Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, D.C. statehood is a ridiculous idea, which would have shocked our forefathers. It is a government city. It has no--or minimum manufacturing, agriculture or natural resources. With all its government jobs and universities, it is a recession-proof city and should be one of the easiest cities in the Nation to govern.

Let's see how the current elected officials are doing.

This is the second highest spending area in the country per pupil.

How do they do?

Tied for worst in fourth grade reading scores, worst in the country in eighth grade reading scores, worst in the country in fourth grade writing scores, worst in the country in eighth grade writing scores, and second worst in the country in eighth grade math.

They have more homeless here than 29 States. Of the cities with at least 600,000 people, it has the sixth highest murder rate. And if it were to become a State, it would immediately become the State with the highest murder rate in the country.

Right now, by comparison, only 49 percent of the parents of newborn children in the District of Columbia are married. By comparison, again, the great foreign capital, Taipei, 96 percent of the parents are married.

This is a government city, and it would do a horrible job as a State.

Madam Speaker, I would like to address the Chair with regard to the upcoming infrastructure bill. I am going to talk about some numbers. I don't mean to bore you with numbers.

When you put together a bill, you don't want to be an outlier. I am going to address two areas in which I think this bill makes this an outlier in very, very serious ways.

The first one is, you have changes in the tax law. And when you look at the taxes that a business pays in this country, a corporation, you have to look at kind of a double taxation. They will tax you at a corporate rate when the business earns the money; and when the business gives the money to its shareholders, you will be taxed at a dividend rate.

There is a graph here comparing all of the OECD countries around the world as to where they stand on this combined tax rate. The lowest countries, the Baltic countries, Latvia and Estonia, are 20 percent.

Right now, the United States, even after the last tax cut, at 47 percent, is middle of the pack. Actually, a little bit higher. If the tax hikes are put in effect that are published right now, you are going up to 62.7 percent. In other words, of the over 20 countries here, the United States will have the highest combined dividend, plus corporate tax rate. That is an outlier and a dangerous place to be an outlier.

There are a lot of things that go into a decision as to where you put a manufacturing facility, but taxes is certainly one of them. And given one of our goals should be to bring manufacturing back to the country, it is a bad place to be as the highest combined corporate tax rate, plus dividends.

The next area I am going to address is the money supply. To a certain extent, because of previous bills passed during the COVID crisis, we have had a rather dramatic increase in the money supply.

I would suggest you google ``M1.'' You will see that, in the last 6 months, the amount of dollars floating around has gone through the roof. Some people, including me, would say M2 would be a better measurement. But even if you look at M2, we have a 27 percent increase in the money supply over the past year. That is just screaming we are going to have a lot of inflation in the very near future.

It is certainly not the only reason, but we already see the rapid increase in the cost of housing construction. We see an increase in food prices and an increase in energy prices. This is given what we have already done.

Now, you are going to tell us--or some people are going to say that we are going to raise enough taxes to pay for this spending. But we are going to be raising enough taxes over the next 10 or 15 years. We know around here that when we say we are going to make a pay-for the next 10 or 15 years, a lot of times that pay-for never materializes.

So I am afraid we are going to have another big increase in the money supply when we have already had a 27 percent increase in the last year, and this is going to come back and cause serious concern. I beg the majority to look at a graph of the combined tax rates, us compared to the other OECD countries, and I beg them to look at the money supply and don't make us any more of an outlier on either.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address what I think is the biggest crisis to our sovereignty since I have been here, and that is what is going on at the border.

It is hard to think of something new to say, but I want to point out as we pursue an open borders policy that it greatly increases the power of the Mexican cartels.

Because the Mexican cartels have a monopoly on letting people in this country, I heard a story of two people who weren't part of the cartels trying to sneak people across. Two of them were skinned alive, and a third one was partially skinned and sent back to say: This is what happens if you try to push people across without going through the cartels.

I want to point out an anecdote of a father and a, perhaps, 7-year- old girl who were murdered for trying to come across without the approval of the cartels.

I would like to address the 70,000 people who died from illegal drugs this year. I was recently at the Milwaukee DEA, and I was told last year 540 people in Milwaukee County died of illegal drug use, and the local agents suspected that all 540 were killed by drugs or ingredients from drugs that came across the Mexican border.

Please, President Biden, do something about the crisis on the border.

Madam Speaker, I rise in honor of the great Bernell Trammell of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who owned eXpressions Journal Publications, which was located on 915 East Wright Street.

Bernell Trammell was an avid reader and a very religious man who liked people. He graduated from Lincoln High School in Milwaukee.

Last July 23, he was shot dead carrying a sign for Donald Trump.

I would like to ask the city of Milwaukee to dial up the investigation for the murder of Bernell Trammell. I believe it is a shame in Milwaukee that when someone--one of few people--stands up and announces by a sign that he is voting for Donald Trump that he would be shot dead.

He was an iconoclast, he was a very spiritual man delving in different religions, and he was all over the political spectrum as far as the people he endorsed. But while he was carrying a Donald Trump sign, he was shot down last July 23.

I beg the city of Milwaukee to do something about this horrible crime.

Madam Speaker, just prior to coming to Washington this week, I spent a couple of days down at the Mexican border to see for myself exactly what was going on down there.

I visited the El Paso sector. I would like to thank the Border Patrol, ICE, the ranchers, and local law enforcement for being so helpful and informative to the nine Congressmen who were in the El Paso sector over the weekend.

Our goal was to see over the last few months how things have changed, and in the last 5 months, things have changed dramatically at the border.

For one thing, illegal apprehensions are way up. In March, we had 172,000 illegal apprehensions, and that doesn't include, of course, the people who snuck across without being apprehended. This time last year, in March, there were 34,000 illegal apprehensions. What could cause an increase from 34,000 to 172,000?

It was painful not only to hear about the numbers but to see row after row of young children on mats just waiting for something to happen.

Now, what has happened? What happened at the border to get a fivefold increase in 1 year, as well as seeing all these children in almost inhumane conditions waiting to be taken away to somebody who they hope will take care of them?

First of all, this administration got rid of the migrant protection protocol. Donald Trump, I am sure in very difficult negotiations, had Mexico agree to hold people south of the border pending hearings for asylum. That was a huge benefit.

Secondly, we had agreements with Central American countries so that when people came here from other Central American countries or South America, they would be held south of the Mexican border.

Third, we changed things to the old-fashioned catch and release, where we touched people, but then when we are dealing with families, we let them in the United States pending a hearing on immigration. We changed title 42 to allow more people to come into this country, whether or not they have COVID.

Finally, we have a President who, during the campaign, made many different statements indicating that illegal immigration was not going to be a problem during his administration, whether he was promising free medical care, supporting sanctuary cities, ending the public charge rule. And President Trump had said: Immigrants coming here, we don't want you here if you are going to wind up on welfare.

It is no wonder they were wearing Biden T-shirts. We make stimulus payments to people who are here illegally.

Given all these changes, is it a surprise that so many people want to come here? In addition to the fact that the changes in the laws themselves cause people to get to the Mexican border to come here, it is advertising to the world that the United States does not care about immigration laws.

Now, we have to do something. We have dug ourselves a deeper hole in our relations with both El Salvador and Mexico. It is important to treat our Latin American cousins with respect. But in February, the President of El Salvador, President Bukele, was not given an audience when he showed up in this country in February. Is that the type of way we should treat our Central American allies when we want people held south of the border?

The Mexican President feels that President Biden has made himself out to be the migrant President. Mexico does not like this free-for-all at our

southern border in which we are strengthening the control of the drug cartels.

But, again, our relationship is going south there. The migrant protection protocol, in which we are holding prospective applicants for asylum south of the border, has ended.

Another thing that I think is causing this problem is the actions of the President and Vice President. Three weeks ago now, our Vice President was appointed to be in charge for the administration on what goes on at the southern border. She hasn't been there yet. This has to raise red flags all over the world.

Do the Vice President and the President get along? Right now, it is not hard to find articles by talking heads. Did the Vice President want this position? Has she accepted the position with any enthusiasm? Why, for 3 weeks, in what to me is probably the second biggest crisis, maybe the biggest, at least the second biggest crisis the United States has undergone in the last 6 years, why do we have a person in charge of the crisis who has not gone down to the border? Does she consider this a serious problem or not?

I would love it if she gave a speech, a wholehearted speech, saying that she does believe we have a problem on the border, and she is going to do something.

I am going to divert a little bit from my discussion on what is going on at the border. I want the Biden administration to also give a little thought to how this looks to other countries around the world. I don't like the United States to have enemies--and I don't consider these countries necessarily enemies--but there are times when, clearly, we are being challenged by Russia, China, Iran, and other countries around the world.

How does the United States look to other countries when we can't even secure our southern border, when it looks like we are not even trying to secure our southern border? I want the Biden administration to think that the complete inaction at the southern border, allowing tens of thousands of people to cross every month, sends a message around the world that this administration is not yet fully engaged.

The Vice President has said she wants to deal with root causes. If root causes mean people making less money than in the United States, I mean, we are going to have open borders forever.

We have something great here in the United States, and if we feel that some people would rather live here, or they are not materially as well off as in the United States, I will tell you, if we are not going to secure the border until that is solved, we are not going to solve this problem until we have over a billion new people in this country.

We noticed other things on the border. We noticed the stopping of building the wall. It is not until you are down there that you see all the planks that are supposed to be put together on the wall just sitting there in the sun. Somebody presumably paid for these things. I don't know why, since we had all the pieces for a wall down there, that we didn't at least try to build it for another month or 6 weeks so that the material down there could at least have been used.

I want to point out, by the way, with regard to the wall, because some people think it cost money, compared to the alternative, not only people coming in this country using the services we provide, but we were told at the southern border that when you have the old-fashioned barbed wire, you maybe should have two or three Border Patrol agents per mile. But when you have the wall, you need one agent for every 2 miles. There is a tremendous savings in the number of people you need in Border Patrol at the border if you had the wall.

The idea of stopping it mid-construction, where you have all these metal beams spread out just lying in the southern sun, is very frustrating.

Another thing to point out is that we met with ranchers down there. How difficult it must be for ranchers to see members of drug cartels walking across their land. Wouldn't that just scare you to death? A horrible thing.

We look at the human toll of people sneaking into this country because they are escorted into the country by the drug cartels. A lot of people don't realize this. Another reason so many people are pushed across the border, and another organization that will educate people around the world that you ought to come to the United States, is the Mexican drug cartels.

Why do they do that? They do that because they are charging 3,000 bucks a head for every Mexican person who comes across the border. They are charging $5,000 a head for every Central American. They are charging $8,000 to $10,000 a head for every Brazilian.

As long as the drug cartels are making money at the border, is it any surprise that we have such a surge here, as they attract people or encourage people to come to the United States?

I want to make another point about these poor children at the border. What goes on right now is that the children come to the border. If they are unaccompanied, we hold them, looking for somewhere to put them in the United States. It is very heart-rending to see all these kids without anybody there.

But right now, under the current protocols, if you have a child who has parents in Honduras, but you give them a piece of paper saying that he has an aunt and uncle in New York, rather than send that child back to his parents, they send them to the aunt and uncle in New York, who are here illegally.

Does that make any sense? That is what is going on.

One thing that really irritates the Border Patrol down there is they know that if American parents were to send a 5-year-old child, let's say, and drop him off at the Milwaukee airport and hope he shows up in the airport in Miami the next day, Child Protective Services would be there saying: What is wrong with the parents?

Here at the southern border, we are co-conspirators on these dangerous trips for the children, some of which wind up dying, and many of them wind up being sexually assaulted, which is just a horrible thing.

Another thing that we found out at the border is that the amount of hardcore illegal drugs is rocketing up. I know some people may say that is an old story. The week before I went to the border, I happened to visit with the DEA in Milwaukee. Last year alone, in Milwaukee County, 540 people died of illegal drug overdoses. When I talked to the people at the DEA in Milwaukee, they felt it was entirely possible that all 540 people were poisoned to death with drugs either brought across the southern border or ingredients for drugs brought across the southern border.

Madam Speaker, look at the skyrocketing number of people who are dying of hardcore drugs.

Why is that?

We should have anticipated it.

The powerful Mexican drug cartels are going to make money. There was a time, maybe 10 years ago, when marijuana coming across the southern border was common. But now as more American States legalize marijuana-- Washington, Colorado, and what have you--there is so much marijuana being produced in the United States that there is no money to be made by importing marijuana from Mexico.

I heard an anecdote of marijuana being brought here from Mexico, and it was being carted around the Southern United States, looking for somebody to take it. Nobody would take it because you can have higher quality marijuana growing legally here in the United States.

So what are the Mexican drug cartels going to do?

They are going to import in this country more heroin, more meth, and especially more fentanyl. That is what we are seeing at the border.

So rather than being a time to cut back and saying that we don't care as much about the border, now is the time with the increasing number of fentanyl deaths--540 in Milwaukee County alone last year from fentanyl and the other drugs, which is a shocking number--now is the time to dial up enforcement at the border. But instead, it seems, we are going the opposite way.

I don't know what is going on that you want to let more fentanyl in the country, Madam Speaker. I know there are some people who say that it is a victimless crime or what have you, but you tell that to the families of the 540 people who died last year in Milwaukee County. That is another result of this lax, devil-may-care attitude, as far as what is going on down there.

So the question is: What to do?

Maybe Mexico will not go back to the old agreement, but I think the President should beg Mexico to go back to the migrant protection protocol where one more time we are allowed to hold people on the Mexican side of the border pending hearings as to whether they are eligible for asylum.

Secondly, we have to hire more Border Patrol.

I want to go back and explain something. I talked about the 170,000 people in March who are touched by the Border Patrol. That doesn't include people whom they don't catch. The more the Border Patrol has to deal with the children on the southern border, the less time they have to guard the border. So there is clearly a significant increase in people crossing the border because they know the Border Patrol is no longer there. They are dealing with paperwork for the children that they have to process, and that has to be the priority.

If you are going to go down this path, President Biden, and not care about the southern border or not reinstate the migrant protection protocol with Mexico, at least hire more Border Patrol agents so we can process the people you are letting in this country; and don't leave these huge swaths of the southern border wide open.

Because of that, people I have talked to guess--this is a guess--that whereas, last year, maybe 10,000 people a month were crossing the southern border without the Border Patrol touching them, now it is more like 30,000 people a month. What a disaster.

We should amend the Flores agreement, which is what is requiring us to take so many of these children and ship them around the United States. We should be able to send them back to their native country.

We should try to undo the damage we have done with the way we have treated the El Salvadorean President and see if he can, one more time, assist us in preventing people from all around the world coming up from south of Mexico.

Since the metal beams used to put together a wall are just sitting there in the hot sun, we should at least, at a minimum--it would be great to build a whole wall--use up the raw materials for the wall that are sitting down there. Actually, it is more than a wall; it is a whole wall system. Just don't have those metal beams just sitting there in the desert forever.

Above all, President Biden and Vice President Harris, show you care. Show you care. Let the world know that the United States does not have an open border for anybody to come across the border, be they criminal, especially people coming across with that fentanyl. Show that you care. Hold a press conference.

It would be nice if Vice President Harris would show that she accepted her new job with some enthusiasm. Again, the talking heads I read right now imply that maybe she didn't even want the job.

So, please, President Biden, show you care before we have 200,000 people a month coming in the country. Show you care a little about the fentanyl crisis, as we are approaching 90,000 people a year dying in this country of illegal drugs, most of which come across the southern border. Show you care about those little children sitting in row after row of mattresses on our southern border. Show you care about the drug cartels and the way they are corrupting the Mexican Government and beginning to corrupt the United States. Say you want to stop the system in which they are able to make so much money sneaking people in this country. Show you care about the poor ranchers on the southern border, who have been there for generations and now have to be scared to death to go out late at night and can't let their children ride their horses on their land for fear of what will happen to them.

If you won't do it, we have to call upon the public and other Members of Congress to let the Biden administration know that the current situation is completely untenable. You have to step up to the plate and do something.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 109.

Madam Speaker, we are now being sent home for 3 weeks, I don't know whether it is coincidence or not that we are being sent home when we have such a problem at our border, and we just got done voting on a few immigration bills.

All of us Congressmen should have a to-do list over the next 3 weeks. I want to give the press corps a to-do list. Right now, our Border Patrol is under a gag order in which they cannot educate the press or Congressmen as to what is really going on. This, at a time when you have almost three times as many people trying to get across the border than at this time last year, and we have huge numbers of unaccompanied minors down there.

The press should be outraged at this gag order. I have been at the border four times so far over the last couple years, and it is always very illuminating what the Border Patrol can say to us. Now, like we are in some totalitarian state, they are not allowed to speak to us.

I don't care whether you care about the government benefits, the unaccompanied minors, the drug trafficking, the human trafficking, the money the drug cartels are making on illegal immigration, we should want to know and we can't know unless the Border Patrol tells us. Please wake up, sleeping press corps.

Mr. Speaker, we take up this bill at a time when almost three times as many people are crossing the border as were this time last year.

Under President Obama, it was a bad day if we had 1,000 contacts at the border. Now, we are having 3,000 contacts a day.

These bills are being introduced, advertising that people who come here legally are suckers, and we are going to give preference to people who didn't come here legally.

I would further like to ask that we delay the vote until the Biden administration removes the muzzling of the Border Patrol. We do not really know what is going on at the border, when this most opaque of administrations tells the Border Patrol that they cannot tell the press or Congressmen what is going on.

James Madison must be spinning in his grave. He gave the press freedom, and they refuse to use it.

Mr. Speaker, we have already talked tonight about the numbers which come from the crisis at the southern border.

During the Obama administration, Mr. Speaker, if you had 1,000 contacts a day with people trying to sneak in this country, that was a lot. We are now at around 3,000 a day. February of this year compared to February of last year is up 173 percent. That is shocking. It didn't have to be.

What incompetence did it take to get such a massive swing of people coming across our border?

President Trump had something called the migrant protection protocol. When people tried to sneak in here and claim asylum, they were sent back and held by the Mexican Government pending a hearing. This was a great victory for President Trump.

Maybe just because he is President Trump, it means you don't like him, Mr. Speaker, and you had to get rid of him like the protection protocol. So, we are back to the old days.

Rather than being held south of the border, waiting to see if you can come here, you are escorted into the United States, turned over to some nonprofit organization, and told to disappear somewhere in the United States to show up for a hearing which you don't show up for. And that is, more than any other reason, why we have this problem.

Another thing they have changed is that President Trump had worked on a deal with Central American countries so that people trying to come up here from South America and other Central American countries were held south of the Mexican border. One more good policy, but let's throw it overboard and see what happens.

By doing this, not only do we let more people in the country, but we enrich and empower the drug cartels. The drug cartels are charging about $3,000 for every Mexican they let in here, about $5,000 for every Central American, $8,000 to $9,000 for every Brazilian, and up to $20,000 for every Asian.

When you are making that kind of money, Mr. Speaker, you know very well the drug cartels will recruit as many people as they can to come into this country.

Of course, nowadays, it is unlike years ago when they used to find marijuana. Now when people come across the border, it is fentanyl, meth, and heroin. So, in addition to the huge amount of humanity moving across the border, we have that many more drugs to kill the people of our country. I am sure the American people already remember we are losing about 80,000 people every year to illegal drug use, so much of which comes across the southern border.

As has been mentioned by other speakers, there is an increase in sexual assaults as people try to come across the border and are escorted by the drug cartels.

I want to point out that the drug cartels control that southern border. If you try to come here without their approval, Mr. Speaker, you are in big trouble. I will give you an anecdote from the last time I was down there. Three people tried to escort other people over the border. Two of them were skinned alive and died. The other was partly skinned alive and told to go back south to Mexico and tell everyone what happens if you try to come across the border without going through the drug cartels.

Just as another indication of the huge problem we have at the border, last year, which was an unusually hot year, they found, in the Tucson sector alone, 100 bodies of people who dehydrated trying to come here.

Under President Trump, Mr. Speaker, you know how good it can be. They went from a point where they were letting 100,000 people across the border, which was about 2 years ago, back down to, around December, about 10,000 people crossing the border. They did that with the migrant protection protocol, with dealing with Central America, and by being concerned about COVID.

So, what to do now? I am sometimes asked how the United States got in this mess, and I am talking about a wide variety of issues. Where would the Founding Fathers say they screwed up?

Until this, I always felt that if I look at the three branches of government and say between the legislative, executive, and judiciary, our Founding Fathers would have never believed the judiciary could have such complete lack of respect for the Constitution. But now, I have to answer something else.

The press sometimes considers themselves the fourth estate. There are rumors right now that the Department of Homeland Security has put a gag order on the Border Patrol agents who always have so many interesting stories down there. If I think of our Founding Fathers now who wanted a free press, as disappointed as they would be in our President, as disappointed as they would be in our Congress, and as super disappointed as our Founding Fathers would be in our judicial branch, I think the area they would be most disappointed is in the fourth estate. The bootlicking sycophants of the fourth estate are just horrible. These toadies are ruining the country.

Wake up. Insist on being able to talk to the Border Patrol. Get down to the Border Patrol and find out exactly what is going on.

Mr. Speaker, my final plea tonight is for the press corps to wake up, get to the southern border, and report what is really going on down there.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak one more time about the current issue at the border.

We have gone from a situation in which 1 year ago at this time there were 36,000 confrontations at the border to last February 100,000 encounters at the border.

In addition to a three-fold increase, there has been a corresponding increase in unaccompanied children at the border.

How did this happen? There are several policies that should be reinstituted immediately.

First of all, prior to President Trump being sworn in, we had a policy in which the Mexican Government was keeping people on their side of the border pending an asylum hearing. We have now undone that policy, which does three things:

First of all, new people arriving at the border are escorted into the United States and sent somewhere inland.

Secondly, people who have been waiting on the Mexican side of the border are coming across.

And thirdly, you are sending the message around the world that the United States is not enforcing their immigration laws the way they are intended to be enforced. The word gets out, be it in Central America, be it in Mexico, be it in Asia, be it in Brazil, the United States is inviting people in. And with that situation comes the three-fold increase.

Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama said at one time that 1,000 encounters a day at the southern border was a bad number. We now have three times what was considered a bad number under Barack Obama.

The next thing we are doing is, we are getting rid of the agreements we had in Central America. President Trump maybe tweeted too much, but he engaged in negotiations with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras so that people stayed down there, rather than coming through Mexico to the United States. He did it, to a certain extent, with the carrot and stick of foreign aid which the United States had sent to those countries. That policy has also changed. And with the change in that policy people are streaming up through Central America.

Again, from year to year there has been a 61 percent increase in unaccompanied children. People purport to say that they care about children being separated from their parents. Well, when you have more and more unaccompanied children showing up at the border, what do you think that means? These children inevitably are going to wind up separated from their parents, keeping families apart.

I should point out, by the way, another thing that I am told bothers Central American countries. In this country in an effort to sometimes keep a child with both parents, if the parents don't get along that well, courts make an effort to keep both parents in the same region.

I am told that the Central American countries do not like the fact that the United States sometimes will take children with even one parent, leaving the other parent behind. I think it would be better if we improved our relationship with those countries by trying to keep children with both parents.

Other things that have been done is, sadly, we stopped the border wall construction. When I was down at the border we learned, with regard to the border wall, it takes four or five agents to man 2 miles of the old wall, which was sometimes little more than minor fencing. Now, with the new wall we need one Border Patrol agent for 2 miles, so there is a substantial savings there, as well.

The catch and release policies are back, and with it a crisis is coming. America has to apply more pressure or tell the Biden administration, please, there is a reason why we have tripled the number of people, the number of encounters our Border Patrol is having today compared to this time last year. It is the policies that have been implemented in the first month and a half of the Biden administration.

Please, President Biden, go back to the old policies in which people are held on the southern border and people can get a good hearing on their asylum claims, rather than creating a system in which, as a practical matter, people come here illegally and wind up just blending into the background.

It is unfair to the people who are trying to access our country legally that people are coming here illegally and skipping ahead of them. Inevitably, as we take people without vetting them, we are getting a given number of people taking advantage of our benefits, and we are getting a number of people who are sneaking illegal drugs across the southern border.

So, again, we have sent letters to President Biden, and I please ask him to respond to these letters and let the American public know: What is your plan to stop 100,000 people a month coming across the border before that 100,000 becomes 200,000 or 300,000?

And it will become 200,000 or 300,000 because people around the world are watching the President, and if the President continues to make it clear he does not intend to enforce the border, people from all around the world will be coming here.

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

Mr. Speaker, jeez, we could talk for 2 hours.

First thing, one of the things that hasn't been mentioned here is the increase in the income tax credit for single people has a marriage penalty in it. I bring it up because I know the strength that Black Lives Matter had in this last election. I know it is a group that doesn't like the old-fashioned family. I am disturbed that we have another program here in which we are increasing the marriage penalty.

Second thing, we have loan forgiveness on farms based on ethnicity. Some people are going to get forgiveness; some people aren't. I think that is incredibly divisive. I think we started out with a divisive inaugural speech right off the bat, and to go down this route is only going to create divisiveness in America.

The third thing, to have a bill with this high spending, with the Federal Reserve printing up this amount of money, is inevitably going to result in inflation.

I feel so sorry for young people today. As the cost of housing goes through the roof, I don't know how they are going to be able to afford a house. But we also have increase in food costs and increase in energy costs. I don't want to call it the Joe Biden inflation, but I am afraid that is where we are heading.

Fourth thing, in the rush to judgment, giving checks to people who are incarcerated. I have talked to my correctional officers about this. I don't know how they are supposed to feel, in which they have to work every day and the people who they are taking care of are going to be getting checks out of this.

Finally, I have had two municipalities in my district, from which I have been contacted, in which the amount of money they are getting is over 10 times what they feel would make them whole.

I think we are being very reckless about the degree to which we are spending money here.

Mr. Speaker, one more time we see people uncomfortable with our Constitution. Our forefathers gave us the right to bear arms because they wanted law-abiding people to have the right to defend themselves.

Until Ferguson and the rise of the antipolice movement about 5 years ago, the murder rate in this country fell by over one-half between the early 1990s and around 2014.

What happened at that time?

We whipped up some antipolice hysteria, and since that time things have gone wildly up. Now the majority party introduces a cache of bills designed to make it more difficult for law-abiding people to access a weapon while not having any impact on people who wouldn't obey the laws anyway.

They don't like the idea of private transfers. They don't like the idea of being able to get a gun in less than 10 days. They don't like the idea that if the government doesn't give the proper information over--well, apparently, they like the idea that they want to keep people from getting guns if the government, for whatever reason, is slow in turning things over.

In any event, let's go back to the things that worked for 25 years before the rise of the antipolice movement if we really want to see improvement.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to, one more time, address what is going on here and the perceived problem.

Here in the United States, the number of murders from the beginning of the 1990s until Ferguson had fallen repeatedly, and the murder rate was half of what it once was with a tough law enforcement stance.

At that time, in the Ferguson shooting, when Officer Wilson, who was eventually found entirely innocent by the Obama Justice Department, when that person died, we whipped people into an antipolice frenzy. Because of the antipolice frenzy, we had the murder rate in this country go up by 20 percent.

It then began to drop again until last year when we had the horrible events in Minneapolis. One more time, we whipped people up into a frenzy, and the number of murders in 1 year in Minneapolis went up 70 percent; in New York, 40 percent; in Chicago, 55 percent; and in Milwaukee, 95 percent, with the same gun control laws in cities that are run by mayors who are as antigun as you will find.

The problem here is we whipped the people into an antipolice frenzy. The police became passive, and a lot of people died. The people who were whipped into the antipolice frenzy ought to stop and consider the huge increase in murders.

Mr. Speaker, I will make four points on this bill.

First of all, under this bill, you can have a vote on unionization within under 15--I am told even 11--days of finding out the vote is coming. You look at our elections. I know in the State of Wisconsin, probably similar, you get over 2\1/2\ months between filing and knowing you are going to have an election and actually the election. It is hard to believe anybody who really cares about the worker would do that.

Secondly, your privacy concerns. You are even giving the addresses of all of the employees to the unions. This is supposedly the party of women. Do you really want to come home at night and have people in your driveway wanting to talk to you about an election?

Third, we are getting rid of the secret ballot. I don't know how anybody who cares about anybody would get rid of the secret ballot.

And, fourth, you have a situation here, when it is unclear whether something right or wrong happened, automatically you go to a union. So you can have a situation here in which the majority of people did not vote for a union, and the government bureaucrat says, automatically, you are unionized.

And one final comment: For people talking about purchasing power, the most recent COVID bill is a strange bill. Your purchasing power is going down.

Madam Speaker, I was hoping when I flew back last night that the fence would be gone from around the Capitol. Unfortunately, it is still there. But given the bills we have before us today, maybe it is only fitting when you look at the Capitol you see a fence around it. It makes the Capitol appear as if it is a capital of a more totalitarian state looking at the bills we have before us today.

The first bill is H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act. They call this an assault on the Second Amendment, something our forefathers put in the Constitution because they knew that the power in this country has to rest with the people. Instead, we have a bill here making it much more difficult to transfer a firearm and putting one in a position where they could face prison or a $100,000 fine if they do something wrong.

It is just beyond belief. It is hard to believe when you look at this bill, Madam Speaker, that until 4 years ago when they began a war on the police, the murder rate in this country had fallen over 20 years in a row. Unfortunately, the majority is going to try to make it much more difficult to transfer a firearm as well as create a situation when you are waiting for your NICS check, if the FBI doesn't get back to you, you are delayed in getting a firearm.

Madam Speaker, I urge rejection of the rule.