Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I hope the American public is paying attention as we have three bills moving through here, including the reconciliation bill.

In the year that we just finished, which included some supposedly once-in-a-lifetime COVID spending bills, 41 percent of the money spent by the government was borrowed. President Biden has laid out his dream for what will happen in fiscal year 2022, and now that we are back to normal, he still is borrowing 31 percent of the budget. Think about that.

That would be like saying if you are making $60,000 a year, next year I am going to spend $90,000 a year. The top line numbers on this are just unbelievable. And these numbers are without taking into account the almost certain increases in interest rates that we are going to have to pay on our Federal debt.

I would say there are so many horrible parts of this bill, but I think the most dangerous part is, in addition to not funding the southern border, there are provisions in here clearly designed to have a dramatic increase in the number of illegal immigrants, which will turn into legal citizens.

Right now, America is used to having about 800,000 a year sworn in as new citizens. Pro-immigration groups suggest that this bill would add, in one shot, over 10 million new immigrants. Just disastrous.

Among other carrots to get more immigrants here, we are giving away free Pell grants, which is to say free scholarships if you come here illegally. That is almost hard to believe, at a time

that the average American, middle-class kid is paying $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 in debt to get his college degree and is going to wind up in debt into his forties.

If you come here illegally under this crazy bill, we are going to give you free college. Unbelievable. Permanently changing America to say the government should take care of 3- and 4-year-olds when there is no evidence or scant evidence that this will improve the outcomes for American children and their education system, all you are doing is, I think, following an absolute horrible ideology that says that the government ought to be the ones taking care of the children.

As far as families are concerned--increasing the marriage penalty, be it increase the marriage penalty for the earned income tax credit, increase in the marriage penalty on Pell grants, putting out more low- income housing, which is also designed to break down the families and further erode the stability of future generations.

Madam Speaker, I strongly urge my colleagues to vote no on the massive increase in the number of citizens here, the massive increase and the role the government plays in American life, and begin to restore themselves to some fiscal competence.

Madam Speaker, we discussed last week some of the issues that are of significance, and I don't think the press is paying enough attention to them.

We just had a little bit more progress toward the development of fenofibrate, which is a generic drug, which some researchers from Israel have had some success on in curing COVID. I want to talk about these successes and then talk what is going to be necessary to have happen to get this potentially lifesaving drug in the mainstream.

Two researchers from Israel found 15 people who were on oxygen and had pneumonia; and of the 15 people, after giving them fenofibrate, a generic drug available for very little, they got out of the hospital in 5 days. The other took, I think, it was 14 days.

That is pretty incredible stuff. If it could be used routinely, it would dramatically have reduced the number of deaths in this country.

Right now there are a variety of people around the world trying to do research on this topic, including the University of Pennsylvania, and they are grateful they got some money from the U.S. Government. But given the promise of this drug, I think they should have gotten a lot more money to deal with it quickly.

I have talked to the researchers, and they think they will be able to get together. I guess they need 700 patients before they can make a determination. They think they will be able to make a determination that this is a good drug by the end of March. That is not quick enough.

If they had more money and more push, they would be able to get more potential patients, and I would like to think get a final determination by the end of December.

So I am calling on my colleagues in Congress, as well as the NIH and the CDC, to highlight fenofibrate. It is also known as Tricor. It has been around a long time without dangerous side effects. Maybe there will be side effects with COVID, but there wasn't dangerous side effects otherwise. It has been used by millions of people. I am going to be circulating a letter, hoping that the administration wakes up and does something and does something quickly.

And by the way, this doesn't only cure it, but one of the underpublicized problems with COVID is that if you get it, it can result in long-lasting problems, problems to your lungs, problems to your organs. It appears, tentatively, that fenofibrate will clear up those problems quicker and not as many people will have those problems.

I am afraid from what I read that COVID is going to be around a long time. I know people who have gotten it after being vaccinated; not as bad, I guess, but they have gotten it. So again, I hope that this institution moves, and I hope the administration moves and hope we can move at warp speed and get a final determination on fenofibrate by the end of December.

I would also like to address, given what has happened over the last week, what I believe is the biggest crisis facing the country today, and that is the problem at the southern border.

The numbers are well known. Last July 8,000 people crossing the border, staying in the country. This year, 105,000, and a lot of people think that is a low number. The increase, the percentage increase wasn't quite as great in August. But, again, it was a substantial increase at a time of year where it is very hot and normally people aren't crossing the border.

We know the effects. I also don't think it has been as publicized as it should be. The huge number of people who are dying of illegal drugs, clearing 90,000 in a year for the first time in this country. When I first got this job, 45,000 a year was a lot. Every politician had to say we wanted to do something to fight illegal drug use.

Now that we have fentanyl, an especially dangerous drug, we have more than doubled the number of people dying. Politicians barely talk about it. But obviously that situation has been exacerbated at the southern border.

My local sheriffs are saying, ``Glenn, why aren't they doing anything to stop this coming across the southern border?'' Think of all the families, the people who have died from illegal drug use.

You think of all the humanitarian problems in addition to the huge financial impact this is going to have on America.

I have been down at the border looking at the little children in pens, under 8 years old, unaccompanied by parents, staying there. What is going to become of these children? Apparently we don't care. We continue to let the system go on. We continue to allow the word go out around the world, not just Central America, but South America, Asia, everywhere, Russia, Cuba, Haiti, more and more people coming in this country. And every day we don't do something, the word gets out and the number continues to go up.

But what I would like to address is how have some Members--I hope not that many. But currently the reconciliation bill that is under consideration, you read about it in the paper, how do they respond? Do they respond with more Border Patrol agents? No, we are going to keep the Border Patrol understaffed.

Do they respond with a wall? Which whenever anybody thinks about it, whenever I am on the border talking to local law enforcement, talking to the Border Patrol, all thought the wall was a good idea. No, we are not going to respond that way.

We are going to look at the crisis and change immigration law to dramatically increase the number of people coming here, whether it is increasing the number of green cards, increasing chain migration. Right now, and something that I think would end the United States as we know it, if this reconciliation bill passes, it will result in a dramatic increase in immigration.

So instead of doing what anybody with an ounce of common sense would say, and let's hire more Border Patrol agents for the border, we go the other way and say we don't have enough people in this country. We are near record levels of the number of current Americans who have been born abroad. Immigrants are fine. I think in 2018 we swore in, I believe, 830,000 new citizens.

But to respond to the crisis at the border, all the Haitians being let in, all the people from around the world to say let's change immigration law and let's dramatically increase the number of people who are coming here legally, to boot, is just crazy.

It is unfair to all the people who have done things right. And it is up to us to make sure that in the future, people who come here have their years in doing jobs, are appropriately vetted, and make sure they are good citizens. Not to slap dash say, as scandalous as things are at the border, let's let in a lot of new people here as chain migration relatives or that many more green cards as well.

So I beg this body to wake up. I beg the press corps to wake up as far as what is going on at the border, as well as what is going on in the reconciliation bill, and let the American public know what is going on.

I realize that the reconciliation bill is long and complicated. We can't cover it all. But at least the American public ought to know what we are voting on before we destroy America. In addition to the generosity that is in the bill as well that further serves as a carrot to bring people here.

We have a provision in there to give free Pell grants, free scholarships to people who are coming here illegally. Which, of course, will further encourage more people to come here. I still find that hard to believe. That if that bill passes as is, the average middle-class American will be expected to owe $20,000, $40,000, $50,000 in debt and may or may not get something available at the university. But if you show up at the southern border because you don't have a lot of money and are considered poor, you will get free college. I mean, no wonder people are coming here when they see the type of bills that our Congress propose.

But above all, the other provisions are going to result in huge increases in immigration, and I beg the press corps to cover that.

I would like to thank you for giving me this time to address these two problems, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the most immediate, but still underpublicized, crisis facing America today.

No country can afford unlimited immigration.

In 2018, 830,000 people were sworn in as new citizens, as they spent years in America proving they were the moral citizens John Adams said were necessary to keep our Republic.

Now record numbers of unvetted immigrants, including, we believe, over 10,000 Haitians at the border, are flooding in our country. We have been processing over 200,000 immigrants at the border each of the last 2 months, many of which are turned around; but in July over 100,000 immigrants were let in. That is in comparison to 8,000 immigrants being let in a year earlier. It appears in August we will be at another 90,000 people coming in.

Because of the flood of refugees, the Border Patrol must do paperwork so that 224 miles of the Texan border is largely unguarded. People I talk to in Border Patrol believe that the official number of 31,000 got-aways is probably understated.

It is hard not to conclude that this is happening by design. Recently, the Biden administration extended temporary protective status, causing drug cartels to inform people all around the world that the border is open.

I should point out, by the way, when people talk about the Haitians, these are not people who are coming here from Haiti. These are Spanish- speaking people who already were in places like Chile, for example. They are not coming here because they have nowhere

else to go; they have somewhere else to go. They are coming here because they received a message from the Biden administration that we are not guarding our borders.

It is apparent they feel the over 800,000 legally vetted immigrants are not enough. It is kind of amazing.

I don't know where the press is in this. The press ought to wake up. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, other than her 1-day photo op, have largely ignored the border. Wouldn't you think they would be getting nothing but questions as far as what is going on, on the border? Why aren't you down there? Why aren't you seeing what is going on? This will destroy America. America must wake up.

Two weeks ago in the Education and Labor Committee, apparently in an effort to further increase illegal immigration, all 28 Democrats voted specifically to give Pell grants, which is free college, to illegal immigrants--it is unbelievable--while the middle-class families in America are forced to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get their college.

We are specifically saying that if you come here illegally, we will give you free college--unbelievable--in addition to promises of free healthcare. It is no wonder that so many people are flooding across our border.

By the way, I want to give our President something to think of. When we appear so weak at the border, I think it tells other countries around the world that we are weak, as well. I don't know what President wants to be known as the weak President, but you don't think that other countries like Iran, groups like the Taliban, Russia, are observing this and taking the measure of what Joe Biden is as he lets people flood across the border?

By the way, we are also finally at a point at which 90,000 Americans are dying every year of illegal drug overdoses. My local law enforcement, who have to deal with the families of the people who die largely because of fentanyl coming across the southern border, wonder why more isn't being done down there. But again, it seems to be, well, middle-class Americans dying of drug overdoses, that is not the priority. So we continue to allow floods coming across the border.

It has been well-publicized that illegal immigrants are coming into America with COVID and other diseases, further causing me to wonder about the sincerity of some of the things that President Biden has said.

I do wonder whether or not the vaccine mandates at the very time that tens of thousands of people are flooding across the border every month, and I do have to wonder about this bizarre bill on Friday, which is certainly going to get headlines as the majority of the House of Representatives votes to legalize abortion until birth, is it an effort to cause the press and even our supposedly conservative news outlets to avert their eyes from the border, as they have to focus on vaccine mandates and 8\1/2\-month abortions?

In any event, I am calling on America to wake up. I realize there is not an election now, but you better make your voice heard, or we are going to lose the border.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring an underreported story up for the attention of the majority party, the Biden administration, and our press corps.

People are debating masks and mandatory vaccines. I talked to a local coroner, and they have recently found most of their COVID deaths are already vaccinated people.

What if we found a cure? Israeli researchers recently found that fenofibrate, also called TriCor, a long-used anticholesterol drug, cured 14 of 15 elderly patients with comorbidities who were already on oxygen with pneumonia in less than a week. The other one was cured within 14 days. It also dramatically reduced the damage many COVID patients suffer after the cure.

Wouldn't it be great if COVID could be cured for less than $20 a day?

Fenofibrate. That is two F's in fenofibrate. Google The Jerusalem Post.

I beg the CDC or NIH to take action. The press should publicize this and ask why the politicians aren't doing more to bring this to market and curing COVID.

Madam Speaker, due to an important meeting, I missed the rollcall. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 276.

members recorded pursuant to house resolution 8, 117th congress

Babin (Nehls)

Boyle, Brendan F. (Jeffries)

Carter (TX) (Calvert)

DeFazio (Brown)

DeSaulnier (Thompson (CA))

Escobar (Garcia (TX)

Frankel, Lois (Clark (MA))

Fulcher (Johnson (OH))

Grijalva (Garcia (IL))

Higgins (NY) (Tonko)

Johnson (TX) (Jeffries)

Kim (NJ) (Underwood)

Kirkpatrick (Levin (CA))

Latta (Walberg)

Lawson (FL) (Evans)

McEachin (Wexton)

Meng (Jeffries)

Morelle (Tonko)

Napolitano (Correa)

Payne (Wasserman Schultz)

Porter (Wexton)

Reschenthaler (Meuser)

Rice (SC) (Timmons)

Rush (Underwood)

Ryan (Kildee)

Sewell (Cicilline)

Stanton (Levin (CA))

Stefanik (Miller-Meeks)

Strickland (Torres (NY))

Swalwell (Veasey)

Vela (Correa)

Wagner (Walorski)

Wilson (FL) (Hayes)

Amendment No. 26 Offered by Mr. Mfume

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to respond a little bit to the statement made prior to the gentleman from Louisiana. I think maybe some of the public was misled into believing that people, the Haitians crossing our southern border are coming here from Haiti. They are actually living quite comfortably or at least adequately in Brazil and Chile and are not coming here out of necessity.

They are coming here because of a change in policy in special immigration status instituted by the Biden administration which, as expected, has resulted in Haitians coming here from other countries than Chile.

Now, tonight there are many issues that should be debated. We have the crisis at the border. We still have the crisis in Afghanistan, we have more mundane inflation here at home, we have the racial hatred trying to be incited by the majority party.

But in the midst of all these other issues, they have decided on Friday, over 220 of them are planning to vote on something called the Women's Health Protection Act. I haven't seen a more morally reprehensible piece of legislation in all my time in public life.

This legislation is going to legalize abortion up to the date of birth. So you understand, right now that will put us as one of seven countries worldwide who are in that ballpark, and only three other countries would have a bill so extreme--Red China, North Korea, and Vietnam--all countries in the recent past--and things have turned around a little in China--countries that proudly shut down religion and in particular Christianity, though it has bounced back a little in China.

So there we are. Are you proud? United States, North Korea, North Vietnam, Red China.

This bill will legalize abortion up to the date of birth. Unbelievable. You have to realize in this country throughout most of our history abortion was illegal. Abortion was illegal even though we didn't have ultrasounds, and it wasn't so obvious how horrific it is.

So what did we respond to with about 50 years of ultrasounds in this country? We look at those ultrasounds, and we send people to Congress who say: Let's kill those children.

I also want to point out there are some moderating bills around the various States which were designed to at least give the people some ability to back away from some of these horrific abortions.

When I was in the State legislature, I authored a bill, it was a 24- hour waiting period bill, and I talked to plenty

of women who were bullied into abortions by boyfriends or parents and regretted it. So we passed a 24-hour waiting period bill, and after they showed up at the abortionist, they looked at the literature they had received, looked at the ultrasounds and turned around.

There is some evidence that because of that bill about one in seven women changed their mind and would not return for the second appointment. But apparently that was too much for the majority party. We cannot give women a 24-hour waiting period. We have to have that abortion soon after they enter the clinic.

The next thing that really intrigues me is some States have gone after sex-selective abortion. Perhaps since the majority party wants to invite people from all over the world here, they like the cultural change which some people view around the world, they view a baby girl as somewhat less desirable than a baby boy, and therefore they want to kill that baby girl. Of course, here in the United States we are offended by such a thing, and States pass bills saying we are not going to have sex-selective abortions. But apparently it is time to weigh in, the majority party feels, time to weigh in into an area which has traditionally been the purview of the States and say: No, no, we can't have States having such a law.

We have to go back to the days in which you would come and do the ultrasound, and say: Oh, it looks like a little girl, better get rid of this one right away. That is apparently what the majority party wants to make legal.

I want the American people to wake up. We need a moral reawakening in this country. Wake up and realize that the majority of the House of Representatives on this Friday is going to stand up and say abortion is legal virtually until birth.

They are going to say it is wrong for any State to say you need a 24- hour waiting period, it is wrong to say that we want to stop the sex- selective abortions.

Wake up, America. We are in the middle of a moral free fall.

Mr. Speaker, I was engaged in an important meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 264.

Madam Speaker, we are back from our August break, and there are three issues of tremendous importance that Congress ought to deal with and the press corps ought to be dealing with.

I can understand, by the way, why President Biden wants to change his view over a few months ago and go for mandates on the vaccine, because these other issues are issues that I am sure would be uncomfortable for him to address, but they are important for the press corps and important for the American people to address.

The first issue is: the Del Rio sector of the Mexican border is out of control. We all see the 15,000 people under the bridge, but what is the consequence of that?

What is the consequence of having 2 months in a row of over 200,000 people show up at the border? The Border Patrol has to get off the border, they have to shuffle people around from the Del Rio section to the El Paso section or to the Laredo section. They have to take care of all of the unaccompanied minors coming in here, and when they do that, they cannot guard the border. Things are out of control.

Not only are the agents in that area not able to focus on the area, but things are such a disaster, we are having to bring agents off the northern border to make up for the huge problems on the southern border.

What happens? We wind up in a situation which not only are there more got-aways, people aren't even being processed crossing the border, but we also have a situation in which more drugs are coming off the border. The American public still hasn't been told enough that in the last year we have had over 90,000 people die of drug overdoses, largely from fentanyl coming across the Mexican border, and that is what happens when you have 224 miles barely monitored.

The Haitians are being brought here or encouraged to come here by the drug gangs. Why are they able to do this? It didn't happen by coincidence that you saw all these people under the bridge last week and they weren't over there a month ago.

The Biden administration has extended the Temporary Protected Status for people coming here from Haiti. When they changed this process, it was a recruiting tool for the gangs who want more people to come here.

I am going to emphasize, Haiti is not a very nice country, but these people are not coming from Haiti. They are coming here from Chile, they are coming here from Brazil, they are coming from Venezuela. Why are they coming from these other countries? It is not because they are in danger in Chile and Brazil. They are coming here because they can make more money here, and the drug cartel gangs are explaining that to them.

These gangs are charging these Haitians at least $50,000 a person to come here, which is the reason why they are so involved in this.

Meanwhile, where is the President? Where is our moderate Joe Biden? Where is Kamala Harris, the expert on the border, as we have this disaster going on at the southern border, out of control, people going from the United States to Mexico, back Mexico to the United States?

Wake up, press corps, and find out how much money the gangs are making on this. Why are we processing over 200,000 people at the southern border for 2 months in a row? Things we haven't seen for over 20 years.

No wonder some of the press corps, the irresponsible press corps--and no wonder Joe Biden wants to focus on vaccine mandates. Because focusing on vaccine mandates takes our eyes off the border that is out of control.

It is up to Congress to step forward, have some more committee hearings on this, do something, bring some bills to the floor. I know there is going to be a CR coming through, there is going to be a bill to break the debt ceiling coming through.

I would ask the President, the Speaker, give us some more Border Patrol agents to deal with our empty border. That is the first thing all Americans should be concerned about. They should be asking their Congressmen, they should be asking their Senators, what is being done to prevent 200,000 people from showing up at the border? What is being done when over 200 miles of the Mexican border is left, to a degree, unguarded? Are they at all concerned about the 90,000 people who died in the last year of illegal drug use, primarily fentanyl flowing across the southern border? What is being done about all the people coming from the other countries?

Remember, you did not see all these people under the bridge 2 or 3 months ago. Why? Again, it is not just a random thing. It is because of a change in the Temporary Protected Status extended by President Biden, which results in the huge mess that we have.

But that is not the only thing that hasn't been covered anywhere near enough. There is an issue that the press should be focusing on more with regard to the COVID situation. I know a lot of the focus is on the vaccine, but we have to realize that many people have gotten the vaccine over the last 6 months.

We also have a situation in which people have been working on cures for the disease. Right now, most days over 1,000--kind of averaging about 1,500--people die every day from COVID. So is there any cure for COVID that the CDC is letting sit on the table?

Over a year ago scientists in Israel announced hope for a generic drug called fenofibrate, or Tricor, which has been used safely to treat people for high cholesterol for years. Recently, these Israeli scientists have revealed that they took 15 people, all of which had severe COVID, all of which needed oxygen, and in 4 days, 4 to 6 days, 14 of the 15 were out of the hospital after they were given fenofibrate, which cost a grand total of $1.50 a day. The other patient got out of the hospital within 2 weeks.

You would think this is good news for the CDC, particularly given the billions of dollars that we have given them. Unfortunately, they are not getting enough assistance to do further trials in this country. Think if this 15-patient outfit were typical of the population as a whole. 15 for 15 cured. And not only cured. A lot of people today with COVID, even when they are cured, have permanent or almost permanent side effects. But here the side effects are a fraction of what they were on people who didn't take fenofibrate.

So I beg the CDC or anybody in the administration who is listening, we brought this to their attention before, see what you can do to have the vast sum of money and the U.S. Government weigh in to see if we can have stronger trials with more people on the fenofibrate, and we can get ourselves in a position in which soon if someone does wind up going to the hospital, if someone does wind up needing oxygen, they are given the fenofibrate, and they can wind up like the 15 patients they have already tried this on, all of which are apparently doing very well and are even getting rid of the symptoms that people who have had COVID sometimes hang onto for months and months and months.

If we have anybody out there listening from the CDC, listening from the

NIH, I would ask them to familiarize themselves with the study. It is fenofibrate. It has been well covered in The Jerusalem Post.

Why, in a time when we have 1,200 to 1,500 Americans dying every day of COVID, is this not something that is being pushed? I strongly encourage our health establishment to familiarize themselves with what right now looks like a miracle drug.

My final comment is with regard to the pro-life issue. When you consider the hundreds of thousands of people who would have been born every day in this country but who have their lives cut short before they are born, you can see why this is another issue that our press corps should be talking about, our churches should be talking about.

Already there have been big changes of policy under the new administration. First of all, in the past, under the Mexico City policy, if money was going to an international organization, if that international organization was performing abortions, they could not have the money. We changed that, President Biden changed it, saying: You can't use that money directly for an abortion, but since money is fungible, your organization can take the good name of the United States and use it to proselytize, use it after switching money around to have the U.S. assist in performing abortions around the world.

The second thing they did is under Title X, money going out, again to nonprofit organizations, in the past if these organizations referred for abortion, they couldn't get the money. Change that policy, so the type of organizations who work towards legalizing or work towards normalizing abortion got more money.

They wouldn't get the money in the past because it was too much a part of their mission to perform abortions. But one more time, they are going to be getting money.

But now we have a new bill coming up, and I think all Americans have to stop and think what is happening when it has come to this in America.

This bill will legalize abortion nationwide almost or perhaps all the way to birth. Now, throughout most of our country's history, abortion was illegal. It is kind of amazing, abortion was illegal before they had ultrasounds, before people could see actually what was going on.

I had felt when I began to get involved in public life that when ultrasounds become available, the number of abortions would drop. But despite the ultrasounds, things continue on ahead, in part because powerful organizations continue to hold abortion as a way out of a pregnancy.

But it is truly shocking that I believe a majority of people in this Chamber are going to vote to say that we have abortions right up to birth and get rid of even minor laws that are postponing the abortions otherwise.

When I was in the State of Wisconsin, I authored a bill putting in a 24-hour waiting period for abortion. I talked to the women who were bullied by their boyfriends or cajoled by their parents into having abortions, and they felt it was very important that there be some sort of waiting period after you went to the office of the abortionist one time that you got a chance to stop, step back, and think.

I think there are a lot of other places in our society where doctors or other people put a waiting period out there knowing that it is a very important decision, and you are never going to be able to change your mind once you make that decision. But under the extreme bill that we are going to be voting on later this week, they are going to say, no, we can't have that. Once they get you in that clinic on day one they can perform that abortion right away, and we are not going to give you 24 hours or 40 hours or whatever it is around the country to stop and maybe change your mind.

That is the type of thing that is going to be passed in the U.S. House of Representatives.

It doesn't take many people to change their mind and say, you know, I may consider myself so-called pro-choice, but the idea of saying that it is legal to perform an abortion a few hours after you walk in the abortion clinic, I just can't go that far. And I hope some of my colleagues who think they are going to vote for the bill later this week change their mind.

I hope they change their mind on things like sex selective abortion. We know in other cultures, and I happen to think we have a better culture by a mile, but in other cultures it is apparently not unusual to do, see whether they are going to have a boy or girl and if it is not what you want, we are going to end the life of that child before it is born.

Some States have made that illegal. Well, some people in Congress apparently feel they know better. We are going get rid of that law, and we are going to cut that life short just because maybe let's say it is a girl, and we were hoping for a boy.

I can see why certain members of the press wouldn't want to talk about this, and I can see why certain members of the administration wouldn't talk about this. I don't know what I would do, how I would explain such a radical bill.

So, in any event, I will leave the public with those three things to think about. Think about over 200,000 people a month at the border. Think about the Border Patrol stuck processing people, not able to monitor the border. Think of all the drugs coming across. Think of the 5,000 and up that the people coming across are having to give these drug gangs in Mexico further strengthening their power.

I ask you to think about like they have covered in the Jerusalem Post what is going on with the fenofibrate and the fact you can think how many lives we would save of the approximately 1,500 people a day that are still dying of COVID. And I want you to think about that bill being passed on Friday and whether it is right for the heavy hand of Congress to say not only can you have an abortion up to birth, but we are even going to get rid of laws like a waiting period law or get rid of laws like a sex selective law.

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

Madam Speaker, obviously a lot is going on in America right now, and with all the focus on what is going on in Afghanistan, as well as the latest spending bills going through Congress, we are perhaps losing track of the thing that I think will have the biggest impact on America over the next few years.

I beg the American public and the American media not to lose sight of what is going on at our southern border. In the last couple of weeks, it has become apparent that, by an estimate, 105,000 people crossed over the border into that country as opposed to 80,000 in June; over a 30 percent increase in 1 month, almost entirely unremarked; of that is an estimated 15,000 unaccompanied minors, which is a human relations tragedy.

It is going to further increase the amount of illegal drugs in this country. Right now, 90,000 people a year are dying of illegal drugs. It is hard to believe that this time last year only an estimated 8,000 people were coming in the country, whereas, this July, again, we are at 105,000.

It should be banner headlines in any newspaper in this country when we go from about 10,000 people to 105,000 people per month.

Madam Speaker, as we head into the 6-or 7-week break, it is important that Americans and Congress not forget the number one crisis facing this Nation, and that is the takeover of our southern border by Mexican drug gangs.

Right now, the drug gangs, because we are kind of tardy at guarding the border, escort people into Mexico, escort people through buses and trains to the Rio Grande River, put wristbands on these people so they know which gang they are associated with and which type of tour they bought, and have them carry drugs across the Rio Grande.

If our Border Patrol tries to stop people crossing the river, they throw little children in the Rio Grande so our Border Patrol has to go there. They eventually turn these people over to Border Patrol on the southern border, where they are turned over to nongovernmental organizations that put them in hotels. These hotels are not secure, so even if you have COVID, you are let out into the country.

They hold relatives hostage in Central America and Mexico so that the people who come here have to pay money to get their entry into this country, from $3,000 to $20,000.

Please do not forget what is going on at the border in the next 7 weeks.

Mr. Speaker, I noticed this morning that in the last week there were a couple more homicides in the city of my birth, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee right now is on pace to exceed the record number of homicides they had last year. This did not happen in a vacuum.

There are some people who blame guns, but other crimes are up as well, which shows guns have nothing to do with it. The reason is that law enforcement is under attack and has been passive, not only in Milwaukee, but in Chicago, in Baltimore, in Philadelphia, and Washington.

And why are they passive? Because politicians in this Chamber and politicians around the country have tried to blame the police for incarceration rather than blame the criminal. And as a result, police are scared to act, afraid to be aggressive, and we have murder rates higher than we have seen in quite a while, and we recently hit 90,000 deaths a year from illegal drug use.

These additional deaths, to me, the blood is on the people who ignore the studies that show that police are not racist and continue to push the police into a more passive fashion. We must stop this cheap politicking.

Madam Speaker, I would like to talk about this bill overall, as well as potential amendments to the bill.

Above all, this time around, after the massive increase of spending due to COVID, I think we ought to look as to whether this budget is frugal and whether the increases in the budget are actually necessary.

I am going to address the line in the budget for international organizations, contributions to international organizations. The bill, as proposed on the floor today, is a 10 percent increase over last year. A lot of that money is going to the United Nations, a body that seems to delight in being critical of the United States and a body in which the clear majority of members operate governments in which you would not want to live there at all, human rights abuses and otherwise.

In any event, I think we should go back to the last en bloc. There is an amendment in there. Rather than increase the amount to these international organizations by 10 percent, decrease the amount by 10 percent.

We are putting so much pressure on the value of the dollar, so much debt on our children and grandchildren.

The idea of going back, not to a draconian level, but the idea of going back to somewhere between where we were in 2019 and 2020, not a radical number, I think would be prudent.

I think, in this line as well as other lines of the budget, we should be looking to hold things about even or a mild step back, not another massive 10 percent increase, which will largely fund an organization that takes delight in making fun of the United States and the freedoms that we have.

Madam Speaker, as part of this en bloc, we have two separate amendments. I will address them separately.

The one amendment that was just addressed concerns DACA recipients and whether they should be hired here.

In 2018, we had 830,000 Americans sworn in to be new citizens. I don't think anybody can accuse the United States of being shy about letting other people in this country.

Obviously, if we make permanent the policy that any young person who is brought here automatically can work their way to be a United States citizen, we will have what we currently see at the southern border. We will have, again and again and again, parents coming here either asking for asylum or sending their children here by themselves, knowing that we are not going to enforce the immigration laws.

Now, I think everybody here knows that the day will probably come where something is done with some DACA recipients, but it shouldn't be all DACA recipients. The idea of establishing right now that if you came here, you automatically are--I think the inference is you are going to become a citizen by saying that you can work in the Capitol when these jobs are highly in demand for many of our own citizens is a little ridiculous.

One of my amendments removes the provision that says that people who are still in this country illegally can wind up working for the legislature.

The second amendment concerns the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. I think the gentleman from Ohio kind of mischaracterized the amendment. We

are not cutting anything here. We are leaving things in the same place they were in the last budget.

We have spent money in the last 12, 14 months of this institution like never before. We went through trillions of dollars. That is one of the reasons why we have such high inflation, one of the reasons why young people are going to find it so difficult to buy a house compared to the older generation, one of the reasons why the cost of food is up.

We cannot, as we go line by line through this budget, create a situation in which we are doubling lines in the budget. That is what we are doing here.

The other things that are particularly irritating about this, if you go through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, almost all the things they purport to do are done somewhere else in the legislative branch. They are really not adding a lot.

Obviously, it is one of these groups that I think is going to train people to view themselves not as individuals but more as a group, which I don't think is helpful for America as a whole. But, again, after going so overwhelmingly in debt, we have a Legislative Branch budget that is up 13 percent.

It would be interesting to ask how many Americans out there, how many of their individual salaries or compensation went up by 13 percent in the last year. But for Congress, no big deal.

Legislative Branch is up 13 percent, House Office of Diversity and Inclusion doubled. On its face, preposterous. I bet if you polled the American public, I wonder if there are any lines in this budget they want doubled, but particularly in an agency that, like I said, their function can be dealt with by other groups.

Madam Speaker, in any event, I encourage passage of this en bloc and the two amendments.

Madam Speaker, it is hard to believe there is anything else going on here with 3,000 people a day streaming across our southern border, but we are taking time to put together our budget for the next fiscal year. And in light of the fact that we recently cleared $28 trillion in debt, it is important to look at how frugal we are going into next year.

If you look, Labor HHS, which is a significant part of the budget, is going up 36 percent; Interior and the Environment going up 19 percent; Transportation and HUD up 13 percent; individual smaller lines even more. The White House is taking this opportunity to increase its spending by 39 percent; the Vice President by 22 percent; the EPA is going up 23 percent. This is just plain fiscally out of control.

Meanwhile, the only area of the budget that probably should go up, Homeland Security, which guards our border, is not going up at all. In any event, I hope the press has some time to put some of those numbers out there so the public can see that the fiscal incompetence of this House continues on.

Madam Speaker, two weeks ago, I spent additional time at the U.S. border, which I think, by a mile, is the biggest crisis this country has.

It has recently been brought to my attention that the Rio Grande Valley sector, where I was at, recently had 20,000 people a week processed. They had never seen such a thing.

What difference does this make? The more people come across, first of all, it probably means more illegal drugs crossing the border, which means more fentanyl, which is the reason why we have 90,000 deaths a year in this country. Since they're processing more people, it means less Border Patrol agents to guard the more rural areas of the border, which means more people coming across.

Finally, we are in a situation, we found out, down there, when they turn people over with COVID to the nongovernmental entities, those entities do not have secure facilities, and it means people are flowing into this country who we already know have COVID.

Please, during this appropriations season, please add more money to our Border Patrol so we can get a handle on these ridiculously high numbers.