certainly have problems with the economy, we certainly have problems with education, we certainly have problems with crime-- but I say the biggest problem is we are in a moral breakdown in this country.

I would like to address the way the loan forgiveness program and public loan forgiveness is changing America, I think, for the worst.

The first thing I would like to address is the fact that this institution has apparently felt that you are a lot better off, or it should be much easier for you to have your loan forgiven if you work for a nonprofit organization or a governmental entity.

Now, whenever I go around my district, the manufacturers, the farmers, a couple of big insurance companies, they are all looking for more people to work. But the message out of Washington is, don't work for business, which, after all, is the engine that really makes our country go around. It shows kind of a hatred for manufacturers, a hatred for agriculture, a hatred of retail, a hatred of insurance.

People working in this building who work with our government employees, their staff is government employees, apparently felt: Well, I think those hardworking people in government, they ought to be offered a tremendous benefit that people who don't work for the government don't get. We are going to find a way to forgive the people's loans if they are the nice, noble people who work for government. And if they are somebody who, say, works for a manufacturer--which is so important for the country--well, we don't care about those people. We hate those people.

The next message in our loan forgiveness policy is the dislike of people who don't go to college. One of my goals in the legislature-- which I think I am succeeding at a little bit--is educating people about all the good, necessary jobs we have in our country that don't require a 4-year college degree.

Recently, The Wall Street Journal pointed out--I am told--that if you are a plumber and compare your lifelong earnings to someone who is a general practitioner, it is about the same. We so desperately need more people in the

trades. We so desperately need more people who are skilled in the manufacturing field.

But what do we do here?

We turn around and put them or their children in greater debt with this loan forgiveness program or it will likely drive up insurance more with the loan forgiveness program that is going to cost over $300 billion a year.

We benefit the people who go to college. We treat the people who don't go to college like dirt: No, you are not getting anything, inflation is going to go up and hurt you because we have to give money to the people who went to college.

The next bad message that it sends is, I think it is discriminating against the hardworking.

I ran into somebody recently, heard about somebody who got a nice job out of college, but with pride he said he was going to work extra hard and pay off that student loan. So he got a job as an Uber driver and he got a job as a bartender. I am sure between them both he was working well over 60, 65 hours a week but he was proud to pre-pay that student loan.

And what does the government say to somebody who works especially hard and pays off their student loan?

Sucker. We are going to give the same benefit to someone who didn't work that second or third job.

Again, you are eating away at the moral fiber of America.

The next group is the frugal. I always thought it was wise to be frugal, wise to be debt-free, pay off that debt before you take out your credit card and buy a fancier car or buy more furniture or buy a fancy vacation or something. But we look at the people who are frugal and use their frugality to pay off their student loan. Again, we say: Sucker, you shouldn't have paid off your student loan. The government will pay off the student loan for somebody who wasn't as frugal, and we consider you kind of foolish for being frugal.

And the final thing I would point out is that under the proposed forgiveness by President Biden, we give out twice the forgiveness if you originally took out Pell grants.

Now, one of the problems I have talked about with the Pell grants in the past is that it is easier to get a Pell grant if you are not married, which probably isn't a good thing, but that is the way it is.

Now, you already get the benefit of the Pell Grant for not being married in the first place. Now we double the amount of loan forgiveness if you wind up originally getting this additional boost with the Pell grant.

So, again, it is sending the wrong message to people. In addition to the fact that it is another $360 billion log on the fire of inflation. And then people will pretend they don't know where inflation came from. But when the Treasury is spending 360 billion bucks, that is where the inflation came from.

The next thing I am going to address is what is going on at the border. And as I mentioned before, this is another topic that the press underreports.

Earlier this week, one more time, we had the information come out on the number of people who came across the border in August. It varies from month to month, between 140,000 and 180,000 people crossing the border. But that is just totally inappropriate. It makes a mockery of our immigration laws to people who are doing it right.

We know that some of these people, after all, had to break the law to come here, and are going to be disproportionately in a situation in which they have to take advantage of the public benefits of this country. And we don't know whether they have been adequately blended into America, think like Americans, think with the self-reliance that Americans should have. I don't think any serious country believes in open borders, except for we do here.

In addition to the obvious problem of the adults coming here, we have--depending on the month--about 10,000 unaccompanied minors coming here to be dropped off, presumably at relatives, somebody or other. I don't know where the press is that always worries about broken families, when our open borders results in 9,000 or 10,000 people, who at least claim to be minors, without a parent around.

The next problem, a humanitarian problem, when you have such a huge number of people crossing the border, people die coming over the border. The last time I was down on the border, they found two bodies of people around San Diego and the Pacific Ocean. We were told it was more common to find bodies on the Mexican side of the border. We hear about people dehydrating to death in the Arizona desert. We hear about people drowning in the Rio Grande.

Nevertheless, these things are not talked about. They are an inevitable consequence of sending a message to people all around the globe that we don't care what happens at the border.

Another problem is, depending on the person, they frequently are charged $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 to come here. Who is benefiting by this?

The Border Patrol believes that the drug cartels are right now making more money smuggling people across the border than they do selling drugs.

So what is the effect of the drug cartels making more money? It gives them even more of a stranglehold on our southern neighbor, Mexico, which is quickly becoming more and more of a narco State.

I think part of that is our fault in America for having too many people consume drugs that are snuck in across the southern border. But some of the fault also has to lie in this open-door policy pursued by the Biden administration as the Mexican drug cartels get wealthier and wealthier and wealthier.

Another thing to point out is we are not inappropriate otherwise as far as letting people in this country. Depending on the year, we have over 800,000 new people sworn in as American citizens. That is certainly very generous, particularly when compared to other countries. Meanwhile, we have a situation in which we are encouraging people to come here right now.

Madam Speaker, 65 percent of the bursts of illegal immigrants are people on Medicaid, which would indicate that it is still a greater burden on our budget to have more people come here.

The American Medical Association points out the huge number of illegals who show up in emergency rooms. Of course, as a practical matter, they are in charge of this if something passes through to the other people who are paying for their medical care. But, again, we have to say one of the reasons for the spiraling costs of medical care in this country is people who show up in the emergency rooms and don't pay. That would be illegals.

I recently talked to someone who operates a free clinic in my district. And they told me that a significant number of the people that they deal with at the free clinic are people here illegally.

This could become even greater if eventually President Biden gets his dream--it could very easily happen if the elections go away. I don't want to have them go away--in which we give Pell grants to people who come here illegally which results in close to a free college education that the American middle class doesn't get. But apparently an inducement to have more people come here is we are going to give Pell grants to people who come here illegally.

I hope that the American press corps pays more attention to the numbers introduced earlier this week, as far as the number of people who came here illegally in August. It should be a banner headline. It will be a permanent change in America when over 150,000 people come here.

And I should point out that as more people come here, it doesn't mean we are kicking out more people who break our laws. At the same time, we are deporting only about a quarter of the number of people who President Trump was deporting for breaking the law. So we are, in essence, allowing more people who are criminally prone to come into this country.

The next issue I want to talk about that the press should be paying attention to: I recently talked to someone who claims that in the military, where they had required vaccines, we have recently heard of increases in miscarriages, cancer, blood clots, neurological complications, and deaths.

I would hope the press would dig into this, make some freedom of information requests. If it really is true, as my friend tells me, that there is an increase in medical problems at the same time that our military was required to get the vaccine, it is something we should know not only for the benefit of the military but the rest of America as well.

I haven't seen this being adequately covered given the huge amount of

money we are putting in these vaccines, as well as the fact that we are encouraging children to get these vaccines. I would hope that a lot of attention is being paid to the effect of vaccines on the primarily young military population, and a population that is generally in shape.

The next thing that not only the press should be paying attention to but, quite frankly, the business lobbyists should be paying attention to is something called the PRO Act.

The PRO Act passed the House of Representatives two terms in a row. It is being held up in the Senate right now only because of the filibuster rule. Depending upon what happens in the elections in November, one could easily see the PRO Act become law.

The American public does not know what is in the PRO Act. Lobbyists in this building, who should know better, don't know about the PRO Act. We are very close to changing the labor laws in this country where you can wind up having an election to unionize with only 14 days' advance notice. These elections would take place with an open ballot. You fill out your ballot, and people can know how you vote. If it is perceived that the management team did something untoward during the election, the labor relations board can deem there to be a union, even though nobody even voted to be unionized.

It can create a situation in which different franchisees can be lumped together, and even though no employees in one location want to unionize, they can be forced into a union.

It would be a fundamental change in the way we do business in this country. I have nothing against people who belong to a union, but this would overwhelmingly shift the bias toward forcing people to join a union when they don't necessarily want to. It is something our business groups, whatever association it is, should familiarize themselves with and make sure their members know what could very easily happen.

I also think the PRO Act has been very underpublicized by our press corps. If it turns out in January that we begin down a process of mass unionization and we go down a path in which all employees' numbers have to be turned over--their address, their email address, their phone number--without their say so, the American public ought to know what they are voting for in November.

I don't believe the press corps in this country has adequately explained to both management, employees, everybody, how close we are to that PRO Act becoming law. Everybody ought to know it. I think it would be devastating for American business, particularly American business that has to compete abroad, if the PRO Act were to pass. But if it passes, I bet very few people will understand what effect this election has on it.

There is another significant bill that is being held back only because of the filibuster rule in the Senate. Even though this bill passed this session, the average American does not know how close we are to this becoming law. I speak about the LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act.

In this act, both for the purpose of censuses and other government forms, American citizens and American children will be asked to declare a sexual preference or sexual identity, be it bisexual, be it binary, be it transgender, what-have-you. I think this is highly offensive. There was a time when the gay rights movement meant we weren't supposed to ask what people do in bed. Now, it is going to be the government's business, and you are going to be asked to declare your sexual preference, which by itself is outlandish.

But just as outlandish is this declaring goes all the way down to kids who are 7 or 6 or 5 years old. Now, there the form may be filled out by parents or by a teacher. It includes forms other than just the census, forms that school districts are required to fill out.

Nevertheless, I think it is a fundamental change in America that we are going to be collecting data on sexual preferences from any age group. Outlandish for age 5; outlandish for age 12. But this, to me, is a fundamental change in the way America operates, and the information that people are supposed to turn over to the government is a fundamental change.

I would be surprised if one out of 300 Americans knew we are so close to making that requirement in the United States. I hope that our slumbering press corps--I don't mean to refer to them that way--but I hope that the average American knows how close we are to that bill becoming law.

The next issue that I think we ought to look at a little bit concerns the continued effort to claim we have a huge racism problem in this country. I do not believe we have a racism problem in the country. The easiest way to see that is when you look and see how well the immigrants who just come here are able to do, despite the fact that many of the immigrants who come here don't even know English.

I have recently spoken to people from the Hmong community, from the Indian community, and from the Filipino community, and all of them are so happy to be in America and think America is the land of opportunity, that people do so well in America.

I talked to a Hmong individual recently, and he had between himself, his children, and his siblings' children, about 30 children or nieces or nephews. Every one of them is thriving in America. Nobody has broken any laws. They all have decent jobs. They are educated in one fashion or another. These are people who came here from an entirely different culture. Many were not Christian. Their parents or grandparents did not know English when they came here, but they thrive in America.

I have been talking to some Indian immigrants, and they say how wonderful the opportunity is here. Again, I talked to somebody recently who came here, didn't know any English. He had to start out as a dishwasher. He worked his way up and is doing fantastically well in America. The fact that he is of Indian heritage had no effect on him whatsoever, and he couldn't think of any way in which he had been discriminated against. Same thing is true with somebody from the Philippines.

But what do we get here out of Washington? We get Joe Biden talking about we have to pass a bill--I will talk about in a second--we have to make it easier to sue police, in part, because we perceive the police are prejudiced.

We continue to promote the Black Lives Matter movement, which is built on the lie that we have a huge problem with racist police in this country. But nevertheless, we coddle them, people give them money, and they are treated with respect.

In our election law, we are told we have to get rid of photo ID, something that many other countries have, because it is racist to require photo ID. That is some horrible slander that Joe Biden has against the people of this country.

I would ask that the press begin to treat these claims of racism a little more skeptically. I think they should ask people details when they claim racism is a big problem, because it is not without harm. I think it causes people to walk around with a chip on their shoulder. I think that it causes unnecessary divisions in Americans. I think America has been a melting pot my whole life and well before I was born.

People come here from all around the globe. I should point out that insofar as there are ethnic problems, they are frequently greater in other countries. That is one thing that people from India pointed out to me, that there are problems between different religious groups or ethnic groups in India in which people even get killed. There is nothing like that in the United States.

It is time the politicians of this building, rather than trying to take political advantage of the grievances that they try to bring up, they should tell people that anybody who works hard in America has an opportunity to succeed and that that is something they can be proud of about of America. They can just use their common sense.

If you are down at the border, the people who come here, come here from all around the globe, because they know that despite the fact they might not know the native language, despite the fact that they don't have a job lined up when they get here--whether you are coming here from Peru or Cuba or Ecuador or Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, anywhere--you are going to be better off in the United States. Not Christian, not northern European, not European at all, you are still going to be better off in the United States.

So many immigrants have told me there is unlimited opportunity in the

United States. That is why they are here. One of the major reasons, I think, why some people don't succeed in taking advantage of that opportunity is because they are told by opportunistic politicians that America is a racist country and you cannot succeed in America.

The final comment that I think the press should be picking up going into the election cycle is a law that right now has passed the House twice but has only not passed the Senate because of the filibuster rule, which could change with a shift in just two votes in the U.S. Senate, is the law making it easier to sue police.

There are a variety of reasons why crime has gone up so dramatically in this country in the last 2 years, and there is no question that part of it is we are not adequately funding our police departments. But even more than that, we are not speaking positively about police. Now, we have a bill out there making it easier to sue police if they handcuff somebody or if they wrestle with somebody.

This rhetoric from politicians and also this proposed law causes police, I think, to be very reluctant to physically engage somebody, very reluctant to be aggressive. As a result, we have in Milwaukee, the city of my birth, and many other urban cities, including Washington and Baltimore, right up the freeway, dramatic increases in the number of homicides. It didn't just happen. It happened, in part, because of rhetoric from politicians tearing down police, encouraging lack of respect for the law.

The final highlight of this drive to dislike police could easily happen in January when we get rid of the limited immunity that police currently have if they have to engage someone. It would dramatically change policing, make it more difficult to find police, and make it easier to sue police.

I hope our press corps pays special attention to these laws, which did not pass out of this Congress, but passed only out of the House. But if there is a slight shift in the partisan makeup in January, they could easily become law. The American citizens ought to know about these laws before they go to vote in November. I am afraid they are not going to know it, because they are not adequately covered by our slumbering journalists.

I ask one more time that they pay attention to laws related to racism; laws related to suing police; laws related to the LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act, in which they go around and try to collect data on sexual preferences from all Americans; and the PRO Act, in which we, I think, just shamefully tip the balance of the scales toward forcing people to become members of a union.

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

Mr. Speaker, I arrived 20 seconds late in a meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 441.

Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress

Baird (Bucshon)

Bass (Correa)

Boebert (Gaetz)

Chu (Beyer)

Conway (Valadao)

Garcia (IL) (Correa)

Gomez (Evans)

Gottheimer (Neguse)

Johnson (TX) (Jeffries)

Jones (Beyer)

Kirkpatrick (Pallone)

Lamb (Pallone)

Lawrence (Stevens)

McEachin (Beyer)

McHenry (Donalds)

Meng (Escobar)

Napolitano (Correa)

Newman (Beyer)

Palazzo (Fleischmann)

Ruiz (Correa)

Rush (Bowman)

Ryan (OH) (Correa)

Sanchez (Pallone)

Soto (Wasserman Schultz)

Swalwell (Correa)

Vargas (Correa)

Waltz (Gimenez)

Madam Speaker, I bring attention to the American people of what should be the number one story in every newspaper in the country tomorrow, but we know they won't even cover it.

Today were released the encounters and releases at the southern border for August--just shy of 140,000 people. By

comparison, 2 years ago in August of the prior administration, it was 13,000. So, in 2 years, we have gone from 13,000 to 140,000.

That also means a corresponding increase in the amount of fentanyl crossing the border, and we all know that, right now, we have well over 100,000 illegal drug deaths in America, and of those 100,000, the vast majority contain fentanyl.

I also point out that, right now, the deportations are about one quarter per day as to what they were for people committing crimes 2 years ago.

I want the American people to wake up and demand something serious be done on the border, and I beg the press corps to talk about the new August numbers for people crossing here illegally.

Mr. Speaker, the 87,000 figure is entirely reasonable, given we have an $80 billion increase. Now, is it exact? It might be 86,500. I don't know. It is a big number.

First of all, it is that many more people monitoring Americans. Anybody that wants a free society should be afraid of that.

Secondly, with 86,500 people poking around small business, it means that much more accountant time that has to be paid for by the small businesses. It means that many more lawyers hired by the small businesses. It is really an accountant and legal make-work program. Auditing on this scale will really change the amount of time you have to deal with this.

Other things, you are getting rid of--I am very disappointed--the good provision you had with regard to carried interest. You are finally going after some of the billionaires of this country, and I wish you wouldn't have caved into the Senate and removed that provision. That was a very good thing.

Next, you have way too much corporate welfare in here. $134 billion in tax credits for so-called favored green industries. What is it? It is that many more businesses depending upon government, and their way to make money is not by providing something the American citizen wants. They are making money because of tax credits they have been given by Congress.

Otherwise, the bill is full of other big spending, as well. There is a 22 percent increase in Bureau of Indian Affairs, 22 percent at a time when we are choking on inflation because of excessive government spending. That is one more spending program to put in here.

Mr. Speaker, everybody is obsessed with inflation, as well they should be obsessed, but there are so many stories out there that the mainstream media is not covering that the American public ought to be aware of.

Right now, ICE is proposing identification cards for illegal immigrants. First of all, we have a situation in which there are over 170,000 people allowed in this country every month who should probably not even be here illegally.

Why is this?

Already we promised free healthcare, and I think in many cases people coming here illegally are getting more healthcare or easier access to healthcare than people are originally. They are allowed to travel all around the country.

Now there is already a concern in my State that many illegal immigrants are getting public benefits, as well. I am afraid that these cards will be used to further solidify the programs to give free public benefits to those people who shouldn't be here.

I hope the press looks into it.

Mr. Speaker, we all know that inflation is the big topic on people's tongues nowadays, but what we can't let people forget is that high inflation is caused by high spending.

Now, what did Congress do after returning to this floor this week and spending the weekend hearing people complain about high gas prices, but even more high housing prices, high food prices? They passed the CHIPS bill today for $76 billion.

Now, I know why they thought they could vote for a $76 billion bill. They thought the public wouldn't know the difference between $76 billion and $76 million. $76 billion is $230 for every man, woman, and child in this country. If you are a family of four, Congress just spent $1,000 of your money and didn't think anything about it.

Now, the other thing that bothers me about it is, I like to look out for the average guy. Who owns these chip companies? The uber wealthy. Seventy-six billion dollars toward the uber wealthy and corporate welfare.

A lot of people think the majority party likes to freely spend money for welfare, for the people who don't work. And that is true; they do. What is not as known is they love to spend money on the uber wealthy as well.

Every newspaper in the country ought to have a banner headline in the morning: ``$76 billion spent again by Congress.''

Madam Speaker, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 397.

Madam Speaker, I think we need a little more talk about inflation. I know when we get home it is always the number one issue that is out there. I don't think there has been enough talk about how the inflation came about.

The inflation came about because of excessive spending. Every middle school student should know that if the Federal Government spends wildly more on the amount going out than the amount going in, the Federal Reserve has to, in essence, print the dollars to make those payments, and when the Federal Reserve prints more dollars, the value of the dollar drops, which is why we have these huge spending increases.

Now, I will make a couple of comments on them.

First of all, I think the numbers that we are supposed to talk about, the 9.1 increase in inflation, are woefully underrated. Here is the graph that all of us politicos are supposed to talk about.

Does anybody believe that the cost of shelter in the last 12 months has only gone up 5.6 percent? Where is the press? They ought to be making fun of that number.

When I talk to my landlords, when I talk to my builders, nobody thinks things have gone up only 5.6 percent in the last year. I think the cost of a new house has gone up 20 to 25 percent. I think the cost of rentals has gone up by 10 or 15 percent. It is way more than the 5.6 percent on this chart.

The same thing is true of automobiles. They tell us used automobiles have gone up by about 11.4 percent in the last year. Talk to your car dealers. They will laugh at the idea that used cars have only gone up by 11.4 percent in the last year.

Things are much worse than the numbers that are put out there by the Biden administration. Therefore, the American public is suffering a lot more than even this so-called record inflation increase of 9.1. It is much more than that.

But once we get done looking at that, let's look at the new spending bills that are coming out. Have people learned their lesson? All of a sudden, we are going to produce even on the relatively small part of the budget, this discretionary spending, which is the part we vote on around here? Are we going to do something to maybe have no increase there or 2 or 3 percent increase there? No.

When we look at the bills, some of which we passed last week, and they break up what I think the people at home would call the budget into a variety of different bills, military construction and veterans affairs, people want an 18 percent increase for the year beginning October 1; financial services and general government, 17 percent increase; the Department of the Interior and the environment, up 18 percent.

In other words, even after the horrific inflation, when we come back to the regular budget, this place has the pedal to the metal, trying to spend another huge amount.

I think the press ought to wake up and pay attention to both of these issues. I beg the press to talk to your local car dealers, to talk to your local landlords and see: Have we only had a 5.6 percent increase in shelter? Have we only had a 7.1 percent increase in used cars? No way. They are giving us numbers that are much lower than the reality.

The press ought to look at this, and rather than just sleepwalk through these budgets that get passed around here, we ought to be paying a little bit more attention to the sizable increases in these budgets, line by line, or the amount of inflation we have seen so far would be a drop in the bucket. Wake up, American press corps.

Madam Speaker, I ask that my name be removed as cosponsor of H.R. 8167.

Mr. Chair, I have seven amendments in the en bloc, and I will talk on two issues, in general, that cover, I think, all of the amendments.

The first thing is an overall concern of spending. It is a lot easier to break an economy than to fix an economy. And the American Rescue Plan and the very high-spending infrastructure bill--between them, spending over $3 trillion--I think is the primary reason for the huge inflation we are having to deal with today.

Look at these underlying bills--the T-HUD bill, up 12 percent; financial services--in general government up 17 percent--these programs have to be held at an even or slight decrease level for years to make up for the damage that was done with those two big bills.

I am not going to say there wasn't damage done before that. I think a little bit of the COVID bills that were originally signed by the prior President were not exactly the most frugal things either, but everybody knew at the time this was a problem. And my amendments are along the lines of not destroying programs, not taking out programs altogether, but going back to the amount that was spent last year, or the amount that was spent in President Obama's final year.

I sometimes use President Obama's final year to show that I am not being reckless here, but what I am saying is, there ought to be a little bit of restraint in the Committee on Appropriations and a little bit of restraint of the new bills coming out.

A couple of my amendments also address this obsession with hiring bureaucrats to enforce diversity. America is supposed to be a country in which we view ourselves as individuals. There are people who, I think, want to destroy America, and try to set one group against the other group.

When I look in my district, I know a lot of people who are Hmong. I recently got to know a lot of people from India. I know people from Russia. They have had no problem succeeding in America. And they all tell me the same thing: The easiest place in the world to succeed is America.

But there are people who try to divide us and set up programs in which you say, I am not going to succeed because of who I am. I want to succeed as a group of people determined by where my ancestors were born three or five or ten generations ago.

Not only are these programs, first of all, a waste of money. We have to have some people administer the programs, we have nowhere near enough people to work in American business as it is.

Secondly, they are designed to train people that what goes on in Washington is a fight or a contest between ethnic groups--that is a cancerous way to think. The fact that so many immigrants come here without even being able to speak English and succeed, wildly show it as a lie. I am trying to reduce funding or get rid of funding all together for some of these programs.

Mr. Speaker, I will talk about a variety of issues tonight. I will start one more time. I direct this talk not only to the Chair, not only to my colleagues in the legislature, but also the press corps that normally doesn't cover this because I think I am going to touch on some stories that ought to appear in the press corps but for whatever reason they don't.

The first thing, and I have addressed it several times from this microphone, is what is our goal in Ukraine, okay?

It would seem to me a good goal would be to end the war. We have a lot of Ukrainian troops who have died; we have a lot of Russian troops who have died; we have a lot of Ukrainian civilians who have died; and it seems to me that every week or month that the war goes by, those numbers get greater and greater.

Not only that, but particularly Russia is also a country with access to horrific weapons, and every week or month that goes by, the chances that eventually some horrific weapons will have to be used goes up.

I will also point out with regard to these two countries, not that losing any young life isn't a tragedy, but it would seem to me there would be special tragedies in these countries because both countries have low birth rates and declining numbers of young people. For two countries that have been around--I believe Ukraine has been--for millennia, we would kind of like to see these countries continue to exist into the future.

Of sizable countries around the world, Ukraine has the second lowest birthrate, trailing only South Korea. There are also people who emigrate from Ukraine. In any event, I would think one of the primary goals of Ukraine is to make sure that they hang onto the young people they have left.

Russia is in a similar situation. They also have a low birthrate. I repeated this story about 7 months ago before this war began. I was at the San Diego sector of our southern border, and San Diego is only one tiny sector of a large border, and it was only talking about the week or month that I was there, but in any event, at that time, the second biggest nationality crossing our border came from Russia, which kind of surprised me.

So not only do they have a low birthrate in Russia, we have a lot of people emigrating. It would seem to me a primary goal of the governments of both Russia and Ukraine is to make sure the few young people they have left don't die in a war.

Now, I do not know what President Biden's goal here is in this war. I try to talk to some Democrat colleagues; I try to talk to people who should know President Biden. I think he himself may be a little bit mixed on the situation, but the press corps ought to be calling upon him and saying: What is your goal in this war? Is our goal to end the war and perhaps give President Putin an off-ramp; give Mr. Zelenskyy an off-ramp; find a way for both to declare some sort of victory and stop the carnage? Or is our goal to continue on for another 6 months or year or 2 years, and we don't care if another 5,000 or 10,000 or 15,000 Russian or 15,000 Ukrainian troops die; not to mention the monetary damages that take place when you have a war in your country?

I would like to know where President Biden stands on this. We collectively have not had a decent briefing for congressional Members since March 31. And given that we have been asked to give tens of millions of dollars to Ukraine--this week we were asked to affirm or accede in the policy of adding Sweden and Finland to NATO--I don't think it is too much to ask that the administration invite its key Cabinet members over here, as they did in February and March, and let us know where the Biden administration stands on this war.

I don't think we have such a great relationship right now with Russia that we can moderate a conclusion to the war, but I think perhaps Israel, perhaps Turkey, perhaps some other country should do that, and perhaps we could grease the skids a little bit.

I mean, I realize back home right now everybody is focusing on inflation, but I will tell you if something bad happens in Ukraine, people are going to be focusing on that very, very quickly.

It would be a lot better if we wrapped up this war. I know there are hard feelings that will probably last for generations, but nevertheless I think the United States had very good relations with Russia only a few months ago. It would be good if we were able to wrap up this war, and it would be good if President Biden, if it was clear that we knew that his administration was working his way toward that.

So, again, I ask the press corps to kind of lean in a little bit on President Biden, find out where he is. I ask my Democratic colleagues in particular, insofar as they have access to the administration, to point out that it would be good to end this war, good to find countries that would mediate ending this war, and insofar as people on that side of the aisle get to see President Biden, carry that message to him.

Vitamin D and COVID

Another topic that I have addressed before from this microphone but haven't talked about for a couple months, so I am going to bring up again is that of vitamin D. People know I have talked about it before, but it bothers me that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis has not really addressed this issue.

The most recent study that came out was that done by an Israeli researcher, and in that study, it indicated that if you had inadequate amounts of vitamin D, which I believe he described as 20 nanograms per milliliter, that you were 11 times more likely to die of COVID than if you had adequate amounts.

If you break it down by race--and I don't like it when we break things out by race, but I am going to do it for these purposes--it is even scarier in that studies show that 35 percent of the White population is inadequate in vitamin D, 57 percent Hispanic, and 85 percent Black, which means having an adequate amount of vitamin D in your system should be a huge priority for people of color.

I think the COVID committee ought to have a hearing solely on vitamin D. We ought to find out, given the trillions of dollars we have thrown at COVID and billions of dollars we have thrown at trying to solve this problem, why the public health establishment has not talked about vitamin D like they should. They may say we don't know whether this is a matter of causation or a matter of correlation, but if

that is so, we should certainly be doing more studies on this matter, because I think it is possible that hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved if we began to promote vitamin D when it appeared to be the cure, as it appeared before the vaccines were even invented. Nevertheless, to this day, it is not discussed.

The next question that the committee ought to look at is why are we not routinely testing people who are at risk for vitamin D deficiency? I would think anytime anybody over 65 went to a doctor today, they should be tested for vitamin D. Now, some people say you can take vitamin D without getting a test, which is true, but my personal experience in telling people about vitamin D is if they take a test right now, say the low level of adequate is about 20 nanograms per milliliter, if somebody goes and takes a test and they wind up being a 12 or 8 or 7, they immediately go out and take vitamin D because they have the result of the test that says you have got big trouble coming if you don't take more vitamin D. Having the test specific to that individual is much more relevant than just a doctor saying it wouldn't be a bad idea to take vitamin D.

I do believe we would save a lot of lives if that was done. As I understand it, you can get an online vitamin D test for about $40, so it shouldn't be a cost-prohibitive thing. Given the trillions of dollars we put at it, we should even be paying for the test. But if we don't, individuals should be encouraged at getting those tests.

I do believe vitamin D is good for other things. It is good for bone health, another reason why people should be taking it. There is really no downside. Again, people back home that I know or even experts in the field begin to wonder if the reason we don't push vitamin D is because you can pay $20 for a bottle from Walgreens or CVS and there is not a lot of money to be made, and they seem to be more in favor of trying antidotes that will make money for somebody--there have been billionaires made on this disease--rather than focusing on vitamin D.

I really beg the committee to look into it a little bit more, get some experts there. Even though this pandemic seems to be on the downside, hopefully we will be ready for a different sort of pandemic in the future. So I encourage the COVID committee to spend a little time looking at vitamin D because they could have cut the number of people who died maybe in half.

Crisis at the Southern Border

Mr. Speaker, the next issue that maybe has bored the press by now, but they shouldn't stop reporting on it, is what is going on on the southern border.

We recently got the estimated number of migrants remaining in the interior who crossed the southern border for June. The good news is it is down a little bit from May and April, and it is expected to be down because June is such a hot month, fewer people cross our border.

But if you look at June of this year, about 142,000 migrants remained in the interior. Of those 142,000, 50,000 are what they call got-aways, which means the Border Patrol didn't even touch them. We didn't even have a perfunctory interview with them. They just came across the border, which should be particularly scary.

What I want to point out, though, is that almost 150,000 from this June is compared to 79,000 last June. So we have gone from 79,000, which was a crisis at the time, to 142,000. Two Junes ago, under another administration, we were around 9,000. So when we go from 9,000 people a month to 79,000 people a month to 142,000 people a month, that should be a banner headline in every newspaper around the country.

Now, I know the newspapers don't like to do anything that would make the current administration look bad, but there is a reason why people don't subscribe to newspapers anymore or don't listen to the news at night, and that is they caught onto the idea that you are not going to be well informed if you read the local newspaper or turn on the news at night.

Again, I will repeat those numbers: 9,000 people in June of 2020 migrants crossing the border. We go from 9,000 to 79,000 to 142,000. Massive increases. In addition to that, as we know, almost all these people who cross the border paid $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000 to the Mexican drug cartels. I have been at the border about eight times. Every time I am down there, the Border Patrol tells me they think the Mexican drug cartels are making more money letting people across the border than they are selling drugs.

This brings another thing which hasn't been brought up enough, our poor neighbor to the south, Mexico, is right now in very, very bad shape due to the strength of the drug cartels, and part of that is our inability to close our border. We are making the Mexican drug cartels wealthier and wealthier and wealthier with all their crime, with all their corruption. I think the United States, just as we refuse to enforce our border, we refuse to stop taking illegal drugs crossing the southern border, and as a result we are making Mexico a complete mess.

I beg my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to express some interest in the flood of people coming here. I beg our newspapers to begin to report these monthly numbers with the banner headlines that they deserve so America can know what is really going on here.

Drug Overdoses in America

Related to the border, speaking of numbers, every year we come out with new numbers of the number of people who die of drug overdoses in this country, and that is something that has been underpublicized.

When I first got this job 7 years ago, about 57,000 people died every year of drug overdoses. We are now at 107,000. Twice as many people die of drug overdoses every year as died in 12 years in Vietnam. That is another story that should be banner headlines, and every newspaper reporter in this country or cable news reporter ought to be asking politicians: What are you going to do? Why is Congress not doing something to save the 107,000 lives a year?

It is a huge national problem. And, again, I don't like to talk about race, but if you look at the last 4 years, particularly the number of Black men who die of drug overdoses is just going through the roof. I mean, normally we are always, particularly the Democratic Party, are always so eager to point out if there is a difference in statistics from one race to the other. Here there is a significant difference. They don't even talk about it. I am not sure what causes it. Normally they would attribute prejudice. I don't think that is it. I think to a certain extent it is police being less active than they have in the past, the judicial system not putting drug dealers in prison because we are all antiprison right now.

But in any event, when you have 107,000 people die every year, isn't it something we ought to be talking about, both in this Chamber and on the nightly news?

Spending in Congress

Mr. Speaker, the next issue we should be talking about more is the overall level of spending that is going on in this institution. I think it was very predicted when the first bills passed when President Biden took office--and then we had the infrastructure bill; between those two bills we are looking at, I believe, over $3 trillion--that it would lead to inflation.

But, again, the press corps, maybe because the press corps doesn't like to talk about numbers, does not like to talk about the size of the increase in spending. Now, it is a lot easier to break an economy than it is to put it back together.

Since the inflation was caused by excessive spending, I think the only way to get a handle on things is to not spend so much.

We will, this week, be voting on a variety of bills to fund the government, beginning October 1. I have not seen the press corps report what I think is enough on the size of the increase in those bills. It would seem to me we should go back to the days of sequester where routinely you were seeing these bills go up by 0 percent, 1 percent, 2 percent.

What do we have in the bills we are going to vote on this week? We have a transportation and housing bill, up 12 percent. We have an agriculture and rural development bill up 8 percent. We have an energy and water bill up 6.4 percent. Financial services up 17 percent. Interior and the environment, up 18 percent. Military construction and VA up 18 percent.

Again and again, what we are seeing here is just fiscal irresponsibility. It is just throwing more gasoline on the fire of inflation.

I think the press corps, if they were responsible, should be asking Congress whether these numbers could be closer to 1 or 2 percent, which is where we should work toward.

I think, quite frankly, Republicans during appropriations should be coming forth and saying that we would like to see these numbers at 1 or 2 percent. If we are ever going to get our economy back, we can't continue down this path of excessive spending or the amount of inflation is just going to continue to go up and up.

The final spending vote we had today was on the National Park Foundation. I love the national parks. It wasn't a huge spending bill by the standards of what we do around here, but it was a 300 percent increase. Almost everybody in this body voted for it because who wants to be against the national parks. Think about that, a 300 percent increase.

I hope the press corps wakes up a little and decides to report on the individual lines of these budgets, how much the spending is going up line by line and the overall increases in spending in each of the packages.

I will deal with one more issue here tonight that I think ought to be covered constantly but is covered nowhere near as much.

I think so many of the problems that we deal with in society, or at least the people back home feel are part of the problem, are caused by the breakdown of the family. I think America used to have very strong families in the forties, fifties, and early sixties. The breakup in the family did not just happen. It happened because we began with a welfare system in the 1960s that, quite frankly, put nonnuclear families in a position that sometimes was better off than a married couple, depending upon their situation.

In any event, we went from a situation in which the people born without a mom and dad at home rocketed up between the early sixties to about 40 percent, went down a little, and has gone back up to 40 percent since the welfare reform of the 1990s.

I find a lot of people in my age bracket think it is going to be very tough for the next generation, and when they talk about being tough on the next generation, above all, they talk about the breakdown of the family.

I have pointed out before that Black Lives Matter--an organization that people should run from but apparently has been embraced by too many people in the majority party and some people in the minority party--originally came out saying they wanted to disrupt the traditional nuclear family. I would be very concerned when an organization that claims on their website that they want to disrupt the traditional nuclear family is received positively around here.

I know some people will say that Black Lives Matter is a diffuse organization, and just because the founders say they want to disrupt the nuclear family doesn't mean every segment of Black Lives Matter wants to disrupt the nuclear family. But I would feel better if more people came down to the well and boldly said: I am in favor of strengthening the nuclear family; I don't care if I happen to have my picture taken next to Black Lives Matter. I haven't seen that happen.

You might say, what is the nature of the marriage penalty? I will tell you where to begin to look. I would look at some of my local administrators of low-income housing. I think particularly 42 housing, which is newer housing, is frequently superior to other housing. I would ask people about that in your neighborhoods, my colleagues, and see what type of incentives we have when we have new housing, new apartments going up, some of them quite lavish, better than the old apartments that other people have to rent. Is that a good or bad thing?

I would ask the clerks in grocery stores, as far as the expensive food that people are buying, if they are more being provided for by the government than provided for within the family.

I would ask tax accountants about the earned income tax credit and some of the perverse incentives that are involved in the earned income tax credit. I would also ask the tax accountants what people are doing with the earned income tax credits when they get that $6,000, $7,000, or $9,000 check once a year.

I think when we get done asking these questions, we can ask ourselves if we want to continue programs that prevent children from having both parents, particularly a dad, at home. I think there are so many problems in our society that would, to a certain extent, be improved if only we got back to what we would call old-fashioned, traditional family values.

In any event, those are some of the issues that I think the press corps ought to be covering but aren't covering and some of the issues that I think our body ought to be addressing that we are not addressing.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the wonderful staff for being here so late, and I yield back the balance of my time.