Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I will now address the Cuban crisis just south of our border.

Cuba is, of course, a very progressive Marxist state. The government runs the economy with all the restrictions of freedom; that means there is no freedom of press.

The State Department International Religious Freedom Report shows numerous violations of freedom of religion as believers in God are harassed. There is no freedom of movement. And now with protests, people are disappearing.

How does the United States respond? There was a Free Cuba mural put up in Washington, D.C., and the mayor of our Nation's capital responded by saying that it was said in the past that Cuba has an education system we should learn from, and the mural disappeared.

I beg President Biden to do what he can to restore internet service so the people in Cuba can communicate with each other. Please don't lift the embargo. And above all, provide a little bit of moral leadership and show that you are opposed to the Marxist cabal to the rest of the world.

Madam Speaker, I was delayed in a meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 216.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I would like to address the Chamber on what I believe is the biggest crisis facing America today. I spent last week down at the McAllen section of the U.S.-Mexico border, and what I saw horrified me.

Late at night, from 10 to 11 o'clock, I watched people from all around the world walking on a pathway from the Rio Grande River to the Border Patrol station. We are right now at a point where I believe over 70,000 people a month are being allowed in the country. Many of these people have no ID at all, so there is no way to confirm who they are, to even see if they have a criminal record.

Upon being processed through the border station, even without an ID, we buy them plane tickets for all around the country.

Scandalously, at a time when we are talking about COVID again, even if they test positive, people are held in apartments or hotels and not guarded, so they turn around and are being released. At a time in which we are supposed to be more careful than ever, we have a situation in which people who are coming here illegally are allowed in the country.

Furthermore, we watch as we have hit new records for the number of people who are killed in this country by illegal drug overdoses, including fentanyl. We are up to 90,000 people in the last year. I believe the reason we are hitting all-time records is because, as bad as heroin is, fentanyl is far worse. And all or virtually all of that fentanyl is coming across the southern border.

Meanwhile, we cede control of our immigration policy to Mexican drug gangs. These gangs charge, depending upon where you are coming from, $3,000, $10,000, $20,000 to come across the border. They are so heartless that it is not uncommon that if Border Patrol approaches them on a boat from the Mexican side to the American side, whether it is with people or with drugs, they will throw a 3- or 4-year-old child into the Rio Grande River, knowing that our Border Patrol will fight to save that child rather than go after the people sneaking in the country or going after the drugs. This is the brutal type of people we are assisting by continuing the current policy or lack of a policy.

I strongly urge the Biden administration to step up to the plate to make sure that COVID-positive people are no longer let into the country; bring back the old policy, the migrant protection protocol, when we had only 6,000 people a month rather than 70,000 people a month crossing the border; require some sort of photo ID, like every other American would have before they get on an airline.

Good grief, who knows what type of criminal records these people have. Of course, we can only check criminal records in the United States. Nobody has any idea if these people have horrific criminal records in Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, or all the other countries that people are coming here from.

Madam Speaker, I strongly encourage the Biden administration to step up.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the crisis we have on our southern border.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to go with three other Congressmen to see the Rio Grande Valley sector, and I want to educate the American public, as well as my colleagues, as to what I saw down there. It is my personal belief that it is the biggest crisis that we are facing today.

First of all, let's just look at the raw numbers. In June, we have had contact with 190,000 people at the border. Now, a lot of those are turned around. We do not know, because the numbers are not yet available, how many are let in the country, but we believe about 16,000 children who were unaccompanied by an adult are let in; we believe about 24,000 other family members are let in; and we believe about 30,000 people who are not touched by the Border Patrol and who are sneaking across the line are let in.

So, we believe that more than 70,000 people, who we did not pick and did not vet, were let in America in June, as opposed to about 6,000 people last June. That is kind of a dramatic change, 6,000 to 70,000 people.

Normally, this time of year, by the way, those numbers are falling, but they went up in June compared to May. Why? Normally, it is hot this time of year, and people are less likely to travel south of the border, but more people are coming up here.

I have been down to the border four times this year, and things are different from sector to sector. The Rio Grande Valley sector is that which borders the Gulf of Mexico. I want to point out that, there, people are coming from

countries you would expect, primarily Honduras, then Guatemala, then Mexico, then El Salvador, although other countries like Haiti, Ecuador, or Cuba are also in the top 10, a little bit different than other regions where Brazil led the way or where Russia was very close to the top.

I want to point out that according to the Border Patrol agents I talked to, frequently, these people are not necessarily starving or poor, with the exception of Venezuela and Cuba, where they have had to put up with socialist Marxist governments. They appear well fed. Some of them, particularly from Cuba or Europe, are actually, judging by their clothes or the purses they have, relatively well off.

I stood on the border in a path between the Rio Grande River and where you check in with the Border Patrol. During the 45 minutes I stood there, again and again and again clumps of people, 15 people, 45 people, 25 people, were coming across. They were rather jolly, despite the fact that I was standing next to a Border Patrol agent. That did not intimidate them. They knew that, under our new laws, they would be escorted in. They just smiled, waved, and were completely happy.

They knew that they would wind up being looked at, at the border. That is why people just kept coming, until 3 o'clock in the morning, as one of my colleagues saw.

What other comments can I make about watching this huge sea of humanity cross the border? It is strengthening the cartels. I do not know if I believe it, but a Border Patrol agent told me that he felt the Mexican cartels are now making more money escorting people across the American border than they are from drugs. I can't document that. That is just what I was told.

If you have to come across the border, if you come across the Rio Grande, people have to realize, you do not get to come across unless you deal with the drug cartels. They will charge someone from Mexico about $3,000; from Central America, about $5,000; from Brazil--and these are all abouts--you negotiate your own price with the cartels, maybe $10,000.

I didn't see anybody coming from China, but our tour guides at the Rio Grande Valley said it was not uncommon to get people from China. They may be paying up to $20,000.

You get different trips. When you come up from Central America, first of all, you are escorted toward a place near the border between Mexico and Central America. Then, you pay to get from a gathering place there to a gathering place just south of the American border. Then, you are escorted to the Rio Grande River and over the Rio Grande River. Maybe for a higher quality trip, it might cost you $12,000 to get a better boat, that sort of thing, as you worked your way north.

You have to pay. We recently heard a story from the Border Patrol in which somebody from Ecuador refused to pay. He felt like he could just come across the border. The gangs just killed him on the spot, boom. That is the type of thing you are dealing with.

A lot of sexual assaults, so as our Border Patrol interviews people, they try to do something about it. But, obviously, given the hodgepodge nature of the border, I think very rarely are they able to catch the assailant.

To give you a further idea of how difficult it is, people might say: Why does the Border Patrol not intercept the boat coming across the Rio Grande? Because what the drug cartels will do if there is a little child on the boat, and there is frequently a little child, they will just throw that child in the river, knowing full well that the U.S. Border Patrol, being compassionate Americans, will help that 1-year-old or 3-year-old child to safety rather than go after the drug cartel or the person working for the drug cartel, escorting people across the border. I was told again today, talking to our Border Patrol, that is very common, that they would throw a little child in the river.

Kind of an interesting thing, if you watch these people come across, it is so automatic that, nowadays, they get a little wristband, like you might get at a county fair. That wristband varies depending upon the quality of trip you are going to get, as well as which gang is escorting you across. It is just done automatically.

Like I said, you come to the southern border of Mexico. Then, you take a plane, train, or bus through Mexico and enter another gathering place just south of the border. You are escorted to the river, and then escorted on a boat across. Like I said, depending on the quality of the trip, $3,000, or from Asia, $20,000--a very difficult thing.

The next thing we learned down there, you might think: What does Mexico think about the new policies implemented by the United States? Of course, the biggest policy is that we got rid of the migrant protection program, where people who were going to ask for asylum had to stay south of the border. For whatever reason, the Biden administration decided to get rid of that.

Since then, the Border Patrol agents I talked to felt they were getting less cooperation with Mexico. They are still getting cooperation, but it frayed the very good cooperation we had with the Mexican border patrol 6 months ago because the attitude of the Mexican border patrol themselves or the police themselves is: Why should I risk my life taking on the drug gangs when the Americans on the other side don't really seem to care about protecting their own border?

The next thing to point out, that I didn't know looking at TV, is it is not unusual at all to have people come here without their own ID. Without their own ID, of course, you have to take their word for it, as to who they are. You can't do criminal background checks like you want to do.

Bizarrely, even without an ID, the wonderful American taxpayer will fly you or bus you wherever you want to go in the United States. When I left that area, in the McAllen airport, I saw people with manila envelopes. On the envelope, it says: ``I do not speak English,'' but it gives directions as to where you should go.

As we talked to some of the immigrants coming across, they knew where they wanted to go. ``I want to go to Chicago.'' ``I want to go to New York.'' ``I want to go to Louisiana.'' So, we dutifully put the instructions on the manila envelope, without ID, and they are allowed to get on the airlines without ID, something that none of us could do, and we take them wherever they want to go.

The next comment I will have is people talk about keeping families together. Under the current system, as we open up the border, we see not a small number of children all alone in what I can only describe as cages. I would say they are maybe 20 feet by 20 feet with maybe eight kids in there all under the age of 5, or another fencing area with kids who are older than that crowded together, maybe 10 to 13. They are, obviously, kids. We do let kids in who claim to be under 18 who almost certainly aren't. But in any event, it is kind of heartbreaking to see these little kids under the age of 5 sitting on mats, asleep at 10 in the morning without any adults to accompany them, without their parents to accompany them.

Now, you might say: What are they doing here? Bizarrely, I think, parents will send their kids north to live with an aunt and uncle or gram or grandpa or whatever, and they put the address and the name of the people on their T-shirts or with something the kids are carrying. Then, the kids show the Border Patrol their T-shirts, and the United States sends the kids to a nonprofit organization that takes them to New York, Baltimore, or wherever.

It frustrates the Border Patrol because, of course, in the United States, if we knew parents who just wrote on a 3-year-old's shirt ``take Johnny to 123 Elm Street in Los Angeles, California,'' and dropped him off at the airport, those parents would be getting a call from social services.

But here, in dealing with immigrants, we don't consider that unusual at all. ``Oh, Johnny, we are supposed to find a way to take you from McAllen to 123 Elm Street in West Bend, Wisconsin.'' Why? We have no problem doing that. It is just something that bothers the Border Patrol and bothers me as well.

The next thing to think about, something new that the Border Patrol sees, and I am a big advocate for those people who are born with different abilities, but it is apparent to the Border Patrol that, more recently, they are getting kids who they wonder if they are coming from orphanages, who have different abilities than the rest of us--

you could say special needs. We are seeing more of that come across the border.

Of course, America is a very wonderful country, and we do take these kids in. I am sure we will find special programs for them. But I think it ought to be openly discussed if we are seeing a new trend of countries south of the border feeling that it is up to the United States to care for this population.

I am going to comment a little bit on the people they call got-aways. Obviously, if you have so many young kids who are being processed here, Mr. Speaker, the Border Patrol has to spend a lot of time filling out paperwork and interviewing these folks.

What happens when the Border Patrol is filling out paperwork and changing diapers? They don't have time to guard the border.

As a result, we have heard in certain sectors the Border Patrol is at one half the number of people they want on the border, which is why this time last year they had about 6,000 got-aways sneaking in every month, and now there are 30,000 got-aways sneaking in every month.

A discussion of what I learned at the border is incomplete without talking about the drugs that are coming across the border. Ever since I have had this job, we have talked about the number of people who are dying in this country by illegal drug overdoses. I think after a while people's eyes tend to glaze over, and they may not be aware that in the last 6 or 7 years the number of people dying in this country has doubled.

When I first got this job, it was about 45,000 a year, and I was just stunned at 45,000. It is not that far away from the number of people who died fighting in Vietnam, and every year that many people die of drug overdoses in this country. It has doubled. It is now up to 90,000 a year.

When I talked to the local DEA agent in Milwaukee, he told me that he felt the drugs from all of the overdoses in Milwaukee County--which at the time was 540 a year--probably came across the southern border. Just like every other member of law enforcement in Wisconsin, they wonder what we are doing in Washington to prevent these drugs from coming across the southern border.

Why is there such a big increase?

I think two things: First of all, more drugs are coming across the border. As marijuana becomes legalized in more and more States and grown legally in more States, there is a speculation that the drug gangs who, after all, make money selling drugs, are shifting from marijuana to harder drugs.

Secondly, the current drug of choice, the drug that is being used by these horrible cartels--and by the way, we ought to put more of these people in prison, not less--the type of drugs that are being brought across by these cartels is fentanyl.

I had always thought that heroin was about the most dangerous thing you could take, Mr. Speaker. Fentanyl is much more dangerous than heroin, which is why I recently talked to a district attorney in my district, and in his area there were as many people who died from drug overdoses last year as the 3 prior years combined. It is what we see as the young people shift or older people shift from heroin to fentanyl on purpose or not on purpose, because frequently the fentanyl is put in with the heroin.

So if we care about the 90,000 people who are dying every year in this country of illegal overdoses and we think about the poor families who lose their loved ones and wonder what we are going to do, it seems that a minimum part of the response has to be to respond at the border.

One more time, it seems like we are going in the opposite direction. We are doing less at the border. More people are coming across, and more people coming across means more fentanyl; more fentanyl coming across means more fentanyl-laced heroin; and more fentanyl-laced heroin means more people dying and more broken hearts of the families of the people who are dying.

So what can I recommend to the wonderful Congressman in the Chair?

First of all, I will ask the Biden administration not to get rid of title 42. That is the section that allows the Border Patrol to turn people around because of fear of COVID. There are rumors that the use of title 42 is soon going to be dropped by the Biden administration. Perhaps the uptick in COVID will cause them not to do it. But as I said, already we have 70,000 people a month crossing the border, and if the word gets out that we are no longer going to turn away single adults or families with kids over the age of 7 who are right now being turned around because of COVID, that 70,000-a-month figure is going to shoot up even more.

Secondly, with regard to COVID right now, the Border Patrol checks people, but they only check people if they have a temperature of at least 99; otherwise, they just send them on--which includes a lot of asymptomatic people--to the nongovernmental organizations who take these people next.

If they test positive there, then these organizations put them up in hotels or apartments.

But because they are here illegally and they want to get inland to America, what do the people with COVID do once they are placed in a hotel or placed in an apartment?

They leave right away. So, right now, as a practical matter the policy of the Biden administration of people who come here--I am not talking about unvaccinated people, I am talking about people who literally have COVID--the response of this country is we let them in. I would beg the Biden administration to do something about that concern.

So keep or expand title 42 so people can't get here because of COVID. And, secondly, when people test positive for COVID, don't let them out. That is kind of opposite of the whole story we are getting from the President.

The third thing I would like to ask the President to do--and I made this request, I think it was 3 weeks ago now--please put someone other than Vice President Harris in charge of the border. She went down to the El Paso sector. She did a few-hour perfunctory check.

I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, I learn so much more every time I am down there, and usually I stay down there a couple days each. Every sector of the southern border is different, and there are nine sectors there. I happened to be in the Rio Grande sector this time. It is very different from what you learn in the Tucson sector, Mr. Speaker, and very different from what you learn in the San Diego sector.

Please, President Biden, pick someone who either has a zeal to control the southern border or at least is personally responsible enough to go down there and do something. Because I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, that 70,000 figure now up from 6,000 a year ago is going to do nothing but grow; and if you ever get rid of title 42, it is going to rocket up through the roof. I don't think there is any country-- particularly a country with a generous welfare state like we have--who can survive purely open borders.

So there is your primer, Mr. Speaker, for all the people fortunate enough to be in the room and fortunate to be listening at all.

I beg President Biden to take the border more seriously, and I beg the media of this country to take the border more seriously. I do not think anything that the government does or does not do is more significant than what happens with the 70,000 people who are coming across the border today, and what I believe will happen as soon as the weather gets a little cooler and it becomes more apparent to people around the world, soon that number is going to go from 70 to 80 to 90 to 100 and maybe significantly more than that.

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

Mr. Speaker, recently, if you look at the CDC numbers, we hit an all-time record in drug overdoses for a 12-month period at 90,000. That is up from 45,000 only 6 years ago.

There are two dangerous trends that are going the exact opposite way than you would think, if we care about the people who died and their families.

First of all, because of the antipolice hysteria out there, the number of police are being reduced; and for that reason, at least in my area, they are no longer doing criminal investigations in some cities when there are drug overdoses.

Secondly, I think the major reason for the massive increase in deaths is the increase in fentanyl deaths--fentanyl being actually much more dangerous than heroin.

We now have this happening at a time when the Border Patrol is being pulled off the border to process unaccompanied minors and we have the horrible situation of not even increasing the budget of the Border Patrol.

Mr. Speaker, if we care about the 90,000 people who die every year of drug overdoses, it is time to start caring a little bit more about the border and care a little bit more about the number of police we have in our country.

Madam Speaker, due to an important meeting, I missed this vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 198.

Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress

Babin (Nehls)

Boebert (Gosar)

Cardenas (Gomez)

Cawthorn (Nehls)

Cohen (Beyer)

Comer (Cammack)

Fallon (Nehls)

Gallego (Gomez)

Garcia (TX) (Jeffries)

Grijalva (Stanton)

Horsford (Jeffries)

Jacobs (NY) (Garbarino)

Johnson (TX) (Jeffries)

Kirkpatrick (Stanton)

Lawson (FL) (Evans)

Leger Fernandez (Jacobs (CA))

Lieu (Beyer)

Long (Fleischmann)

Lowenthal (Beyer)

McClain (Bergman)

Meng (Jeffries)

Mullin (Lucas)

Napolitano (Correa)

Owens (Stewart)

Payne (Pallone)

Ruiz (Aguilar)

Rush (Underwood)

Sewell (DelBene)

Steube (Franklin, C. Scott)

Strickland (DelBene)

Timmons (Gonzalez (OH))

Wilson (FL) (Hayes)

Young (Mast)

Madam Speaker, I will have to admit that when I first got this job and walked through Statuary Hall, I was kind of surprised at some of the people who are honored there. In particular, Alexander Stephens was one that kind of jumped out at me.

And right before the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln talked about malice towards none and charity for all. And I think that charity for all was being a little abused when people like Alexander Hamilton Stephens got their statue down there.

Be that as it may, there is another part of this bill that is put before us. We have talked about the Dred Scott decision. I am going to talk a little bit about Roe v. Wade and a history of Roe v. Wade that I think a lot of people don't know about. I get this history in part from an article put out by Planned Parenthood and in part from a book written by Bob Woodward.

Obviously, Roe v. Wade could be described as the most significant court decision in that it legalized abortion, and we have 60 million fewer Americans than we would have if this decision had not happened.

However, a change was made in that decision as they were debating it, upping that 60 million figure a little bit higher because a decision was made at the end to go from allowing abortions at 3 months to allowing abortions all the way until viability--late-term abortion.

The author of that decision, Justice Blackmun, was just going to go 3 months, and he got a letter put out by Thurgood Marshall, who wanted it to be much higher.

I can't tell you exactly how many abortions past 3 months we have had in this country, but it is probably over 5 million. And that was because Thurgood Marshall was in the right or wrong position--however you want to look at it--to go from 3 months to making America one of seven countries in the world where they allow abortions so late. And of those countries includes North Korea, Vietnam, Red China--not countries you want to be associated with.

Madam Speaker, if this bill becomes law and we walk through there, we are going to see Thurgood Marshall--or at least I will always look at him as the guy who weighed in and felt after abortion was largely illegal in this country for its first 200 years, the guy who kind of put the foot on the gas and legalized late-term abortion and put the United States in with those other six countries.

Madam Speaker, for that reason, I am going to vote against this bill today. And, hopefully, someday in America, the Roe v. Wade decision and putting the United States in the position in which even 6- or 7-month- old

babies can have their lives taken away, hopefully that will eventually end.

Madam Speaker, I stand in solidarity with the majority of Americans that oppose taxpayer funding of abortions.

Despite how clear Americans are on the issue, President Biden and the Democrats in Congress are attempting to force Americans to pay for abortions.

President Biden's recent budget calls for removal of the Hyde amendment, the appropriations rider that prohibits Federal funding of abortion. Congressional Democrats have committed to removing the Hyde amendment and other longstanding pro-life provisions from this year's appropriations bill.

We must not allow longstanding abortion funding prohibitions that are widely supported by the American people to be gotten rid of at the whims of pro-abortion radicals.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committees on Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 18, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to discuss the threat of inflation on the future of America's economy.

In other places around the Capitol at this time, people are discussing a new infrastructure bill. They are talking about a new 2022 budget. People talk about the importance of not raising taxes on the poor. Earlier this year, they rejected a possible gas tax hike because it would have fallen disproportionately on the poor. But there is no surer way to penalize the poor of this country than to inflate the currency.

Look at where we already are on other commodities: aluminum, lumber, soybeans.

How are our young people going to buy that first house?

The cost of food, and even prepared food, is going up.

Why is that?

Take a look at the charts showing the amount of currency in banks. M1 currency, which is up by a factor of 5 times; not 5 percent, not 50 percent, but a factor of 5 times in the last year.

Look at M2, up 30 percent in the last year. Of course, the cost of commodities is spiraling through the roof.

America is a wealthy country because our dollar has been the envy of the world. But this Congress has not been acting like a Congress with the world's reserve currency. This Congress is acting like the Congress of a country such as Zimbabwe, and we all saw on TV what happened there.

It is time for the people who are not only negotiating the infrastructure bill, but negotiating the 2022 budget, to take into account what they are doing to the poor of this country or the middle class of this country as they inevitably stoke inflation.

Think of the people on almost fixed incomes, on Social Security. Think of all of the people on pensions, who are locked in at $15,000 a year, $20,000 a year, and think how their purchasing power will go down if we continue along this path, including the bloated budget proposed by President Biden himself.

We must rein in our spending. The poor and the middle class are the ones paying the price. I beg the negotiators to stand up to the people who think that printing hundreds of millions of dollars more in the infrastructure bill or passing this bill with an excessively high spending increase in the regular 2022 budget will not affect the average guy. It is going to affect the average guy. It is going to erode their savings. It will shrink the values of their pension or Social Security. It will be a true disaster for middle class and poor America.

Questions for Vice President Harris on Her Trip to the Southern Border

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to, first of all, applaud the fact that Vice President Harris is going to the southern border. I don't know whether she has done this on her own accord or with prodding from President Biden, but, either way, I am glad she is going down there.

I have been to the border several times this year. I think it is very difficult to learn all you should learn in one day. There are nine sectors to the southern border, and what you learn in El Paso is very different from what you learn in Yuma. It is very different from what you learn in San Diego. It is very different from what you learn in McAllen.

Nevertheless, I am glad she is going down there, and I would like to make some suggestions for her, which we will forward to her as questions she should be asking or things she should learn about the southern border.

First of all, Madam Vice President, the Migrant Protection Protocols caused the Mexican Government to hold asylum seekers on the south side of the border. President Biden has since walked away from the protocol. What effect did the nullification of this agreement with the Mexican Government have on the number of people crossing the border? And what effect will it have on the number of people from around the world who will come here in the future?

Secondly, we also had Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Central American countries that held people south not only of the Mexican border, but south of Mexico. What effect did President Biden's ending the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Central American countries have on the number of people entering southern Mexico? And what effect will this have on people coming through Mexico from around the world?

Third, I want the Vice President to find out what type of drugs are coming across the border. Has there been a change in the fraction of marijuana versus fentanyl coming across the southern border? How lethal is fentanyl?

Fourth, I hear horrific stories from the border guards as far as women and girls being sexually assaulted on their journey through Mexico. What percentage of women and girls are sexually assaulted as they travel to enter the U.S. illegally?

Fifth, you will find when you get down there, Madam Vice President, that families consist of adults and children, find out how many times a family supposedly shows up and the Border Patrol suspects that the children are not part of the family, and what happens when DNA tests are given to children and the adults they are entering with?

Six, how much does it cost for the migrants to enter our country? And by that, I mean how much are they having to pay the drug cartels? I think you will find different numbers for the cost of a Mexican, a Central American, a Brazilian, and Asian. But you should ask these questions when you are on the southern border.

Seventh, got-aways are when people come in this country and have no contact with the Border Patrol. As the Border Patrol must spend time doing paperwork with the huge increase of unaccompanied children coming here, has the number of got-aways, increased from this time last year to now?

Eighth, I think you should look at some demonstrations with some dogs. How effective are dogs in looking for fentanyl and other drugs, and should we be purchasing more dogs in this budget?

Next, I ask you to look at the border wall which you will find is 30- feet high and 8 feet underground. Talk to the Border Patrol, talk to ICE, talk to local law enforcement, and see what they think of that wall and whether it would be worth expanding it or whether your administration was right to just cut it off with equipment just sitting in the open sun.

Next, Madam Vice President, you said you want to focus on the root causes from countries whose citizens are coming here. I ask you to find out what countries are sending its citizens here and which countries have sent a significant amount of people. I think you are going to be surprised that it is not just a matter of people coming here from Mexico or Honduras. They are coming from around the world, but you should report back on the number of countries you would have to improve to prevent the demand from going up further to come here.

Next, in the opinion of the Border Patrol, have you and the President's public comments during your campaign

and after the campaign had an impact on the number of people coming to this country? I would ask members of the Border Patrol.

The twelfth question is: Have your comments, as well as the fact that you have decided to take 13 weeks before you decided to go to the border, had an effect on the morale of the Border Patrol? You and the President have not visited the border, which I think is the biggest crisis facing your administration since you were both sworn in. What do they think about that, and what can you do to make up any dispiriting of these brave people due to your inaction to this point?

Thirteen, and one of the scary things that I don't think we have talked about: Ask the Border Patrol if they keep track of how many people drown in the Rio Grande trying to come here every year, and how many people dehydrate in the Arizona or New Mexico or Texas deserts as they try to come here.

And, finally, look for what policies we can implement from Washington to make your job of securing the border easier.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

As we turn on the news every night and we think again and again about all of the changes to America that have happened in the last 4 months, it is so easy to just focus on the border or focus on the inflation or focus on the constant drumbeat that America is a horrible, racist nation. And by doing so, we forget the huge changes we have had in American law and American funding that affect the number of abortions that happen not only in the United States, but around the world.

It is hard to believe that throughout most of this country's history, even before ultrasounds were invented, the consensus in this country was that abortion was horrific; it was murder.

What have we done in the last few months?

First of all, we have repealed the Mexico City policy so that funds are once again going to organizations abroad that don't directly but indirectly fund abortions.

Secondly, we have overturned President Trump's Protect Life rule, which will reopen Title X Family Planning funding for Planned Parenthood. We believe that under this, Planned Parenthood has received $60 million a year, which not only, in part, goes to fund abortions, but also goes to fund an organization that is designed to encourage or change America's traditional dislike of abortion.

We are restoring funding to the U.N. Population Fund, which supported China's birth limit law, and is also proselytizing for abortion.

In the latest attack on unborn babies and pro-life Americans, President Biden released a fiscal year 2022 budget that removes the Hyde amendment, the longstanding provision that prohibits Federal funding of abortions.

We don't believe this is what Americans want. The vast majority of Americans do not support taxpayer funding of abortion. So much for the unity that President Biden promised us.

There is, over time, more and more scientific literature that demonstrates unborn babies can feel pain at a very earlier gestational age, at the 15-week-old gestational age. So much for science. This is pro-abortion extremism. We can start by making the Hyde amendment permanent by passing H.R. 18, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.

Madam Speaker, we are back here after 3 weeks in our districts, and I think our minds should probably be on the border and the thousands of people--tens of thousands of people streaming across every month, or perhaps on the economic problems caused by higher inflation. But, instead, there was a few brief statements made by one of our prominent TV anchors that causes me to feel I have to speak tonight.

While we were gone, we celebrated both Memorial Day and the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who have died for our freedoms. We celebrated another anniversary of D-day, the landing in Europe. And when we think about Memorial Day, we can't help but remember other names of battles during World War II: Okinawa, Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Midway, the Battle of the Bulge, as well as all the soldiers who died fighting the communists in Vietnam and Korea.

It is a time for superlatives talking about the heroic efforts of these great men and women.

Unfortunately, on a formerly major network, NBC or MSNBC, Brian Williams decided to compare or supposedly compliment all of our brave troops by comparing them to people who fight under the most evil banner I think that has existed, or one of the two most evil banners that has existed in the last 100 years, and that is the banner of antifa.

Antifa is an organization. If we had their flag here before us, it is virtually identical to the flag used by the communists in the early 1920s in Nazi Germany. The socialist flag at the time, the communist flag, allied with the Soviet Union, which at the time millions of people were dying as they adjusted to life without the czar and life under communism.

The Soviet armies were soon responsible for killing millions and millions of Ukrainians as they guarded the food so the kulaks would starve to death, the communist armies that in Red China caused tens of millions of deaths, the communist armies in Cambodia, these countries with their anti-God philosophy, proud in Red China when the final Christian churches were closed.

Of all things, to compare our troops at D-day with antifa, I cannot imagine a greater insult to give these soldiers. I wish more of them were still alive so they could respond to seeing on television a TV anchor trying to compare them--these brave men to keep the world free-- to compare them to antifa, a group whose flag is almost identical to the communist flag.

By the way, it is not surprising that we have a red flag for Nazi Germany and a red flag for the Soviet Union. Red at the time stood for socialism.

Our young children should be educated on the comparisons between the two. During the 1920s, there were times when both ideologies entered into joint strikes because they both wanted to get rid of what existed of a free country in Germany at the time.

We would like to hear from NBC. Shame on you, NBC, the once-proud network. Would you respond to the statements by Brian Williams comparing the men who died at D-day, the men who landed on European soil to free Europe? Will you respond to your anchor implying they were the equivalent of antifa, a group connected with communism? Shame on that once-proud number one network in America. What do you think of what you have done?

The next issue I would like to comment on that I heard about again and again when I was back is an issue that is not surprising. To a certain extent, some of the policies of the past are responsible for this, but recently, we have had a new round of checks go out, a greater increase in the money supply, both M1 and M2.

Not surprising, when the government prints money, we see an increase in the amount of gasoline, an increase in food prices led by an increase in soybeans, an increase in lumber, and massive increases in homebuilding.

I am scared to death for the younger generation as a new economic ideology seems to have taken over in which there is a feeling that you can spend yourself into prosperity. When I look at the degree to which housing costs have skyrocketed within the last year, it is perhaps not surprising, given the degree to which money is being printed. But it is going to be much more difficult for a young couple to buy that first house today compared to 12 years ago.

It is important that everybody in this Chamber sit back and question the idea that is being approved by the Federal Reserve that America can become wealthier just by printing money. America will not become wealthier by printing money. America will have inflation, and that inflation will strike hardest at commodity prices and hardest at housing.

So everybody in this Chamber, before we vote for any more spending bills, ought to look at the rather boring charts of M1 and M2 as we analyze the money supply and look at the cost of all commodities over the last year as this Chamber has decided that the way to create prosperity is to print more money.

I do feel it is also important to address one more time the crisis at the border and the variety of bad things happening because of that crisis and not caring like we did only a few months ago as to who crosses the border.

I don't think we have spent enough time addressing the drug crisis in America. It has been around so long, it becomes boring even to think about it. Except recently, we hit the point at which 90,000 Americans had died of drug overdoses in a 12-month period.

When I talk to people at the border or my local drug enforcement administration, they both agree that this is in part happening because more drugs are coming across the border. In part, it is predictable that more drugs are coming across the border because it is easier to get across the border. More people are crossing the border. But even more so, as marijuana becomes legalized in the country, it is no longer profitable to bring marijuana across the southern border.

I heard an anecdote of a significant amount of marijuana coming across the border, and the people who owned it couldn't sell it. Because the marijuana produced by the now-legalized agriculture operations in the United States--not surprisingly, because we now do genetic engineering, that sort of thing--the marijuana produced in the United States in States like Colorado and Washington is superior to the marijuana brought across the Mexican border.

Well, if the Mexican drug cartels cannot make money selling marijuana or bringing marijuana across the border, how are they going to make it up? They are going to make it up by bringing more and more dangerous drugs--meth, cocaine, heroin, but above all, fentanyl. They are going to bring more and more fentanyl across the southern border. Now, we have 90,000 deaths in this country in 1 year.

A little bit of my district touches Milwaukee County, not a huge county, by nationwide standards, about a million people. Last year, 540 people died of drug overdoses in Milwaukee County. There were about 200 murders, which is the all-time record, and everybody couldn't believe 200 murders. There were over 500 illegal overdoses.

Now, what do we do about that? Well, clearly, one of the things we have to do is we have to prevent these drugs from coming into the country in the first place. It is disappointing that we put the security of the border on the back burner and think of excuses not to deal with it.

But in addition to thinking of all the people running across the border, take a minute to think about the 90,000 people, many very young people, dying primarily of fentanyl but also other illegal drug overdoses, and ask yourself: What is this body going to do to stop it?

Of course, other problems are at the border. We have gone from checking in or touching about 17,000 people a month to 180,000 people a month. As far as got-aways, people who aren't even checked in, our Border Patrol estimates we have gone from about 6,000 this time last year to about 30,000 now--just massive increases.

I would guess between got-aways and people who are checked into the country, we are looking at 60,000 or 70,000 a month instead of under 10,000 a month at this time last year. It is truly a crisis.

Quite frankly, this body ought to be doing nothing else but dealing with that crisis until it is solved. The fact that we had under 10,000 people crossing the border only 4 or 5 months ago shows it is not something we don't know how to solve or that it is impossible to solve. It is that we are willingly allowing a massive increase across the border.

Of course, that massive increase, since the drug cartels charge people to come here, also increases the power of those drug cartels, both in the United States and their country. It, to a degree, results in separation of children from their families, as unaccompanied children come here, as well as a given number of children are probably rented by people to come here because they know supposed intact families have a better chance of being allowed in this country than single people, who are still frequently turned around.

In any event, there is a brief summary of issues. I hope I was enjoyable. And I hope NBC will let us know what they were thinking when Brian Williams decided to say that our soldiers landing on D-day were like antifa.

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

Mr. Speaker, a tragedy is going on in Israel. Over 4,000 rockets have been shot from Gaza and a handful from Lebanon. Twelve Israelis and about 200 Gazans have died. This is entirely unprovoked on Israel's part. It may have something to do with a future election on the West Bank. Iran is showing support for Hamas and is giving them financial aid, so they are partly responsible.

Gaza, of course, could be a liveable, modern country. It used to be a vacation destination. And prior to 2005, when Israel turned it over, there were greenhouses for an agriculture sector. It is their own fault by collectively electing a government which not only declares a unilateral war, but chooses residential and commercial facilities as military locations, guaranteeing deaths of civilians, including children.

Israel is a strong country, and, of course, they will not be defeated militarily. There is a danger, however. As explained by James Burnham in his book, ``Suicide of the West''--now over 50 years old--a decadent West may blame themselves for the corruption and lack of caring for human life in Gaza.

Some Members of this body are already doing this.

The United States and Israel must not shirk from our responsibilities as moral leaders of the world. We support Israel in defending themselves from the attacks of the morally bankrupt government in Gaza. We encourage them to continue this fight for as long as necessary to make sure their citizens are not at risk in the future.

Mr. Speaker, since our last couple of floor periods, I had a chance to visit our southern border one more time, and I would like to point out what is going on there because I think it is the most important issue in America today.

So that our listeners understand, there are two classes of people who come to our border. There are people who are caught or deal with the Border Patrol--and a lot of people want to be found by the Border Patrol because they think they can come into this country through an asylum process--and there are other people who sneak across the border.

In April, our Border Patrol touched--or dealt with about 178,000 individuals. A year ago, that number was 17,000. So we have voluntarily gone up from having the Border Patrol deal with about 17,000 to 178,000.

As we deal with more people who are touched by the Border Patrol, the Border Patrol has to spend more time doing paperwork, particularly with the children.

We have another group of people coming across the border called get-

aways. Because they are get-aways, nobody knows exactly how many there are. We do have drones. We do have our new wall together with sensors. And we are guessing right now that the number of get-aways has gone from about 10,000 a month a year ago to 30,000 a month.

We feel when you combine the two totals, we are going from about 10,000 a month people coming across our border to--just guessing--70- to 80,000 people a month crossing our border.

One thing I found at the border is that it is a misnomer to say most or all of these people are necessarily coming from Mexico or Central America. The last time I was down there, we looked at the three western sectors of the Mexican border. There are nine sectors. We looked at the San Diego, El Centro, and Yuma sectors.

In the San Diego sector, the second most common nationality coming across at the time we were down there was Russian. In the other two sectors, the most common nationality for quite a while had been Brazilian.

While I was there, we watched Border Patrol process a group of about 40 people coming across. They weren't even from one country. It was a group, and some of the people were from Russia, some were from Romania, some were from Cuba.

When we looked at the facilities the Border Patrol had down there, they had names of countries in--what else to call them--pens, where they were holding people. Sometimes a lot of people were kind of squished together.

Another country that people are commonly coming from was Ecuador. I said a lot of people are coming here from Cuba. We saw a large pen for people from India, though, to be honest, nobody was in it. But in any event, people are coming here from all around the world.

We also noticed at the border that the huge slats used to build the wall, which they had to cut short on, are apparently being stolen. Somebody paid for all these things that were supposed to be used to build a wall that was 30 feet high above the ground and 8 feet below the ground.

We cut short the building of that wall right when President Biden was sworn in. We already paid for the equipment. There was a lot of equipment used to put together the wall that had been rented. Apparently that money was wasted. Right now, the slats used for the wall are apparently being stolen at night by people who are selling them on the market.

One other observation about the wall: There has been an increase of traffic coming by boat in the San Diego area. And the reason the Border Patrol thinks that is true or the reason it is true is because of the effectiveness of the wall. Because the wall is doing a good job, people are more likely to get in a boat, go 20 miles out to sea and 20 miles back to come in.

The people who are let in this country pending an asylum hearing are put all over the country. They are frequently left with a nonprofit organization, perhaps the Catholic Social Services, and they find somewhere for them everywhere you look.

Another thing that you have to realize as things get worse with the wall is the number of drugs coming across the southern border. I had always wondered what would happen to the drug cartels as marijuana was legalized in the United States. One of the arguments for legalization of marijuana is it would weaken the drug cartels. Because they would no longer have to sneak the drugs across the border, that what would happen is that they would grow the marijuana in greenhouses here-- Colorado, Washington, where have you--and the drug gangs would dry up. Not so.

I recently heard an anecdote in which a lot of marijuana was shipped across the border, and they couldn't find anybody to sell it to because the quality of marijuana grown in America is superior to the marijuana grown in Mexico. Because it is no longer that profitable to ship marijuana across the border, what happens is there has been a dramatic increase in more severe drugs: heroin; cocaine; meth; and the worst of all, fentanyl.

We recently hit a new record in which we have had 90,000 deaths in a 12-month period in the United States. In Milwaukee County, of which I represent a part, there were 540 deaths last year. Milwaukee County is not big like Cook County or some of these other counties around here. It is about a million people. 540 deaths in Milwaukee County is a huge deal. For whatever reason, I think the press has underpublicized it.

I think one of the reasons for the big increases is because you are seeing more and more dangerous drugs coming across the southern border.

I would like to give a tip of the cap to the dogs that the Border Patrol uses at the border. When we were down there, we saw dogs who had detected fentanyl located in a gas tank. Of course, a gas tank smells so much, you figure there is no way that a dog could detect that because the smell of the gasoline is so strong. But even there, the dogs had detected it.

The thing is, the dogs could only sniff so many cars coming across. It would be a good idea if the Border Patrol would get more dogs.

In any event, if you want to talk about an underpublicized problem: 90,000 deaths in America last year from drug overdoses. At least at the drug administration in Milwaukee County, they speculated that the drugs that killed every one of the 540 people down there, either the drugs themselves or the ingredients for the drugs came across the southern border.

Now, you might say: Can we do anything to prevent this? Can we do anything to prevent there being 17,000 up to 178,000 contacts coming across the border? Yes.

Why did we not have a problem a little while ago, and what changed it?

First of all, President Trump had negotiated something called the migrant protection protocol in which people were held on the Mexican side of the border pending a hearing for asylum. Because of that, less people showed up in the first place. President Biden got rid of President Trump's agreement with Mexico to hold people at the southern border. First of all, more people are let in right away, and secondly, it advertises to prospective illegal immigrants around the world that now is the time to come.

Secondly, we had an asylum cooperative agreement with the Central American countries to hold people south of the Mexican border. In other words, if somebody wanted to come up from Venezuela and said, ``I need protection. I need asylum,'' they were held in Central American countries. Obviously, if they were concerned that they were being persecuted by the government, why would you have to come to the United States? It would be perfectly fine to stay in Guatemala, stay in El Salvador, wherever. That agreement was torn apart.

Finally, we changed the way we are dealing with COVID. Given the big deal we make about COVID, it is kind of surprising the Biden administration is letting people in without being tested for COVID, but they are.

Between these three things, we have managed to go to probably about 10,000 people who we don't want coming here a month to an unknown number, but probably 70,000 to 80,000.

I am afraid what will happen is that number will continue to grow. One of the reasons it is so much greater than it was in the past is because the gangs that help people get here charge people to come here. They charge $3,000 for a Mexican to cross the border, about $5,000 for a Central American. I am told $9,000 to $10,000 for a Brazilian.

Obviously, as it is easier to come here, the drug gangs will educate people in other countries and market in other countries to see if they can get here.

Other comments that I learned at the border: We already, in this fiscal year, have 6,000 arrests. That is over twice the amount we had in the entire last fiscal year. And these are for very serious crimes.

I also want to point out that usually you frequently only know if somebody has committed a crime or if somebody is a criminal if they committed a crime in this country. You don't know if they are coming here to escape from another country. So, we are letting an increased number of a criminal class in this country.

It is estimated that 33 percent of the women who come to this country, on their way up, as they walk through Mexico, are abused. Some of these women may find they have to pay the

money they are supposed to give to the gangs by being trafficked, and that is a horrible thing. I don't know where these people are in this building who purport to be concerned about human trafficking, but one way women can pay their way, for their $5,000 or $8,000 or whatever, is obvious. The current system encourages that.

Another problem with it is when people cross the border, and it is a very mountainous border, whether you are in Arizona, whether you are in California, whether you are in New Mexico, you can wind up dehydrating to death. The drug gangs that show people how to get here do not take people necessarily all the way to civilization. They take them across the Mexican border, and they may say there is a town 10 miles that way or 15 miles that way. There may or may not be a town that close.

The Americans do put jugs of water out for people and hope they survive. But last year, in the Tucson sector alone, they found 100 people dehydrated to death, which is another problem that you have with this hodgepodge at the border.

Another problem that you find out is the children who come across the border, sometimes the children are people who are borrowed or rented or whatever from other people and are not related to the people who claim to be their parents or relatives in some fashion. Sometimes, we are able to identify that with DNA testing. Sometimes, we don't.

Children come up, maybe young children, even 7- or 8-year-old children, have fastened to their clothing who they are supposed to contact when they come here. The United States, under a bad court decision--in my opinion, a bad court decision--those children, rather than, say, being sent back to their parents in Honduras, may be sent to their supposed aunt or uncle in New York.

In the United States, when the children come to the border, they provide transportation to get those little kids to somewhere in the United States. The idea being that once one child comes here, eventually, the rest of the family is going to follow.

All the way across the board, we have a very dangerous situation. I implore the Biden administration to do something about this, and I implore the American public to get upset about this and demand that their Congressman does something.

I think the first thing we have to do is, of course, beg the Mexican Government to reinstate the migrant protection protocol, beg the Central American governments to reinstate the asylum cooperative agreements, and do what we can to immediately test for COVID the people coming across the border.

The next thing we have to do, Mr. President, is address the Vice President. The Vice President was appointed over 8 weeks ago now to be the czar for the southern border. I have been at the border three times this year. You do not know what is going on at the border unless you literally sit down, talk to the Border Patrol agents, talk to law enforcement of the counties that are on the border, talk to the ranchers who have to live with people crossing their land.

Clearly, Vice President Harris is not interested in finding these things out. I have made bad hires in my life. I have assigned people to jobs that maybe they couldn't do that well. I beg President Biden, who says he is a moderate, to find somebody else to be the border czar.

The current situation in which we have the number of people let in this country rocketing up is just unacceptable. If Ms. Harris, or Vice President Harris, can go 8 weeks without visiting the border, it clearly shows that she is insubordinate, is not interested in doing a good job. There must be somebody else in the Biden administration who can pick up the slack and express some interest in closing our border.

I should digress and point out that this does not mean we are anti- immigration. In 2019, almost 850,000 new citizens were sworn in, in this country. There are work visas, as well. There are plenty of ways to come into this country legally, but we do not need this massive sea of people coming here illegally.

Again, I implore the American public. When we see the Border Patrol touch 178,000 people a month, that is unacceptable. When we talk about 30,000 getaways, that is not acceptable. The numbers are going to continue to spiral up as we have had public comments from both the President and Vice President that indicate they are not interested in enforcing our laws.

Now I would like to touch briefly on another crisis that I hope the American public expresses their concern about during our 3-week recess.

There have always been people trying to destroy America. And America is such a hope for people all around the world, both our example and the fact that we do have many immigrants coming here. There have been various ideologies which have been used to overthrow our government, or change our government so it is no longer in accordance with our Constitution.

John Adams said our Constitution is fit for a moral and religious people and not fit for anyone else.

There was a time when Marxists traditionally felt they could destabilize the American population and that way have a rebellion in the United States. Eventually, they gave up hope on traditional Marxism, or at least gave up hope for a while.

The reason they gave up hope is, quite frankly, the American middle class was so prosperous. And in America you could find just by going to work, working hard, saving some money, you could buy a house bigger than what you would find in any other country. And as a result, the lure of Marxism, which took over in China--albeit with some mistakes made by the American Government--which took over in Russia, which took over in Cambodia, resulting in maybe over 100 million deaths of Marxists caused in other countries, not to mention the destruction of the churches, the destruction of the family. That failed.

More recently, the left-wingers in our university system has taken it upon themselves to talk about critical race theory. Now under classic Marxism, they try to take over by educating the American public that they should be bitter and angry, and they should want to revolt so that they could own the factories or own the big houses, and have a revolution that way.

The new effort is to try to create anger based on race, and they call it critical race theory. And they want to tell people that if you don't have all you have, it must be because of racism. If you don't have the nice house you want, if you don't have a big amount in your savings account, or whatever, that is the problem.

Recently, I ran into a little bit of what I will call critical race theory in one of my local high schools. In the high school, a teacher educated a class, which was devoted to racism, mentioned that in the past year, 4 percent of the kids in this high school were Black, and 20 percent of the kids who were arrested were Black. The teacher told the kids, of course, or implied to the kids that this was the result of racism.

There is a problem twice. First of all, you are educating people in the United States of America, which we have just covered, the whole rest of the world wants to get in here. You are educating kids that America is not worth preserving, America is not worth fighting for, America is a bad country.

Secondly, you educate people that if they are arrested for drugs, for fighting, what have you, or if the police interact with you, it is not a matter of you did something wrong, it is a matter of racism.

I can't think of any clearer way to make sure that people do not progress in our system than telling them that if they do something wrong, the punishment was not because they deserve the punishment, it was because of racism. But this is the mindset that is out there right now in our schools. It is the mindset that is out there in our large businesses and in our military.

I think people have to educate themselves as to what critical race theory is, because clearly, the goal of critical race theory is to make people not proud or not respect the United States and, furthermore, make people bitter and angry, and tell people rather than work hard-- you work 45-50 hours a week, try to afford a house, try to have children, buy a car--it tells people if you don't have all you want, it is because of racism.

And there is no way teaching our young people that is going to lead to anything other than resentment and a great deal of unhappiness. I think it is obvious that America does not have the racist problems that other countries have. And I beg people to read about countries like India, countries like Somalia, where minor ethnic differences result in deaths, huge amounts of discrimination.

Here in the United States, in recent years, Asians, and before that, many other different so-called minority groups outdid financially-- finances aren't everything--but financially exceeded the native-born.

We can see that America is not a racist country because I talked about, a second ago, people from all around the world are trying to get in here, and almost nobody ever wants to leave. So when it really comes to saying it is bad, no one wants to leave, but the whole rest of the world tries to come here, be it from Africa, be it from Latin America, be it from the Indian subcontinent, be it from Southeast Asia.

So many wonderful people come here. My district has a lot of Hmong who are tremendously successful, despite coming from a very different background, loving America, taking full advantage of the opportunities that are there.

However, if we let this pernicious ideology get in our schools and get in our businesses, it will be a success for the left-wing groups that have always wanted to destroy the special country that is America.

And I encourage parents and grandparents and employees to report or publicize when they are forced to put up with this stuff in the schools or in the businesses.

There is something for our wonderful American listeners to deal with over the next 3 weeks.

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

Mr. Speaker, I stand to honor our policemen and -women on National Police Week. Few things in this job are more illuminating than doing a ride-along with local law enforcement, and I strongly suggest to those people out there who think we have to change the laws to harm the police, contact their local police or sheriff's department, do a ride-along, and find out what their job is really like.

The week should be uncontroversial except for recently ambitious politicians have decided to get reelected by tearing down the police. Black Lives Matter, an organization founded by a Marxist, attacks the police for racism. I ran across a local schoolteacher educating his students that police are racists. The Democratic Party passed a bill out of this House making it easier to sue a police officer.

This is one of the strange situations in which the crisis politicians talking about is actually going in the opposite direction. I picked some statistics I could find at random. In 1971, 50 years ago, New York had 93 people killed by the police. Up until 1996, it was rarely under 20 people a year. Now it is rarely over 10 people a year who are killed by the police. There are reports on a study of people who died in the 30 largest cities in the United States. There has been a 37 percent reduction in police shootings leading to deaths.

Harvard economist Roland Fryer reports police are 47 percent less likely to discharge a weapon when attacked by a Black man, and Heather Mac Donald in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that if there is a bias in police shootings after crime rates are taken into account, it is against White civilians.

The wholesale antipolice hysteria has dramatically increased homicides in Milwaukee and other big cities as the police become more passive. Wake up, America. Familiarize yourself with the statistics, and stand up to the politicians who are riding antipolice hatred to reelection.

Mr. Speaker, John Adams said our Constitution is fit for a moral and religious people, and is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

The average American watches about 30 hours a week on broadcast TV. And, of course, what starts on broadcast TV winds up on other screens as well. The Federal Communications Commission is tasked with keeping obscene and indecent content off the airwaves.

While there are some especially responsible parents who raise their children with no TV in the house at all, as a practical matter, broadcast TV affects the moral norms of the Nation.

I have received complaints in my office, and rightfully so, about Cardi B and the GRAMMYs. They wonder why we are paying the FCC if they feel this should be in living rooms across the Nation.

I realize that Kamala Harris has used her fame to promote this performer, but I assure the FCC that millions of Americans would view her performance as inconsistent with basic decency.

Wake up, FCC, and begin to do your job. The moral decline of America is partly due to your utter complacency.