Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, in the midst of all the talking about the love affair the Democratic Party has for abortion and talking about Ukraine and making another vote there, I am afraid the press isn't going to pick up on the numbers that have just been released for border crossings of illegal immigrants or people we have not appropriately vetted for June of 2022.

It is a hot month in Mexico and a hot month on the border, so the numbers are not as great as the prior month, but compared to past Junes, we have once again set a record, and nothing is being done about it.

If you look at two Junes ago, June 2020, a total of about 11,000 people were allowed in this country.

Last June, we shot up from 11,000 to 79,000, and this year we are at 142,000.

Madam Speaker, that is 142,000 in one month; once again, a record in June of the number of people crossing the border, and all this body can talk about is Ukraine and abortion. It is time to talk a little bit about the future of the country and ask what the Biden administration is doing to stop this invasion.

Madam Speaker, I would like to address the current situation in Ukraine.

Obviously, everyday people in Ukraine and Russia are dying, and I am concerned that the current administration has no particular plan, or at least we are not told of any plan or goal, as to where we want to wind up.

Ukraine has the second lowest birthrate of any country in a country of that size in the world. It is lower than all but South Korea. Russia also has a very low birthrate. Even before the war, a lot of Russians were leaving Russia, at least subjectively from what I have seen when I toured the southern border of the United States.

The combination of immigration and low birthrate means that the primary goal of the leaders of both these countries should be to make sure we get the number of Russians and Ukrainians up, not going the opposite direction.

In any event, I do not know. We have not met collectively since March to have a briefing for all the legislators as to what the opinions of the Biden administration are. So I am going to ask the press maybe to ask a few questions to find out whether they are working with anybody to try to reach some sort of end to this war or if they don't care if it goes on for another 6 months.

Mr. Speaker, our country was sent on a journey a week ago to see how we would respond to the Dobbs decision. This decision challenges all Americans to decide where they will stand on the abortion issue.

It is particularly a challenge to the churches of this country who are supposed to provide moral guidance to the country as to where to stand.

These are decisions that will have to be made by the citizens, in part, when they vote. Decisions have to be made by State legislators, district attorneys as to whether they are going to uphold pro-life laws, and perhaps, most important of all, individual decisions that are going to have to be made by women or families who are in a situation in which some people are going to try to persuade them to have an abortion.

It is interesting when we talk about this to remember that in 1973, as far as I can determine, no State between California on the West Coast and New York on the East Coast had entirely open-ended pro- abortion laws. Nevertheless, at a time where we didn't really have ultrasounds, every other State ruled that something barbaric was going on.

You just heard other statistics--we know at 6 weeks a child has a heartbeat; 7 weeks, feels pain; 10 weeks, jumps if startled, and has fingers and toes; 15 weeks, sense of taste.

Obviously, anybody who says: What would God want us to do in this situation realizes a human being has been created by God, and that human being should be cherished and kept alive.

It was, again, apparently the clergy in 1973, or society as a whole, did a good job of informing people that something so horrific was happening in abortion that it should be barred and made illegal. Since that time, the clergy of this country and the churches of this country have had 49 years to weigh in with the public and guide them as to how they should think. We are soon going to find out what a good job they did or a bad job they did.

In any event, we thank the Supreme Court for reaching the right decision. Now we put the ball in the court of Americans as a whole, whether they will respond, recognizing the precious lives that we have to protect in America, or if they are going down the shoot toward more of an atheistic view of the world, similar to countries like North Korea, Red China, countries in which atheism is part of their roots.

The challenge is yours, America--the challenge to the churches.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, just so you all know, you don't have to worry about waiting 30 minutes. It is not going to be that long.

I would like to talk about some issues tonight that I don't feel have been adequately addressed in this forum. The press--not the people back home, but the press--keeps trying to make a big deal out of January 6.

When I go home, as I am sure for all of my colleagues who go home, 80 percent of the comments deal with inflation, insofar as other things are being dealt with. It is not January 6.

Nevertheless, there is something that bothers me. Since we are apparently going to have these hearings on January 6, everything ought to be able to come out. If I was on that committee, the first thing I would ask is for all the video from the Capitol that day to be released.

It seems to me if people genuinely want to know what is going on, that is where I would start. Therefore, on last October 5, myself, Congressman Norman, and Congressman Gohmert asked for all the video from the Capitol to be released that day. It doesn't seem that much of a difficult request. There were many people still being held in jail, and the press kept trying to rile up the population and let them believe something horrible had happened.

I received inquiries from both Republican and Democrat constituents who felt it would be a good idea if we released the video of what was going on that day. It would be helpful if Congresswoman Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger also weighed in, saying all that video should be released. But for whatever reason, it hasn't been released.

One more time, Congressmen Norman, Gohmert, and myself have had to make a request of the Justice Department to release these videos. It is getting to the point where no longer is it just an innocent inquiry because a few people asked for it. People are beginning to think that the Justice Department must be hiding something.

One more time, we make the request. The request should be made by the Capitol press corps. There was a time when press in this country, one of their goals was to get behind the curtain in front of government and expose what was really going on, and both conservative and liberal journalists would have quickly asked for these videos. For whatever reason, they haven't asked for them.

I, again, ask the Department of Justice to release them. But above all, because I don't think the Justice Department apparently cares what Congressmen Norman, Gohmert, or Grothman say, the press in this country that seems obsessed with January 6 ought to demand that the Justice Department release these videos. After all, it has been 16 months, 17 months, after this took place. It has been 18 months after this took place. It is high time we found out what was going on there.

Every day that goes forward in which the video is not released, I think the American public, the small amount that is paying attention, is going to be more convinced that somebody is hiding something.

Now, I don't want to accuse anybody of anything. I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but my constituents are wondering, when I write that letter, why we are sitting on the video. If it is so important to find out what really went on that day, please, Department of Justice, release the hidden videos and, please, comatose American press corps, ask that the videos be released.

I have spoken from this microphone many times this biennium about a tilt toward the totalitarian sort of government that we see going on. And by totalitarian, I mean the worst type of totalitarian, a Marxist totalitarian government.

We see a variety of danger signs on the horizon. We began this session with people being sworn in who, in order to get elected, got help from Black Lives Matter, a group whose founders made no bones about the fact that they were Marxist and made no bones about the fact that they were against the traditional American family, what they described as the Western nuclear family.

We have then seen online media giants suppress free speech. Now, I suppose you could say they are private companies, and I suppose you could say it is their right to suppress free speech or prevent you from googling something, from getting a cross section of views that are out there.

Nevertheless, we know, as a practical matter, they have almost a monopoly in this country, and it is concerning that these companies that have, as a practical matter, monopolies have decided to suppress certain speech. They certainly have the heart of a totalitarian atheist.

The next thing we look at is a growing percentage of the gross national product no longer being spent by the people who earn the money but being spent by the government, by the politicians in Washington. That is another danger sign.

We see a President openly talking about taking away the freedom to defend yourself. He wants the only guns to be owned by government employees. He didn't want the right of defense to rest with the individual. This would be another trait of a government very different from that which our forefathers anticipated.

We saw an effort made to have our government deny visas or deny property to foreigners if they engaged in suppression of human rights. But the human rights that we know the Biden administration meant were not fear of murder or robbery or something. The human rights were aimed at the field of pro-life, so that politicians or other people abroad who fought for pro-life issues, or issues with regard to so-called gay rights, if you weren't on the right side, the Biden administration wanted to threaten foreign officials with taking away the right for a visa in this country, taking away their right to travel, as well as taking away their property in this country.

Does that sound like kind of a dangerous thing?

America had better wake up. We are going the wrong way. John Adams said our Constitution is made for a moral and religious people and is totally unfit for any other kind.

When you listen to the things that have been going on in this country, what do you think? Aren't we headed for a very different country than the moral and religious country that is required to keep our country going?

There are other things that kind of just amaze me. June is Dairy Month. Being from Wisconsin, everybody in Wisconsin knows June is Dairy Month. But for some people around Washington, they don't think primarily of Dairy Month. They call it Pride Month, and the U.S. flies the gay flag, and the Vatican, as well as many other countries around the world.

Do you think our forefathers would have anticipated, particularly given all the blessings that our country has been given, that we would decide to fly our flag with, in essence, a sexual preference flag all around the world? Again, highly questionable.

Then, we have another step in a very unusual direction for a country that was supposed to be a moral and religious country. We are sending out requests for grants from nonprofits around the world to promote humanism and atheism. Isn't that kind of unusual?

Here we are, such a blessed country. What do we do with our money? Why, we say, does anybody around the world want to promote atheism?

As recently as the 1960s in this country, only 2 percent of the people said they did not believe in God, only 2 percent in the 1960s. Look how far down we have gone. Now, we elect a government and are asking for grants to be given to organizations to promote atheism in our name.

I mean, when you look at the State Department, I guess the two things that they will tell people abroad are, if you want to be like the United States, if you want to follow in its footsteps, follow the pride flag and follow atheism. Very, very disappointing. I think it is time that the clergy and the people of America wake up.

I know we are just supposed to talk about inflation. Of course, inflation is bad, and, of course, this bad inflation was caused by excessive government spending. That is all true. But there are other issues that are going on out there as well, and I am very afraid, given how quickly we have gone downhill the last 40 or 20 or 10 years, where we are going to wind up in another 10 or 20 or 30 years if this sort of activity continues to come from our government in Washington.

While we took our 2-week break, we hit 100 murders a year in the city of Milwaukee. If that happens in the second half of the year, we are going to wind up hitting the all-time-record number of murders in Milwaukee, a city that is directly adjacent to my district.

We have to ask ourselves, what can we do to reduce the number of murders? Part of it, I have always felt, is the decline in the traditional family. We have spoken, again, from this microphone about the degree to which our welfare programs seem conditioned upon either not working or, above all, make sure if you have children, you don't have them in wedlock because if you have a two-earner household, it is very difficult to take advantage of all these grants.

Mr. Speaker, this is where some of it comes from, but some of it also comes from kind of the neutering of the police corps by having irresponsible politicians calling the police, in general, racists.

When you call all the police racists, which I don't think they are, you create a chilling influence. Police, particularly in big cities with high crime rates, where it may be more important they engage the citizenry than anywhere else, the police back off. When they back off, you have something that is almost unbelievable to see: a hundred murders in the first half of the year in the city of Milwaukee.

By the way, I was born in the city of Milwaukee, and as recently as the early 1970s, Milwaukee had the lowest murder rate of the 20 biggest cities in the country.

Milwaukee was always proud of how safe it was, and now we are kind of going the opposite way quickly. At least I believe one of the reasons is certain politicians. It has become politically expedient for them to trash the police departments, to, therefore, threaten individual police with lawsuits, resulting in police not engaging the population enough and resulting in a high number of murders.

I, therefore, call upon all of our politicians to boldly speak out in favor of the police and boldly describe to the population as a whole that we do not have a racist country, which is something else that should be pointed out.

In my own district, I talk to the Hmong, who came here not even knowing the language. If you talk to the Hmong, all of their children and their grandchildren are doing fantastically well, living the American Dream.

I know an increasing number of people from India in my district, another example of a group that frequently came to America, didn't know the native language, and now they are living the American Dream.

But for some reason--I personally believe they are trying to destroy America--politicians are out there talking about what a horrible, racist country they have.

I think they do it to divide America and weaken America, but I beg them to stop doing it that way and to win elections based on issues, not on name-calling and not on teaching our young people that we have a horrible, racist country.

Mr. Speaker, I guess for the benefit of all the people listening tonight, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, in the zeal to spend more money on our military, some of which is admirable, it is easy to forget that we still have a crisis at the southern border.

Again and again, month after month, 160,000, 180,000 people are coming here. It should be brought to our attention because recently a horrific sexual assault of a 10-year-old made national news, and I don't believe it was anywhere near publicized enough that the assault was done by an illegal immigrant.

This is what happens when we have an open border. People have to pay a horrible price for the laxness here. In addition, of course, to the sexual assault, we have the 110,000 deaths by illegal drugs in this country, and the current administration doesn't seem to care at all.

It is time in this plethora of spending bills to have dramatic increases in the number of people at the border as well as to go back to the stay in Mexico policy.

Madam Speaker, I am sure every Congressman who has been back in their district for the last 2 weeks heard the same thing as the number one issue that is facing the American public right now, and that is inflation, be it gas, even more food, even more housing, again and again and again.

People say: How are you going to get around that? It is simple to get around it; it is just sometimes a little more difficult. That is finally saying no to the excessive government spending around here that has forced the Federal Reserve to print dollars and decrease the value of the dollar.

Within the next couple of weeks, we are going to vote on appropriation bills for the budget year beginning October 1. Let's look: Are we holding the line?

Transportation and HUD, 12 percent increase; water, 7 percent increase; financial services and general government, 16 percent increase; interior, 18 percent increase; military construction and VA, 11 percent increase.

Congress has not yet adapted to the new crisis.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 4176. This horrifying bill would require all Federal agencies that collect demographic data to ask Americans about their sexual orientation or gender identity; and that goes all the way to including the Census, ultimately, affecting every American.

I realize the majority party will claim that you don't have to fill out this form. But we all know, as a practical matter, almost all people presented with a form will fill out the whole thing. There are very people who have the gumption or whatever to say,

I refuse to fill out such and such a question.

Now, honestly, this bill affects adults. And I am old enough to remember when the gay rights movement was supposed to be about, we are not going to poke around and see what people are doing in the bedroom. Now we are kind of going in the opposite direction. We are going to require everybody to talk about their sexual orientation which, by itself, is a little bit offensive.

But I am also going to focus more on the fact that this bill requires--doesn't require but asks for responses from people under 18 years of age, which is just almost beyond belief.

If a parent gets randomly selected to fill out the National Survey on Children's Health, Democrats want the Federal Government to ask parents to disclose if their 3-year-old son is attracted to boys or girls. That is why we should call this, steal our children's childhood act.

When public schools report data to the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection, schools will ask kindergartners through 12th graders what their sexual orientation is or which gender they think they are.

What exactly are you supposed to respond if you are an 8-year-old child?

What are they supposed to do with this question?

Johnny, here we have a question for you. And what is he going to say? I am gay because my favorite cartoon character is gay. I'm trans because I like my mother's dress.

I don't know what they are supposed to do with this question, and I think it is absurd that we would ever expect anybody to ask these questions of a little child. But clearly, that is what the majority party wants.

And we hear about today like people you couldn't tell what they are when they are 6 years old or 5 years old. I mean, really beyond belief.

And like I said, our corrupt popular culture today, we are told people are identifying as something or other when they are 7 or 8 years old.

So in any event, I think it is obvious to vote ``no'' on this bill. I don't know how, as a country, we got to a place where we are asking 7- or 8-year-olds to declare a sexual preference, but that is where we are today; and the majority party thinks it makes perfect sense.

The Democrats must know this is wrong.

I guess we can about wrap this up.

I want the American public, though, to stop and think where we are today. We are going to pass a bill in which 7- or 8- or 9-year-olds are supposed to declare a sexual preference.

I will close by saying, the clergy of this country should ponder how we got this far and what they want to do about it.

Mr. Speaker, not a lot has been said about the conflict in Ukraine right now, but it doesn't mean we should take our eye off the ball. There is a division, I think, on elected officials between two groups, and it is important for the press to identify which one of these two groups has the upper hand, not only in Congress but in the Biden administration.

Some people feel that it would be good to wrap up this war, including me. Ukraine has the second-lowest birth rate of any sizeable country in the world, and the population of Ukraine has sunk about 5 percent in the last few years. Russia also has a low birth rate and is having a lot of people leave their country. So we have two countries that should be primarily concerned about keeping the few young people they have alive rather than engaged in a war. For that reason, I would like to believe that if an off-ramp is provided for Mr. Putin then we could end the war before we have more people dying.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the press corps to weigh in a little bit and find out where the Biden administration stands on this.

Madam Speaker, every weekend we go home, and I am about to go back to Wisconsin for a couple more weeks. When we get back home, of course, we always talk to our constituents. I would like to address my speech tonight to the issue that is most on their mind.

Now, when we go back to Wisconsin in June we spend a lot of time on what they call breakfast on the farm because June is Dairy Promotion Month in Wisconsin, and with Dairy Promotion Month there are breakfasts on the farm where you have an opportunity to see so many of your constituents.

When back home, I go through the number one and number two issues. The number one issue is gasoline inflation. Everybody talks about it. They talk about how it is squeezing their budget and about how they are not able to go on trips as much as they used to. They have got to cut back on the type of food that they buy. So number one would be gas inflation.

I suppose number two would be food inflation because they talk about having to buy cuts of meat that aren't as good or other food products that aren't as good as they were before.

I think probably number three is housing inflation. When you look for a new house now, Madam Speaker, it costs so much more than it did a year ago.

I personally believe there are other issues that are as significant and perhaps in the long term more significant for America:

Are we going to wrap up Ukraine?

What are we going to do at our border?

What are we going to do about the over 110,000 people dying of drug overdoses every year?

But, obviously, in my district the number one issue is inflation, and I want to talk about how we got there.

How did we get there?

Any middle school C student should know that inflation is caused by excessive government spending which has to be covered by the Federal Reserve.

What are President Biden's signature accomplishments?

First of all, a $1.9 trillion bill called the American Rescue Plan came right

out of the chute. His second biggest accomplishment was a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. These bills were in addition to a regular appropriation bill with excessive spending.

What would happen was as predictable as night following day. Multiple Republicans, including myself, warned last January and February against out-of-control inflation. Larry Summers, Barack Obama's director of the National Economic Council, called this bill the worst economic policy in the last 20 years. But whatever Larry Summers said was ignored as, sadly, the majority party charged again, spending $1.9 trillion that America did not have.

So now we are told we have the worst inflation in 40 years at 8.3 percent. Don't believe that 8.3 number. It is much worse than that. It always bothers me when people say that we have such a problem at 8.3 percent inflation. It is just so much more. Changes to inflation calculation over the years have grossly underestimated the real number.

I am going to lead off with housing. When I look at housing, I talk to builders, I talk to landlords, and I talk to real estate brokers. Housing is listed at a 5.5 percent increase in the last year. Ask any of these people if rents or new construction have gone up only 5.5 percent in the last year, and they will laugh at you.

Madam Speaker, 5.5 percent is what the government is telling people it is at. When I talk to builders, they tell me that a new house this year could cost 30 percent more than what that same house was going last year, and rents are clearly well over the 5.5 percent figure as well.

But government, for whatever reason, does not use the cost of new construction. They use what they refer to as the rental value of your new house, which is a much lower number.

I have a graph here showing the difference between the actual rent and the CPI rent, and you can see here, Madam Speaker, that there is about a 15 percent gap and that the actual rent has gone up about 15 percent more than the so-called CPI number which has gone up as well. So that is one of the reasons why I think Americans feel that they are in worse shape than only an 8.6 inflation. That is true.

I also want to point out that these numbers are only updated once every 6 months. That is one of the problems.

Although another problem we have is when they talk about the cost of housing, which usually would mean buying a house. They do not take into account the cost of interest on a mortgage, for whatever reason. In the last year, interest rates have gone up again probably because of the inflation, the interest cost on a 30-year fixed mortgage has gone up 39 percent--a 39 percent increase in interest payments on the house, assuming the cost of the house hasn't gone up at all.

But is that in the equation?

No. When we calculate inflation we do not take into account the massively higher interest rates that you have to pay now compared to the past.

By the way, as we look at things like housing, I beg the press corps to do a little bit of research. Don't just report this 8.3 percent number. You have the ability to talk to the brokers, to talk to the grocers, and to talk to the car dealers and find out what an appropriate number is. Back in the good old days when reporters were a little bit harder working, they would have done their own research and found out what the real inflation rate is.

Now, the next thing I am going to look at is used cars. On the official numbers they claim that used cars or the cost of having a used car has gone up about 16 percent. I have talked to a variety of car dealers from various different places in my diverse district. Everybody laughs at the idea that used cars have only gone up 16.1 percent. They all insist 30 percent on minimum. So here is another number that is thrown out to calculate that 8.6 number the government claims, and they are just way off on the cost of a new car.

If you buy a new car, Madam Speaker, of course, interest rates are going up as well which further increases things.

In any event, the point I am trying to make is that the amount of inflation is well over that 8.6 percent. It is certainly double digits over that when you talk about housing and double digits over that when you talk about used cars.

Subjectively talking to people who do the grocery shopping for the family, they believe that when they go through the checkout their costs are up way more than a few percentage points and the 10 percentage points that the Federal Government claims food at home has gone up the last year.

I beg the American people to demand action on inflation. I am trying to educate the American people that that action will inevitably have to mean undoing the out-of-control spending that took place around here in January or February. As we do it, we are going to have to reduce the amount of government. But I don't think we can go on with these housing prices and these car prices for the rest of our lives.

Madam Speaker, we want to get back to the days in which a young couple had a chance of affording a house. We want to go back to the days when you can eat like Americans are used to eating, not where you have to deal with inferior foods just because you can't afford it anymore. We want to go back to the days in which you can buy the type of car that you would like to buy.

So I encourage my colleagues this year, if possible, but if not then next year--maybe we are going to have to wait 3 years for some of this--we have got to get the spending back down where it was when you could live life in America like Americans are used to.

I beg the other side, when it comes to passing the new budget and preparing for the appropriation bills that are going to pass for the calendar year beginning October 1, let's stop spending so much money.

Now buy that cheese. Remember that June is Dairy Month.

Mr. Speaker, this is directed to the press as much as to the Chair and whoever is listening at home.

Everybody knows we have a lot of inflation. We are supposed to repeat again and again that inflation was at 8.6 percent in May, which is the highest it has been in 40 years. The press should report that there is no way inflation is only 8.6 percent.

Housing is listed as going up 5.5 percent. Have you talked to any landlords? Have you talked to any builders? There is a contorted way that you arrive at that 5.5 percent. That number should be more like 15 to 20 to 25 percent.

Talk to some car dealers. See if they think the cost of used cars has gone up only 16.1 percent in the last year. That number should be 30 percent.

We should not let the administration get away with such low numbers. I call upon the American press to do a little bit of research for once and tell us what the real cost of living has gone up in this country over the last year. It is way more than 8.6 percent.

Madam Speaker, I would like to comment on the recent developments regarding those brave Border Patrol officers who used their reins to prevent people sneaking into a country illegally, prevent them from getting stomped under their horses' hooves.

I have been to the border several times. Uniformly, all the Border Patrol felt those people behaved appropriately, and I think continuous studies have shown they behaved appropriately. But sadly, President Biden has decided to pick them out for punishment.

It reminds me when he calls the police of this country racist--both completely unfounded. He only does it, I think, to divide our country, create divisions here.

I would demand that President Biden apologize to the brave Border Patrol, those great guys or gals who, on that day, prevented the Haitians trying to slip into this country from getting stomped underfoot.

I would also like him to apologize to the police of this country who are not racist and are doing a great job to try to hold down our murder rate.

Madam Speaker, I want to give a story to my good friends in the press corps because they always feel they have a shortage of interesting things in the paper. This concerns the excessive inflation we have under the current administration.

The current administration claims that inflation last year was 8.6 percent. I am going to focus on two different parts of that, one is 5.5 percent for housing and 16.1 percent for used cars.

I ask the press corps to call some local builders or builders anywhere around the country--builders, landlords, and assessors--and see if you can find anybody who thinks the cost of housing has only gone up by 5.5 percent in the past year. My goodness, the cost of interest by itself has almost doubled in that time. The cost of many parts of a house has gone up. There is no way that it is only 5.5 percent. I think if you look around and ask builders and Realtors, they will laugh at that number.

I would also ask you to call some car dealers around the country and see what they think about the idea that used cars have gone up 16.1 percent in the last year. They, as well, laugh at that. The number has to be significantly higher.

So there is a gift to my friends in the news business.

Madam Speaker, we will talk a little bit about the border again and what I think is kind of an inappropriate way to handle some recent events that happened down there.

First of all, we have got to give the backdrop, right. We are all familiar with the most recent statistics available. For April of 2022, 184,000 people crossed in the country that were not appropriately vetted and we do not particularly want here.

A year ago, that 184,000 number was at 66,000. Two years ago, under the prior administration, it was 5,700. So, first of all, the American public should kind of let that sink in: 5,700 a month to 66,000 a month to 184,000 a month. Horrific.

Part of monitoring the border is showing respect for the Border Patrol. I have been on the border eight times over the last 2 years, and I think they are the most professional of law enforcement agencies I have run into.

Last September, when potential Haitian immigrants tried to cross the Rio Grande and get up on shore, agents on horses used reins to protect the Haitians from the horses' hooves.

Every agent I have talked to felt this was an entirely appropriate way to protect the Haitians who were trying to come into our country. But President Biden, the new expert on horsemanship, felt that the new immigrants were strapped, whatever that meant, and said that they would have to pay.

Now, the Department of Homeland Security claims that the Border Patrol agents should be disciplined for protecting the Haitians from the horses' hooves.

Since then, President Biden's budget, the last budget which he signed, the last appropriation bill, provided millions of dollars for monitoring and disciplining the Border Patrol.

This is kind of a mental problem we have seen before in Washington. It reminds me when we had record murders in our big cities, and Washington responded by saying that we had to pass a bill making it easier to sue the police. In other words, all these people dying, records in the last 2 years in Milwaukee--which is adjacent to my district, and they think the problem is the police.

In any event, that is what the Biden administration did. They claimed the police were racist, making it easier to sue police. Obviously, that is inappropriate.

The other thing I think is inappropriate is we hired a new Border Patrol head who used to be a police chief. When he was a police chief, he wouldn't cooperate with ICE when they had problems with people who they were trying to deport or people who were here illegally.

I mean, can you imagine what type of effect that has on the Border Patrol agents when the person who is supposed to be the boss doesn't seem to be on board with the underlying mission?

I believe he also had a problem in which he was accused of some harassment in his prior job. Now, we have got to hire some more Border Patrol agents here, and the way to do it is to not have the administration treat these brave, honorable people inappropriately.

So I call upon Congress to try to weigh in with the President. If you have taken a trip down to the border, tell him how great the Border Patrol agents are.

Make that an attractive job because we need top-flight agents to save our country from people who don't belong here and also to save our country from the sea of fentanyl that is flowing in here and that apparently is not something that concerns Congress a whole lot.

Mr. Speaker, the talk of everyone back home is over inflation. I want to give the press corps something to do. We are told the current inflation rate is 8.2 percent, the highest it has been in 40 years. I believe the number is higher than that.

They claim that the cost of rent or the cost to buy a house has gone up 5.2 percent. I have talked to builders in which the cost of identical homes has gone up 30 percent.

Interest rates have gone up from 2.5 to 4.5 percent. I know somebody who is looking to perhaps flip a house that has gone up 20 percent.

I would like the press corps in this country to look for examples of housing that has only gone up 5.2 percent.

The other thing I would like them to look up is used cars have gone up 16 percent. I have talked to car dealers, and they tell me the price of used cars has gone up 25 to 35 percent.

So I beg the somewhat slumbering press corps to look into this and see whether our leg is being pulled by the claim that the CPI is only up 8.2 percent.

Madam Speaker, we heard a little bit about inflation, and we are going to talk about the economy a little bit more.

As has been widely reported, inflation is at a 40-year high, the worst it has been since 1981. Over 8 percent. However, I feel that we are doing a disservice to the current situation to pretend that inflation is only 8.3 percent.

In the official figures they talk about housing going up 5\1/2\ percent. Does anybody think the cost of housing has only gone up 5\1/2\ percent in the last year? I

know somebody who builds houses; the cost of a new house that he sells has gone up over 25 percent in the last year.

We look at interest which has to be eaten by landlords or a person buying a house that has gone up from 2\1/2\ percent on a house to 4\1/ 2\ percent in a year. That doesn't sound like any 5\1/2\ percent to me.

You look at, anecdotally, how much rent has gone up. You look at assessments, how much they have gone up on property taxes. In Wisconsin, I am told it is not unusual to find 10 to 20 percent increases in assessments.

When politicians talk about this 8.3 figure, I think it is really a lot higher than that. There is no way the cost of housing and rentals in this country has only gone up 5\1/2\ percent in the last year.

I also had the pleasure in the last few days to talk to people in the automobile industry. The official numbers say used cars have gone up 16.1 percent in the last year. Where are you going to find that? People I know in the automotive retail industry talk about used cars going up 30 or 40 percent in the last year.

First of all, we ought to be honest with the American people. When we talk about inflation at 8.3 percent, it is a lot higher than that.

Now, in order to correct it, we have to look at the cause. What is the cause?

We can start with the American Rescue Plan, one of the first things President Biden did. Larry Summers, an economist for President Obama called it the ``least responsible'' macroeconomic policy in the last 40 years. So they had advanced warning. The expert who worked under Barack Obama told them this was going to be irresponsible, but what did they do? They charged ahead anyway, spending another $1.9 trillion the taxpayers didn't have.

And not long after that we got the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Nice sounding, wasn't it? American Rescue and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. I always think it is kind of interesting the way they come up with names of irresponsible bills under here. That was another $1.2 trillion.

Between these two bills--at a time where it was so important that Congress stop spending money--we hit the gas for another $3 trillion. If it weren't for our friends, the Senators from Arizona and West Virginia, they would have doubled that with a Build Back Better bill for another $4 trillion. I beg you all, please stop spending.

In any event, the American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, I think, are more than anything responsible for the out-of-control inflation. I believe they are artificially holding down the numbers to only 8.3 percent.

When I talk to people back home, particularly on housing, particularly on used cars, to a certain extent on food, I think those numbers are artificially low. I think it is higher than that.

People say: What can we do to get things back to where they should be? We just have to work our way back from that level of irresponsibility. Right now we are working on the budget for calendar year 2023. In that budget we have a 13.5 percent increase in nondefense discretionary spending. The days of 13.5 percent increases have got to be over. That number has to be reduced to zero, and I mean zero for defense as well.

We all know there are things in the defense budget that--at least rumors are--that are done more to benefit the people who are making the equipment than are actually going to be helpful in an all-out war.

My suggestion is for both sides to agree that inflation is out of control. To recognize the only way to get it under control is to stop having the Fed print money and to show the rest of the world that we can contain things by committing ourselves to a zero percent increase in discretionary spending for 2023.

Part of the problem here, too, by the way, is the press corps. I don't know if the press corps ever listens to us here. If the press corps wants to make a name for itself--as people with journalism degrees used to--they can do some poking around on that 8.3 percent and do their own research by talking to car dealers, by talking to people who build housing, and by talking to landlords. They can find out, is that 5.5 percent housing cost up in the last year, is that accurate, or is the government trying to pull somebody's leg? I know the answer, and it is time the press corps stops allowing people to get away with it.

Madam Speaker, the second issue that I think has been underreported is what is going on in Ukraine. We last had a briefing, for Congress collectively on Ukraine, on March 30, 2022. I want to know, and I would like to request right now of the majority party another briefing, by that I mean representatives from the Department of Defense and representatives from the State Department, to see how exactly we are going to get out of this.

I voted for more money for the plan because I felt that it is important for America to appear united, and in that vote, we knew it was going to pass. We know the majority party wanted a commitment to make sure that Ukraine was not short of munitions.

However, I think it is important for the majority party to bring representatives of the key departments before Congress as a whole. The reason I would like to talk to them is I don't think enough has been talked about this. Are they working toward ending this war or not?

We all know there are people in this building who, for whatever reason, seem to want to heighten the tensions in the war and get more American troops over there. There are the responsible people--of which I will classify myself as one--in which they want to work toward some sort of peace treaty here before things get even more out of control.

We are dealing with a country, Russia, that has the ability to create economic havoc all over Western Europe, and, quite frankly, economic and human dislocations in the United States.

We should be briefed to see where the administration is on this topic. These are confidential briefings. In the past, I have sometimes gotten answers I like, and sometimes I have gotten answers I don't like. It would be good if the administration would hear from Congress and see what they want.

Do they want this war heightened--tensions heightened? Do they want the United States to provide troops as backup here? Do they want the administration to be working toward an end to the war?

As I said before, we are dealing with two countries who have problems. Their birth rates are low. Ukraine has the second lowest birth rate of the 100 largest countries in the world. Russia's birth rate is not that high either. Both countries have people leaving their countries, sometimes to the United States and sometimes other places.

In any event, I would like to make a request to the majority party that we, one more time, be briefed collectively to see what is going on. I think, by the way, that is something that our incurious press corps ought to be looking at as well.

Madam Speaker, the next thing I would like to address--not one of my top 20 topics--but for the mainstream media, they feel what happened January 6, 2021, is very important. It is important. We are having a committee on it.

I don't think I would rather spend my time on the committee. I would rather spend my time fighting inflation, trying to find solutions to the Ukraine problem, trying to find solutions to the border, trying to do something about the huge number of people who are dying of drug overdoses in this country.

Nevertheless, it is in the news that a committee is looking into what happened on January 6. I feel it is important to put all the cards on the table, and it is important that America know exactly all we have available to determine what happened on January 6.

A considerable time ago, me and two congressmen--8 months ago-- myself, Congressman Norman from South Carolina, and Congressman Gohmert from Texas wrote a letter to Merrick Garland and asked the Department of Justice to release any footage of tapes as far as what went on here that day. Unless it is going to be released, we really don't know all we should know.

I am sure there are both Democrats and Republicans who would like to

know all we have as far as what actually happened that day. What tapes were available because they are taking picture of us all the time from this building.

To my dismay, 8 months later, the Department of Justice has still not answered our plea for these tapes. Eventually it gets beyond the idea of just we want everything to be available, people begin to think that the Department of Justice is hiding something.

Madam Speaker, I will make the request verbally and eventually follow up with some sort of written document asking the Department of Justice to release all the video footage of what happened in and around this building on January 6. I think until it is released there are going to be members of the public who believe that something is being hidden that day. Right now it is part of this country's history, but I see no reason to continue this game of not allowing the American public to know what the Justice Department must already know about what happened that day.

By the way, I also feel if Congresswoman Cheney wants to be a little bit of an asset on that committee because she has a bigger mouthpiece than myself, she could demand and create a little bit of a raucous on that committee and demand to see all these tapes, so we know who really was behind things and what to make of various theories that are out there.

That is another issue that the press corps back in the good old days, where they liked to report on what is going on in this country, would routinely be against secrecy in government and would demand that those tapes be released. I do not know where the press corps is. They have the potential to improve this country, but they don't like to get out there and apparently inform the people. And they are not adequately skeptical of people in power.

Now I will address another issue that I think the press corps ought to be picking up and the American public ought to know more about. I have addressed COVID many times. Over 1 million people have died. When COVID broke, several briefings were held for all Congressmen and others for the Oversight and Reform Committee on which I serve. I would bet in the first 3 months of the COVID crisis I must have attended five or six hearings in which I had a chance to talk to the relative experts, Anthony Fauci and others, about COVID.

Then we switched to an isolated, small subcommittee where only a small fraction of the people in this Congress got a chance to ask questions. And at that time, with the rest of us left out, I think there are a lot of topics that the press should be looking into that we would have a chance to ask questions about but are not being asked.

As I said, when over 1 million Americans have died, I would think the press would express an interest. I, many times before, have stood at this microphone and talked about the benefits of vitamin D, and experts beginning two Septembers ago, well before the vaccine was even released, were putting papers out there saying how much vitamin D could prevent deaths. Now people who don't like to push vitamin D will say that the studies out there only show correlation, not causation. But the same thing could be said about other things that clearly are connected with COVID deaths.

Recently, Dr. Amiel Dror of Israel found that people with vitamin D levels under 20 nanograms per milliliter were 11 times more likely to die than people who weren't.

Isn't that something interesting?

Can you imagine, Madam Speaker, how many less people would have died if the public health establishment and the medical establishment had pushed vitamin D initially?

This study is interesting and consistent with prior studies.

Where is the medical establishment?

Where is the public health establishment in either pushing vitamin D or apologizing for not pushing it in the past?

By the way, when calculating vitamin D deficiency--which they are calculating at 20 nanograms per milliliter, not very much--84 percent-- I don't like talking about race; I don't think America is this horrible racist country that some people on the other side of the aisle claim-- but when calculating vitamin D deficiency, about 84 percent of Blacks in the country are vitamin D deficient compared to 35 percent of Whites. Blacks are 70 percent more likely to die of COVID. Every expert I have talked to believes the reason of heightened deaths in the Black community is the result of a lack of vitamin D.

By the way, it is even higher among Native Americans.

I do not know why the public health establishment and the politicians have not gone out of their way to share these numbers with people of color. All Americans should have been alerted to the benefit of vitamin D. All people over age 60 should have been given a vitamin D test to see if they were under that 20 nanograms threshold. I think anyone of color regardless of age should be given the test. But for whatever reason, no money was put into this, not a lot was publicized.

One million Americans died. Black Americans were 70 percent more likely to die than White Americans, and nothing was done. I think that is a scandal. I think we ought to have more hearings before Congress collectively so we can have a chance to ask the public health establishment why they were dropping the ball here.

I think the American press corps--which was asleep at the switch here--should have been publicizing these numbers a lot more. And the American press corps should have been out there asking questions to Anthony Fauci and the other bureaucrats as to why it was not more publicized and why didn't they specifically highlight the increased number of deaths among people of color.

I personally believe if it was the other way around, they might have been a little bit more forthright in explaining what is going on and the degree to which a lack of vitamin D correlated with additional deaths from COVID.

One other thing for the subcommittee to look at, if they get done talking about vitamin D, now that COVID is a lot less likely to lead to death, recently a new drug called Paxlovid was introduced. You can get a 5-day dosage of that drug, which is recommended, for $530. It is not cheap. Pfizer right now, I am told, expects to earn $27 billion dollars in sales from Paxlovid--$27 billion. That is a lot of money. They made a lot of money on other things as well on the COVID. When you are talking about making $27 billion on a drug, just a few little pills, a 5-day dosage, $530, I would think the subcommittee would want to look into that and see if there is an excessive amount of money being charged for that drug. I would think the slumbering press ought to be looking into it as well.

Twenty-seven billion dollars in sales?

That is what it says.

So if anybody out there wants to find something to talk about rather than some of the trivial issues that dominate our newspapers, they can look into the rich and powerful one more time and see whether the payment for Paxlovid are a little bit excessive.

The final topic tonight is a topic that is no secret but right now people are planning for the next session and seeing what problems in America we should address.

I personally have been outspoken. I think one problem that needs immediate attention is what is going on at the border. We also have to do something to make sure that we don't wind up in a more serious war with Ukraine or a war with China. These are vitally important.

But in the long run, the future of America comes down to its moral fiber. This country has since the mid 1960s strongly subsidized or strongly discriminated against the American nuclear family.

We know that Karl Marx--and there are a surprising number of academics in America who are drawn to socialism--Karl Marx felt in order for socialism to exist, you had to get rid of the family. We all know that in the last election Black Lives Matter was a powerful group and that Blacks Lives Matter, the founders anyway, were opposed to the traditional American nuclear family--or as they describe it, the Western prescribed nuclear family, which is a lie by the way. We have nuclear families in countries that are not Western countries. There are nuclear

families all over Latin America, sub-Sahara Africa, and Asia. But, in any event, it is apparent that powerful groups in this country want to destroy the nuclear family. And probably no policy did more to aid in the destruction of the American family than Lyndon Johnson's war on the family. I think he called it the War on Poverty, but it was really the war on the family is what it amounted to.

I hope after almost 60 years or approaching 60 years after the war on the family and the huge expansion of the welfare state that this Congress would begin to address the discrimination against the traditional family.

Madam Speaker, if you look at the welfare programs--whichever program that you look at, be it health insurance, be it SNAP, but be it WIC, be it the earned income tax credit--which was a very anti-marriage program which was actually initiated by a Republican--all low-income housing, daycare, TANF, Pell grants, and other provisions--program after program after program--are designed to take tax dollars from the traditional family and give it more to other families. It is no problem to help everybody, but I think when you clearly set up programs designed not to go to the nuclear family, you are discriminating against them.

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