Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I will point out one more time the perverse incentives of our welfare state.

I will just mention one type right now: Section 42, low-income housing. Section 42 low-income housing is very generous to property developers, who wind up only having to pay for 30 percent of the cost of their housing.

Worse, because it is new housing, I had a staffer looking for a new apartment building with her new husband, and they found out the best apartments in town were the low-income housing.

In order to be eligible for low-income housing, you almost certainly can't be married. In order to be eligible, you can't be working very hard.

I think this body ought to get out of the business of encouraging people not to work hard, and they especially ought to get out of the business of discriminating against people who are married with children. I sure hope that this body, when we finally deal with the reconciliation bill, gets rid of these perverse antimarriage incentives.

After returning from our districts, Mr. Speaker, it is time to bring to the Chair's attention a variety of issues which we have come across over the weekend and issues that the minority party has brought up.

The first issue I bring up is that regarding DEI. DEI or Affirmative Action has been a big part of America's landscape over the last 60 years, and it is not something that is going to go away overnight.

President Trump can do what he can to wipe out this odious philosophy, but nevertheless it is important for us to educate the young people in this country as to why it is so odious.

It is based on the premise that what you accomplish in this country or what you should be given in this country is based on your ancestry or your gender.

It was based on the idea I think largely thought up by a guy by the name of Herbert Marcuse in the early 1970s that we can destroy America by dividing it by ethnic group or dividing it by gender. He was a genuine Communist sort of person.

Prior to this time, people who wanted to destroy this country thought they could divide it by income, and they thought they could make everybody very mad and jealous of very successful people and tear down America by doing that.

They tried in the 1960s. There were bombings, and there were anti- Vietnam protests, but they failed to bring down America because Americans themselves are hardworking, and they realized the middle- class lifestyle in America would be like a wildly wealthy lifestyle everywhere else in the world.

They failed. They thought: Let's educate our so-called minority people that America is a horrible country and that you are being held down because you are not a White male. President Biden made it clear that he was somewhat hostile to White males.

The first thing we can do to prove that it is not true and every child ought to know it so they aren't corrupted by these DEI professionals that our colleges and universities are spitting out or this horrible ideology our young people are educated into is--as I was reminded again going back to my district, I met with a group of Ahmadiyya Muslims from Pakistan. Here is a group that didn't come from Europe. They aren't Christian, but nevertheless, they have a mosque in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in my district, and they are obviously succeeding very well. They have strong families. They have a good work ethic. If America were Eurocentric, as they say, they would not be so successful.

I have also seen the same thing with Hmong in my district. I have a substantial Hmong population from Laos. These people came to America and

didn't even know English when they were children. Nevertheless, they have come here, and now they all own houses. Their children are doing well. Their families are strong. Again, this is despite the fact that they are not of European descent.

Indeed, if you look at statistics that are put out there by the Census Bureau, if you look at different ethnic groups from around the globe, you find easily the most successful group is people who came here from India, another group that didn't even necessarily know English when they got here. Indian Americans make far more income than the average American. Indeed, they make almost twice the income as the average European American.

Other groups that do tremendously well are the Taiwanese, the Filipinos, the Cubans, people who come here from the West Indies. They are all doing far better than the native born, despite the fact that they are not of European heritage.

If anybody knows anybody who has been corrupted by this wicked ideology that implies, in America, you can't succeed unless you are a White European, look at the facts. Look how people come here and succeed again and again. I would hope you would realize by looking at these facts that you should throw the DEI ideology being taught to our college kids, and in some cases taught to our high school and middle school kids, in the garbage.

Remember a communist by the name of Herbert Marcuse, who thought up this stuff in the seventies and eighties. Remember, the reason they adopted the DEI ideology is because they wanted to destroy America. They wanted to set people from one continent against another continent.

Remember the statistics of how well people do here and make sure that our next generation is not polluted by this because we have way too many people floating around this country who got a certificate in DEI or a major in DEI, and they are up to no good.

Another thing I want to mention here is with regard to immigration. President Trump is trying to enforce the law. I think one of the difficult problems he has dealt with is we just got done with a President who did all he could to ignore our immigration laws. As a result, we took in about 10 million people here in the last 4 years, and that is not something that we should have done.

What can we tell the people who feel we are being unnecessarily cruel? Every year in this country, about 850,000 people are naturalized. They are sworn in to become American citizens. I like to show up at these ceremonies. They have them in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I try to show up at one or two a year. It is kind of thrilling to watch people from all over the globe--a lot of them have good jobs; a lot of them already have their own businesses--as they are sworn in as American citizens.

When you take it in 3-year increments--there is always one year or other years as an outlier. If you look at it in 3-year increments, that 850,000 over the last 3 years is the most that we have taken in, as far as I can tell, in this country's history.

When I was growing up, the number of naturalized people every year was about 200,000. We are now over four times that amount. Nevertheless, there are people who are going to go out there to try to divide us who say that we are not letting people come here from abroad, that we are being cruel.

Mr. Speaker, 850,000 people. That is something to remember. That is before you get all the people coming here on work visas, all the people coming here on tourist visas, and all the people coming here on student visas.

One just has to look around and realize that the idea that we are being cruel to people who came here across our southern border is ridiculous. Many people are coming here. Obviously, if we are going to enforce the law, we have to remove the people who came here by pretending they needed asylum and didn't. Then, there are going to be millions of people, and the same people who encouraged them to come here, knowing full well they were breaking the law or having to lie about needing asylum to come here, the people who caused the mess are going to say it is horrible to remove these people.

Our President Trump is going to have to step up to the plate and undo the damage done by the last administration, and he is going to remove many, many of these people. One has to remember, the reason he is removing them is because the prior administration, with a lot of encouragement from people on the other side of the aisle, were bringing people here who were coming here on false pretenses.

The next issue we have to look at is one that I do hope is included in Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill. This is, I think, the biggest crisis facing America today. John Adams said our country is built for a moral, God-fearing country. In a free country, families have to be strong and self-reliant.

Beginning in the 1960s, in this country, we had a massive increase in subsidies, which ignored a family with a mother and father at home.

In the 1950s, about 4 percent of the children born in this country were born without a mother and a father at home. Within the next 30 years, after Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, that 4 percent increased to over 40 percent. Many other problems came with it.

Why did that happen? It happened because, right now, we have approximately 90 programs that you are not eligible for if you are not in poverty. In other words, for a mother or a father at home making $40,000, $50,000 a year, they would not get these programs. These programs are familiar to all of us: earned income tax credit; what I think is the most damaging, the low-income housing programs; the healthcare programs; the food stamp programs; the Pell grants. There is program after program you get, but you would lose these programs if you had both parents in a home.

Nobody takes advantage of all 90 programs, but I think it is probably not unusual to have people take advantage of 6 or 7 programs. Then, it would not be unusual for people who have a mother and father at home to be penalized over $20,000 a year if they get married.

We have to look at these programs, and frequently, these programs materially put a married couple at a disadvantage.

We have all heard stories of Food Share. If you talk to people at the local convenience store, talk to people at the local grocery store, people are taking advantage of these programs. They may be able to buy food items that the person who is working behind the counter can't afford.

We know when it comes to housing that there is section 42 tax credit housing, which is a screwed up program for many reasons. It is aimed at lower income people. The developers are incentivized to make these projects as nice as possible.

I had a staffer who got married in Wisconsin. They said, ``Glenn, my husband and I are looking for a place to live after we get married, and the nicest places are all low-income housing.'' That doesn't seem to make any sense, unless you look at it again as certain people are out there trying to destroy the nuclear family and trying to discourage people from entering into that sort of relationship.

The same thing is true of healthcare. We need healthcare for everyone, but the same thing is true of healthcare. You don't have the big deductibles that you have when people get their healthcare from working in the private sector. You might have a $10,000 or $15,000 deductible. You don't get a deductible like that if you are on the government plan.

The same thing is true with Pell grants. A woman came up to me and said, ``My husband and I got married. We don't have enough money to help our daughter go through college, so she had to take out a lot of student loans. My sibling is not working, and her daughter got free grants from the government, grants she wouldn't have gotten if she was married.'' Again, is that a good thing? I am not sure it is.

Again and again, in program after program, we discourage the nuclear family. That is why we have gone from a 4 percent rate of kids born without a mother and father at home to 40 percent. It was like it was by design, like somebody wanted to destroy the nuclear family.

It is important to remember that we may individually not know these people, but there have always been people who wanted to destroy the nuclear family and feel that is the key to bringing down America. Certainly, the Marxists wanted to destroy the nuclear

family. Until they took it off their website, a more recent group, Black Lives Matter, was overtly antifamily. The feminist extremists in the sixties--Kate Millett being the prominent one; you can call her the mother of women's studies--were very anti-nuclear family.

These anti-nuclear family people got the upper hand, and that is why we have gone from about 4 percent to over 40 percent.

I hope, as the people in this body put together their great big, beautiful bill, that we remember that a lot of the programs in our current budget are programs designed to destroy the nuclear family.

I have two other quick comments. One is with regard to transgender and local schools. A lot of people have talked about men in women's sports, and I don't even think that is the biggest scandal. I think the biggest scandal is that we are educating our young people to adopt a transgender lifestyle.

In Europe, when they backed off on pushing this lifestyle, the lifestyle not exclusively but largely disappeared. In other words, we have made it cool by what they do in Hollywood promoting this lifestyle. Sadly, the schools are promoting this lifestyle.

I will mention, again, my own anecdotes. When I was campaigning last year, I ran into a couple of grandmothers whose grandchildren were going down this transgender route, and it broke their hearts. They wondered why this had to happen because it wasn't something they saw when they were children. It happened because our education system and our popular culture promote this lifestyle.

It is a good thing if President Trump tries to get this stuff out of our institutes of public instruction.

I think it is really too bad if people feel it is cool to adopt this lifestyle. It is something for us to remember, and hopefully, we will be having hearings on this topic as we delve into whether people would adopt this lifestyle in the first place if there weren't so many powerful special interests that encouraged people to adopt this lifestyle.

Mr. Speaker, my final point, when we come to our big, beautiful bill, a lot of it is going to have to do with taxes. I stand with President Trump on some of his items here that he has brought up in the past and some of them are the reasons why I like him.

President Trump is not afraid to stand up to the special interests that seem to be so persuasive in this Chamber.

First of all, even though a lot of the money is already out the door, President Trump came up against the CHIPS bill. The CHIPS bill was a public-private partnership, I guess we should call it. Whenever you hear about a public-private partnership, I think you have to hold onto your wallet, because that means a private-sector group wants some government money.

The CHIPS bill is to encourage more semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. I think we have to encourage more semiconductor manufacturing, but it costs about $280 billion. That is about $700 for every man, woman, and child in the country.

Does anybody really believe that the Federal Government should be grabbing $700 from everybody just to promote one industry? I think we could promote that industry with a much smaller amount if we deal with some exemptions from manufacturing I am going to talk about in a second. That would be another way to bring more semiconductor manufacturing into this country.

I strongly believe, along with President Trump, that a subsidy of $700 per person in this country for the semiconductor industry is unnecessary.

The next thing I will bring up is the carried interest treatment for hedge fund managers. Under the carried interest loophole, you might call it, people whose primary income is derived from being entitled to some of the money they make for their investors is taxed at capital gains rates rather than regular rates.

In other words, people who are investing other people's money and making, frequently, millions of dollars a year are taxed at a much lower rate than people who are welders, people who are nurses, or people who make their money any other way.

President Trump came out against the carried interest loophole when he ran for President in 2016. He wasn't able to get rid of it at that time. This time, I hope that our Committee on Ways and Means, together with President Trump, stops taxing these wildly wealthy people at a lower tax rate than what the average guy or woman is making in this country. That is another good thing to do.

The final tax provision that I point out is President Trump has floated the idea of having a lower tax rate for manufacturing than other industries. I applaud him for that.

To be a great country, you have to make things. You are not a wealthy country because you have a lot of law firms. You are not a wealthy country because you have a lot of advertising agencies. You are a wealthy country because you make things. Our manufacturers, unlike some of these other industries, have to compete against companies abroad.

Mr. Speaker, when these big multinational corporations have to decide if they are going to set up shop in Germany or Korea or Brazil or India or wherever, we want it to be favorable taxwise to set up shop in the United States. Therefore, I do believe that, when the final tax rates are laid out by the Committee on Ways and Means, I would like to see lower rates for manufacturers who, after all, are responsible for producing the wealth in this country.

It is something I have pursued in my own personal career. We have got a nice low tax rate for Wisconsin manufacturers, but we would like to see a lower rate for manufacturers in the United States than these other countries.

If we are going to be a great country, not only do we need stronger families and to stop penalizing these families, but we have to stop educating our poor, young people that we are a racist country. To be a great country, we need a strong manufacturing base. We want it to be preferable to manufacture stuff in the United States than in Europe or Asia or South America. The way to do that is a lower tax rate for manufactured items.

I thank the chair for paying rapt attention to all the comments I have made here tonight. I hope my colleagues, as they put together the big, beautiful bill, take them to heart, stop penalizing the nuclear family, start treating manufacturing especially the way it should be, and crack down on special tax provisions that benefit the very wealthy.

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

Mr. Speaker, today, I call upon the Trump administration to abandon the drastic Biden-Harris 14(c) rule. The 14(c) rule is with regard to allowing certain people with handicaps to work for under minimum wage.

I have toured many work centers or shelter workshops in my district in which people who have different abilities are allowed to work--maybe they have spina bifida, maybe Down's Syndrome. I know a guy who is an outright quadriplegic. They are allowed to work for under minimum wage.

They usually get some other sort of Federal subsidy, SSI or something, but by being allowed to work in these places, they are able to supplement their income. They have the dignity of work. They have the socialization of somebody outside of their families.

I strongly encourage the Trump administration to abandon the drastic Biden-Harris 14(c) rule, and I encourage all of my colleagues in the U.S. Congress to tour some of their own shelter workshops, where you can see how valuable they are in the life of people who are given a little bit less than some of us in some ways to live their lives.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to hear from legislators on the experiences they had before this week as they toured their district and as they talked to normal people to see whether their concerns and observations squared with those of the people in this building.

Donald Trump has done a great job of trying to remove the diversity, equity, and inclusion from our government, including our military. We have, to a degree, gotten rid of some of the bureaucrats who pushed this odious ideology in our businesses and our schools.

Nevertheless, these bureaucrats everywhere are waiting to gain a foothold in America again as soon as we have another administration, and it is important to educate the young people in this country as to the degree to which America is really a broken system, a racist system, and whether white supremacy is a major problem, as Joe Biden said.

While I was back home, I had an opportunity to speak to a mosque of Ahmadiyya Muslims. Ahmadiyya Muslims have a little bit different theology than Muslims in general. They are persecuted by those members of Islam who live in Pakistan, and many of them have had to flee Pakistan even with regards to their own personal safety.

Nevertheless, when I met with the Ahmadiyya Muslims, there were two things that hit me: First of all, they were all successful, at least the ones I met. I asked them whether they knew of any of them that were having children out of wedlock. They knew nobody like that. They all seemed to be working hard and succeeding in America.

This, of course, is at complete odds with the DEI ideology in which people who are not Europeans are struggling or can't succeed in America. Indeed, the Ahmadiyya Muslims are one more example of a group of people who are succeeding in this land of opportunity.

Actually, they were very thrilled to praise America. They praised us not only as being a much better place to live than Pakistan, but they pointed out we are a much better place to live than Europe. They laughed at Europe, which they referred to as a ``socialist continent'' and one in which there was

no room for people who wanted to work hard and get ahead. One more time, we have an example of foreigners who come here from other places who seem to appreciate America more than the native born and certainly appreciate America more than the average college professor.

I would like to point out that another, I guess you would call, minority that is very common in my district is the Hmong, who came here from Laos. They as well are achieving, doing well, having strong families, succeeding in the realm of education, and all seem to have jobs. This despite the fact that when they came here from Laos, again, many of them didn't know the language. It, again, shows it is a lie for any of these DEI professionals--be they in business, government, or education--to say that America is not a place where people can succeed.

As a practical matter, while I don't think the Hmong are a large enough minority to have statistics on how well they are doing economically, it is apparent subjectively that they are probably doing better than the average American who was born here and, indeed, larger minorities for which we have statistics.

I remind everybody that people who come here from India, who are the most successful minority, Philippines, China, Japan, Cuba, the coast of western Africa all are succeeding wildly in America. All it takes is hard work and strong families, and all these groups have strong families.

I encourage our educators and all our policymakers to educate the people back home on all the groups from all around the world who are doing a fantastic job. I think they are doing, in part, a fantastic job because they don't listen to the naysayers who want to run down America and apparently say that if you are not succeeding and things aren't going right, it is because of prejudice.

The next thing I would like to point out is immigration is still in the news. There are some people who complain about Donald Trump doing what he so desperately has to do, and that is to remove the people who snuck into this country illegally.

I want to point out to everyone that, again, in the last year we had many new Americans who were naturalized. There are people who say about the people who are being removed: Why can't we let them stay? We have a system in this country to make sure that we are getting the best people, the law-abiding, the self-reliant people, which is all we should need here.

We took in 850,000 last year on a rolling 3-year average. I still believe we are at the all-time high of even more than that. We should be reminding anybody who says we are mean or not doing our share of taking in people who would rather live here that, in fact, we took in 850,000 naturalized citizens; those are new citizens.

That is not including the approximately 10 million people who are here on student visas, work visas, or tourist visas. As far as people who want to spend a short time here, particularly to work, we are even more generous that way. I have heard of no strong efforts being made to greatly reduce these numbers.

Again, we have to remind our young people, our constituents, not to put up with this anti-American rhetoric of why are we kicking these people out. We have to remind people every year that in this country we wind up swearing in about 850,000 new people legally. I think if you think about that number for a little bit, something that is far higher than the historical average in this country, you will realize it is ridiculous to say this country is in any way xenophobic.

As I mentioned, one of the strong predictors of success in this country for everybody--for women, men, and children--is that of strong families. I think we have to spend some time pondering why it seems to be that people who are used to the American culture seem to have weaker family ties than those people who are coming here from other countries.

It is my personal belief that the reason we have weak families in America--and one of the reasons why our American children cannot do as well as children whose ancestors come from Pakistan or India or Philippines--is that we have such strong incentives in America, through a horrible broken welfare system, to discourage mothers and fathers to stay together with their children.

This began in the 1960s under Lyndon Johnson, who I felt, before Joe Biden, was the worst President in this country's history. In the 1950s, we only had about 4 percent of American children born without a mother and father at home. We now have over 40 percent who are born without a mother and father at home.

This doesn't mean there aren't wonderful single parents. I know some single parents, particularly emotionally strong single parents, who have done a fantastic job of raising their children. Anybody would be proud of them. However, the statistics make it obvious that overall children would be better off if they had a mother and father at home.

Almost every program in what would be referred to as ``the welfare state'' has incentives to discourage there from being a mother and father at home. This is because eligibility for almost every program is based upon percent of poverty. If you are a single parent and don't have a job or are working part time, you are eligible for many other programs. I think probably the most damaging is that of low-income housing where if, say, a single parent has a child, even when they are a minor without another parent at home, you are eligible for low-income housing, which means almost no rent and the ability to get away from your parents.

Other programs that also discourage marriage, programs that you would lose eligibility for if both parents were working and had a child are the food-share programs, the Medicaid programs, the earned income tax credit, the Pell grants. Indeed, I could go on. There are about 90 different programs in America which are designed to go to a single- parent family, but if you have a two-parent family making a decent income, they are considered not in poverty and, therefore, they are not eligible for a program.

This is why, anecdotally, if you get out in your district, away from the fundraisers and such, you find so many stories of single parents who may even live with the other parent--sometimes illegally--but they don't want to get married because they lose all this money.

Nobody is eligible for all 90 programs at once, but I don't think it is difficult to find hypotheticals in which a parent alone is eligible for maybe $25,000 or $30,000 that they would lose if they were married to the other parent. In other words, it seems like the policy of the United States is to try to discourage the strong families, which are one of the reasons why so many immigrants--be it the Ahmadiyya Muslims or the Cubans or the Mexicans or the Filipinos--seem to do so well in America, indeed frequently better than so many of the native born.

We are soon going to pass a reconciliation bill, and that reconciliation bill will be a tremendous bill, a revolutionary bill. The bill, I think, is going to try to get America back to its roots. Certainly, one of the goals of this bill has to be to get rid of the huge marriage penalty, which has such an impact on causing there to be many fewer children with a mother and father at home than are necessary.

I think it is important to look at all the programs I just named off, as well as a few others, particularly any low-income housing programs, because it is not right that a young person can receive their dream of renting an apartment, not in their parents' home, by having a child out of wedlock.

I also want to point out with regard to these immigrants coming here, there are so many more than there used to be when I was growing up. Right now, as far as the people who feel we are not allowing enough people in this country, in the 1960s we were around 200,000 a year. Now we are around 850,000 a year. We are about four times what we were when I was a child. By historical standards, we have been very, very generous.

The next question is: Why are we seeming to subsidize or have set up programs with an apparent hatred of having both a mother and father at home? You might think that every politician would be encouraging having both a mother and father at home, and this must have been an inadvertent thing.

It is important for the young people today that they know that there is a strong number, it is a small number,

but a strong number of intellectuals going back to the 19th century, actually even going back to the 18th century who are hostile to the idea of having a man in the home.

Certainly, there were people who felt this way during the French Revolution when we had the atheistic mobs killing the clergy. It continued through Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 1800s. The Marxists were hostile to the family. A goal of theirs was to get rid of the family. It winds its way all the way up through communism and the feminists in the 1960s.

Let me give you a couple quotes of people who are famous, who were well-known to people in the 1960s. We have Simone de Beauvoir: ``As long as the family and the myth of the family . . . have not been destroyed, women will still be oppressed.''

There is also Germaine Greer: ``I'm passionately opposed to the nuclear family.''

Then we have Kate Millett, who some people would consider to be the mother, or whatever, of women's studies programs, which are all over our universities: ``The complete destruction of traditional marriage and the nuclear family is the `revolutionary or utopian' goal of feminism.''

Eventually, Angela Davis, another person prominent in the revolutions that were taking place in the 1960s, was very antifamily. Even since I have been in Congress, we had the Black Lives Matter movement, who came out against what was referred to as the ``traditional family.''

This is not only a problem for children, it is a problem for the men. I think men are frequently more likely to cause problems and be less productive if they are not connected with a family, and social scientists like George Gilder have pointed this out. One of the reasons why I think we have a disproportionate number of men in prison, men doing drugs is because they are not connected with a family, and that was because of all these programs which provide financial incentives to make sure that one of the parents, usually the man, is not part of the family.

Mr. Speaker, Black Lives Matter stated that they want to get rid of what is known as the traditional nuclear family. It is a group that a lot of people in this building were happy to stand with, despite stating that on their website. Eventually they took it down, but it shows the power even today.

Mr. Speaker, you might ask why in the world anybody would be antifamily. Why would any politician do that? I mention these powerful people who seem to have a stranglehold on the Democratic Party. Who is for having men participate in women's sports? Who is for an abortion at 8\1/2\ months? Who is for men in the women's locker room? The same group is for them all.

It is the same group that is against having children raised in a nuclear family. It is the radical feminists and their successors from the 1960s. As long as they have such a vise grip on the leftwing of this body, I am afraid they will continue to break down the American family.

In any event, I think those are three things that we have to look at and remember to tell young people. It is the fact that people who are not from Europe come to America and succeed wildly again and again. Statistically, these groups are doing better than the native born, be it the Muslims, Hmong, Chinese, Filipino, Cuban, Nigerian, what have you.

I think we have to remember that it is the welfare structure which is right now creating huge incentives not to raise children in a nuclear family. Frequently there is a penalty of $25,000 or $30,000 for getting married to the father of one's children. This affects so many other problems that we have in America.

The crime problem is a family breakdown problem. The drug problem is certainly not exclusive, but it is a strong element of the family breakdown problem. In talking to teachers, particularly in the area of special education, frequently the problems stem from a breakdown in the family.

We have to do something to remove these horrible marriage penalties. I really don't think America is truly going to be great again until we have a dramatic cut in 40 percent of children who are born without a mother and father at home.

Those are three big issues today. We should educate the young people on all of the issues. Until they realize what our government is doing, they may go back to the days of Joe Biden, a time in which he tried to divide people by ethnic background.

We will continue down the path of having huge incentives not to get married, and our young people will continue to be educated that America has a huge race problem and that we should not be adequately proud of America.

As I mentioned, right now there are many examples of ethnic groups who are doing better than the native born today, which puts a lie to the idea that anybody is not succeeding in this country because their ancestors did not come from Europe.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 3 o'clock and 49 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, last weekend when I was home I saw a very good guy who was recently married. He already has two children, and he was happy because he was buying a new house. He had to save up money for a down payment to do it.

The thing I noticed, though, is that during the 2 or 3 years that it took to save for the down payment, he had to live with his in-laws, which was fine because he had a strong family, and that is what it took to buy the house. It bothered me knowing that in other places in this country people are just

given housing. They don't have to live with their in-laws, and, in essence, the government is treating them better than this example of a guy who was married and spent a couple years with his wife's parents.

I hope in the future that this Congress changes the rules so we no longer benefit or raise this guy's taxes to set up someone for their own house immediately.

Mr. Speaker, I will discuss the biggest highlight of the Trump administration so far, and that is what he has done at the border. We have gone from having over 300,000 people a month trying to get into this country to under 8,000 in February.

That shows that, with a little bit of determination, we can enforce our immigration laws.

Mr. Speaker, there was an important hearing that was not covered enough in this Congress this week. In the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, we brought in four Democratic mayors who refused to say that our immigration laws should be enforced.

It is very difficult for President Trump to protect our country when we have elected officials, mayors and Governors from around the country, in essence saying: We are going to stand in the way of enforcing our immigration laws.

It is time for the American people to stand up and tell their local officials that we want our immigration laws enforced. It is very difficult to enforce them if local law enforcement or social services are not on board.

Mr. Speaker, we just got done with a very interesting week in which this House passed a budget bill, and now we proceed actually to the more difficult process in which, sometime over the next 4 months, we plan on passing both the reconciliation bill and appropriations bills.

Between the two, we deal with all of government spending. As a result, we have an opportunity to look at programs and examine programs the way we haven't before, particularly because we have someone as President who is somewhat of a person who promises change. Clearly, his election meant that they want fundamental changes in government.

Mr. Speaker, different programs have different goals. Just so the public understands, the appropriations bills are for what we call discretionary spending. The reconciliation bills are what are referred to as mandatory spending. Between the two bills that must eventually pass or several separate appropriations bills, we will be looking at virtually all of the Federal Government.

Mr. Speaker, different programs have different goals, and obviously one of our goals has to be to reduce spending given that we have over $35 trillion in debt.

Some of these programs also have goals that are perhaps intentional and perhaps unintentional. These are the goals that I am going to address today.

By the way, this is relevant whether we are running a $1 trillion or over a $1 trillion increase in debt every year, or whether we were, in fact, in a surplus situation.

I am going to look at some programs, which, again, maybe intentionally, maybe unintentionally, penalize people who are raising children while they are married.

We had a hearing a couple of weeks ago in a subcommittee which I have been fortunate enough to chair. In that hearing, Robert Rector, who works for the Heritage Foundation, found approximately 90 programs in which eligibility depended upon having a small income.

In other words, you would lose eligibility for these programs if you either worked and, depending on the program, made more than $12,000, made more than $25,000, made more than $50,000, or had somebody else in the household making more than this amount of money.

This would include if, say, a single parent had a husband or a wife and the single parent was not working or making very little. If they married someone with an income of $30,000, $40,000, or $50,000, they would lose the benefits from that program.

We are all familiar with some of these larger programs. I think most people wouldn't be able to name all 90, but there are things like FoodShare. There is the earned income tax credit, which requires a little bit of work, but

as you work your way up and get a higher income in the company where you work, you would lose that.

Low-income housing, which I think is maybe the worst program of the bunch because you are given housing if you are a young person, allowing you to get out from having to live with your parents as a benefit for having a low income.

Medicaid; TANF, a cash benefit; childcare; Pell grants; payments for children with some disabilities, all of these programs are conditioned upon not making too much money and, of our primary concern today, not marrying somebody who makes too much money.

Frequently, these programs are, in certain ways, more generous than the middle class normally receives. A perfect example would be section 42, low-income tax credits. I have known people who have looked for housing, and the housing they get is not as lavish as the housing available in low-income housing.

The programs are set up in a way that the owners of the low-income housing are encouraged to build very modern, very upscale apartments that maybe some of the average people cannot afford. As a matter of fact, a lot of the average people may still be living with their parents for a while even after they get married.

We have our Medicaid program, which is a fine program, providing healthcare for the poor. Again, there are a lot of people out there working who may have a $10,000 or $15,000 or $20,000 deductible on their medical payments, and of course the government program has, in most cases, no deductible.

We have the FoodShare. All you have to do is talk to people who work in the food stores, and they will say that frequently people on the FoodShare program can afford types of food that the people who are working at the grocery store feel they cannot afford. Not only do we have these programs which are conditioned upon not marrying somebody with an income, but they even have benefits that are sometimes superior to people who are not taking advantage of these programs.

I mentioned Robert Rector and what he said at the relevant hearing. The penalty for getting married obviously varies from person to person, but, in his example, a young person who married a father or mother of their children would be penalized by $28,000.

It is, therefore, not surprising that, if my colleagues ask around, they will find examples of people who are living together but not getting married because they want the benefits. Inevitably, they will find the percentage of people getting married when they have children falls because the generosity of the programs is such that there is a feeling of: Why would I get married at all?

These programs also cause cheating or breaking the law because, of course, they frequently don't catch it if you are getting cash off the books. All of these programs encourage working for cash. They also encourage, I think, earning money by doing things illegally because that is another thing that is not reportable.

We were in a different hearing the other day, and there was a feeling of one of our witnesses who, I think, I would have to say leans toward supporting the Democratic Party. They didn't like the fact that sometimes people are stuck in the muck and are not making as much money as other Americans.

This woman did not seem to realize that one of the reasons that people sometimes make less money is because they shouldn't try to improve their lot in their employer's company because, if they improved their lot, they would lose some of these 90 benefits.

Mr. Speaker, a question is: Is this a penalty for getting married? It has had a huge impact on society. I point out that in the 1950s, 4 percent of the children in this country were born out of wedlock. That number is now over 40 percent. America has fundamentally changed because of these programs.

The question is: Was this on purpose, or was it an inadvertent problem caused by these programs? I think most people would say that people didn't realize what they were doing. The fact that we have had the number of children born out of wedlock skyrocket from 4 percent to over 40 percent was an oversight.

One thing I think America should realize is there were always radicals out there who were trying to get rid of the American family.

Karl Marx, back in the 1800s, made it clear, I think, because he wanted the government to have the absolute power, that he felt that, to have his socialist paradise, we had to get rid of the family.

In the 1960s, the leading feminists, who were celebrated by the left at that time, made it clear that a goal of theirs was to get rid of the nuclear family.

Here is Kate Millett, who has been described as the mother of women's studies classes which dot our universities around the country: ``The complete destruction of traditional marriage and the nuclear family is the `revolutionary or utopian' goal of feminism.''

Linda Gordon, another prominent feminist: ``The nuclear family must be destroyed. . . . Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process.''

Michelle Barrett, in the book ``The Anti-Social Family,'' wrote: ``The family sucks the juice out of everything around it, leaving other institutions stunted and distorted.''

There is no shortage of radical feminists. I could quote Angela Davis, who some on the left view as a hero, as another person who was antifamily.

More recently, Black Lives Matter, during their ascendancy a few years ago, in documents written by their founders, wanted to get rid of the Western-prescribed, so-called nuclear family.

Even after that was out there on the internet, before they took it down, a significant number of people in this institution, I think, showed up at rallies, or whatever one would call them, sponsored by Black Lives Matter, a group that at least initially said they were against the traditional family.

It is entirely possible that one of the reasons we have all of these programs is because some of the powerful feminists and Marxists that influence what goes on in this body were in favor of destroying the nuclear family.

Mr. Speaker, people can say that there is nobody in this conference who would yield to these radical feminists. I remind the public that the radical feminists are for abortions at 8\1/2\ months.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues would say that nobody here would be for an abortion like that--oh, my goodness--but there are individual States that have that law right now, and that is what the radical feminists wanted.

My colleagues would say that nobody would allow transgender women in women's sports, but, again, that is what the radical feminists want. They want to blur the distinctions between men and women, and almost all Democrats in this institution follow along and vote to allow transgender women in women's sports.

There is the same thing about transgender women in women's bathrooms. My colleagues would say that nobody in Congress would be for transgender women in women's bathrooms, but, in fact, the Democratic Party is overwhelmingly for that.

Now, ask yourself, if the Democratic Party is for these things, all of which would have been considered absurd 40 years ago--8\1/2\ month abortions, transgender in sports, transgender in women's bathrooms--is it too much to conclude that one of the reasons our government's programs are designed to destroy marriage is because the power of the radical feminists and the power of the Marxists in the Democratic Party. It has to be in there for some reason. It is something that we should look out for.

I will point out one more time that I think this is the most critical debate that we are going to have over the next 4 or 5 months as we debate our appropriation bills and as we debate our reconciliation bills. This is a debate we should have regardless of whether we are in a difficult financial plight or not.

I want to emphasize that I don't care if we are running trillion- dollar surpluses around here, the idea of putting out programs, substantially generous programs whose effect is to destroy the family, is wrong.

While I certainly know many single parents who are doing a tremendous job and have done a tremendous job, when I talk to people in different fields, they say the explosion in families without a mother and father at home is causing other problems for society. When I talk to law enforcement, they feel one of the root causes of crime is the breakdown of the American family.

I am sure, like everybody around here who has been in politics for a while, you sit in these committee hearings and hear the problems of high crime and murders and such, and people have suggestions as to how to deal with them, but we don't spend enough time pointing out that one way that would certainly reduce the crime rate, maybe back down to where it was in the 1950s, is to do what we can to build up the traditional family rather than what we do now, which is trying to have as few people as possible in the family.

The second thing that I am told is that families of all backgrounds can have problems with drug abuse. Right now, we have over 100,000 people a year dying of drug abuse. It can happen everywhere, but again, when I talk to the professionals who deal with this, disproportionately, the 100,000 people who die every year are from difficult family backgrounds. This drug culture, I think, would be less strong in America if we did more to promote the traditional family rather than doing all we can to make sure the traditional family is weakened.

The third institution I will point out that is harmed by this government's policy of penalizing traditional families is education. I know my friends on the other side of the aisle like to claim they care about education. When I have talked to school superintendents, when I have talked to teachers about the additional money that has to be spent on children with certain problems, again, those kids are disproportionately from families in which you don't have both a mom and dad there.

Again, I know a lot of families like that who do a fantastic job, but I am pointing out that if you really cared about education, you would look at these programs that have caused the children who are born into a family with only one parent there to have skyrocketed from 4 percent to over 40 percent.

I ask the chairman of the relevant committees that are going to have to deal with the appropriation bills and deal with their designated spending limits on the reconciliation bill to pay particular attention to the programs that are designed to penalize the nuclear family, which is so despised by Karl Marx and some of the radicals who were around in the 1960s and 1970s.

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

Mr. Chair, I think I have to address some of the things that I think are out of line or misspoke with regard to the other party today.

First of all, I want to point out there are not a lot of details in this budget. The budget has a lot of top-line numbers in which we try to keep tax cuts that went into effect 8 years ago in effect because we had a strong economy with high employment. There are no specific cuts in here.

The frustrating thing I hear from the other side is that they are talking about that any cut or any reduction in spending is a problem. Let me remind people, 26 percent of the current level of spending for the current year is borrowed. That should be of huge concern to everybody. The average American has about $100,000 as their share of debt. Think of that, a family of four has $400,000 in their share of the debt. The average person or the average American in the budget coming up this year will be spending about $20,000.

One more time, remember, America has to know that 26 percent of every Social Security dollar, 26 percent of every new tank, 20 percent of every new education dollar is borrowed, at a time where interest costs are going up.

Mr. Speaker, I have already spoken on the very significant hearing we had in the subcommittee regarding what is normally called welfare on Tuesday. There is another point I would like to make.

In that hearing, it came out that, while it varies from couple to couple, there are about 90 programs which largely make up the welfare safety net, which if somebody were to get married, a single parent would get married to someone with an income, they would lose the benefits of those programs.

We heard testimony from Robert Rector that you could easily come up with hypotheticals in which someone would lose $28,000 if getting married.

In the 1950s in this country, the rate of children born without a mother and father at home was only 4 percent. We are now at 42 percent. This didn't happen by mistake. It is something that the radical feminists and the Marxists have always wanted: the destruction of the American family, particularly not having a man in the American family.

As we work our way through the budget process and reconciliation process, I hope we all remember that it is not anticipated that America would be a country without families and get rid of these perverse incentives.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to highlight an underpublicized but important hearing that was held today.

First of all, however, I would like to make one more time the point to my colleagues--because I recently heard one of the Senators grotesquely abusing the word--what form of government we have here today.

The Senator--fortunately, it wasn't a Congressman, but sometimes they do it, too--twice, in two sentences in a row, referred to the form of government we have as a democracy. Of course, we all should know by now that we do not have a democracy. We have a Republic, and our forefathers had contempt for democracy.

Alexander Hamilton said: We are a republican form of government. Liberty is never found in the extremes of democracy.

John Adams: Democracy never lasts long.

Benjamin Franklin, upon the completion of the U.S. Constitution: We give you a Republic if you can keep it.

When we say the Pledge of Allegiance, what, again, do we say? We pledge allegiance to the flag and the Republic for which it stands.

Nevertheless, again and again around here, people misspeak and, I am afraid, miseducate the younger generation into thinking we have a democracy.

Why did our forefathers not like a democracy? Our Republic under our Constitution is designed to keep limited government and, therefore, liberty in the United States.

Democracy, or representative democracy, means a majority of people are free to take property from anybody in here or take freedoms from anybody in here. If a clear majority of people say it does not like a religion or, as is increasingly true in this country, does not like religion at all or some of the precepts of religion, they believe in a democracy that they can impose their will on other people.

One of the crises we are facing, which we are going to be talking about tomorrow night, is the huge debt we have. Why do we have such a huge debt? Under our Constitution, under our Republic, they were supposed to restrict the things that the Federal Government could spend money on. Instead, as we have gotten away from a Republic, and the arrogant people of this body think that we have a democracy--they think because they won an election or got 55 or 65 percent of the vote, they are free to either go into debt or spend other people's money until we are bankrupt.

If they had realized all along that we are just a Republic, they would be humble before our Constitution and say: We cannot spend money on such and such. Go to your State legislator.

I had a couple of groups from an educational institution in my office this week. Of course, they were asking for more Federal money. I didn't want to get angry with them or mad at them, but I just noticed that, one more time, a group of educators came before me and asked for more money. Because I won an election, they think I have the authority to give them other people's money. Well, I don't, and it is very irritating to see educators in particular say that we have a democracy when our forefathers disliked democracy and would have been terrified had they known.

Right now, we are almost 250 years down the road. I am sorry, we are 230 years down the road from the founding of our Republic under our Constitution. I am sure our forefathers would be terrified if they knew how many people were under the impression that we were a democracy.

America's Welfare System

Mr. Speaker, now, I am going to talk about the hearing we had earlier today and what I think is probably, next to the out-of- control immigration system, the biggest crisis that we face, and that is our welfare system and a huge marriage penalty associated with it.

When I talk about our welfare system, I talk of approximately 90 different programs that somebody who is almost broke is entitled to. Some you have to have children to be entitled to. All these programs, as you earned more money and went to work, you would lose eligibility.

There are two things we could say about these programs. I should point out the testimony in a hearing today from a guy by the name of Robert Rector from The Heritage Foundation. There are examples--and I know there are even greater examples than this--that we penalize a woman who marries the father of her children $28,000 a year if she makes too much money or, scarier, if she marries a man to support her or to support their family.

First of all, you might say: ``Well, that is hard to believe. Who wants to destroy the nuclear family?'' It is not hard to find people to destroy the nuclear family.

We have Karl Marx, of course, back from the 1860s, who felt the family was the root of so many horrible things.

We have Kate Millett, who I would describe as the mother of women's studies classes. Who knows how many of our poor college students have taken that drivel. She was very definite in the fact that she wanted to get rid of the American family and, in particular, wanted men outside the family.

We also have Angela Davis, a 1960s radical who was still powerful when she spoke into the 1980s and 1990s. She was clearly opposed to the American family.

Until they scrubbed their website, Black Lives Matter was against what they referred to as the Western-prescribed traditional nuclear family.

These people all were against having a mom and dad at home with their children.

You might say these people can't be that powerful, but you have to remember, the Democratic Party has proven that they can be led around by the nose by the most extreme elements of their coalition. That is why, even though they have to know better, they will vote for abortion at 8\1/2\ months. That is why the Democratic Party will vote for a boy pretending to be a girl going into the girls' restroom, because they will be led around by the most extreme group.

Therefore, I don't think it should be considered a surprise that the Democratic Party has supported programs that overwhelmingly favor and encourage an end to the nuclear family.

What type of programs are they? Almost any so-called antipoverty program you can think of. Certainly, food

share would qualify. Even worse, any low-income housing credits in which if you are not married and don't have much of a salary, you get almost free rent. Of course, to somebody who is 19 or 20 years old, being able to get outside their parents' house and get free rent is something that is very tremendous, very desired. There is free healthcare, free daycare, Pell grants, which lead to free college tuition.

All of these things are inducements to, as an Indian friend of mine said, result in the American system in which the women don't marry the men; the women marry the government.

Another downside, of course, is not only that the children do not have a father at home, and they would be better off with a father at home, but the fathers don't have anything to do, which is a problem, as well.

Normally, in life, the purpose or the goal of a man is to support his family, to be the husband and father of children. Of course, in the system encouraged by our welfare system, the men have nothing to do.

If you look in areas of society in which we have maybe the worst results of the welfare system, most of the bad results happen not to the children--although the children are damaged--not to the women, but to the men. When you think of areas of the United States that are more associated with people taking advantage of these systems, these benefits, the men are the ones who are largely committing the crimes. The men are going to prison. The men are doing the drugs.

We talk about it like it is society's problem. It is society's problem, but it was caused by an out-of-control welfare system that left the men with nothing to do. This was well documented by George Gilder, the great sociologist of the 1970s who followed around a young couple when the young gal got pregnant. He noticed it was not cause for concern. It was cause for celebration because of all of the benefits that were available.

A thing that really brings this home is the fact that frequently these programs provide a more beneficial system than even a low-income married couple has. We all know that when you talk to the clerks at the grocery store, they will frequently tell you that the people on the government are buying food that they themselves don't feel they can afford. We know that many young couples starting out may live with their parents, which is probably a good thing because the grandmas and grandpas can teach the young couple ways to live.

Unfortunately, here, they are not only given their own apartment but an apartment that is superior to most other apartments. When I had a staffer get married and look for an apartment back in Wisconsin, they found the best apartments were the low-income housing.

Why were the best apartments low-income housing? It is because we have a tax provision called section 42 in which we give overly generous subsidies to property developers to build new low-income housing. Since the government pays up to 70 percent of the cost of the housing, the developers, of course, are able to make those new apartments, which already are better than the old apartments just by their age. The new apartments are particularly nice because the government is paying for 70 percent of them. You get better apartments than you would for your sister who is getting married and having a husband.

We know that, frequently, middle-class families either choose not to help their children out when they go to college or don't have the money to help them out, and they wonder why somebody who comes from a family which maybe was living off the government in the first place gets free Pell grants and close-to-free college tuition, whereas the middle-class family does not.

When you look at the medical--and we don't want to take away anybody's medical care, but when you look at the medical, frequently people who have a job in the private sector may have a $10,000 or $15,000 deductible. Instead, people on the system have no deductible or almost no deductible. It is usually no deductible. Again, the government sets one up in which you are in better shape if you don't get married and marry the government.

As I said, a lot of the problems wind up landing on the men who have no purpose in life since the government has bribed the mother to raise the children without a father in the home, but it results in a lot of problems that this institution debates separately.

Over 100,000 people die every year in this country from illegal drugs. They can come from any family.

I want to emphasize that there are single parents who do a fantastic job. I know so many single parents, and their children would make anybody proud.

Nevertheless, when I talk to law enforcement, disproportionately the number of people who die of drug overdoses come from a difficult family background. If we were serious about doing something about fentanyl, we would be addressing the family background.

Now, we have nice bills this week. Though, they may be technically flawed--increasing the penalties for people with fentanyl--but if we really want to go after the 100,000 deaths, you figure you would want to do something about the family, but we don't care that much.

Crime. When I talk to law enforcement about crime that is going on, again and again they will talk about the family being broken down as the reason we have so much more crime than we did 50 years ago. As we get away from the crime caused from the tragic events in Minnesota, they have dropped the last couple of years. However, nevertheless, crime is much greater than it was before we passed the Great Society in the mid-1960s.

If we were serious about doing all we could to fight the crime in this country, we would address the current welfare system, which discourages making up a traditional intact family. In other words, I would not say that this institution is being entirely sincere in saying all they can do to fight crime when we continue to allow this welfare system to ramble on, give the men no responsibility, and have the high crime.

Another thing we spend a great deal of time talking about here is education. I was talking with my school superintendents about a month ago, and we talked about special education and the children who were having special problems. My school superintendents agreed that disproportionately those problems were caused by people with a tough family background. In other words, it is caused by the actions of this body who have set up a welfare system that discourages intact families.

This is the primary reason I ran for this job several years ago. If you are in a city council, if you are in a State legislature, and you want to address these problems like drugs or crime or the education system, you quickly realize that a lot of the problems are caused by the breakdown in the family, and that the Federal Government, who caused the problem in the first place, is doing nothing to solve the problem.

I ask our leadership, and I ask President Trump, in this important bill we are going to pass sometime in the next 2 or 3 months, to address our welfare system, which is designed to bribe, usually mothers, to raise the child without a father providing the support, without a father in the home. It is hard to believe we are trying to make America great unless we revisit the horrible welfare system.

There is one more thing that I think the press has not covered enough that I would like to touch upon today, and that is one of Donald Trump's great executive orders. He is doing a good job here. One of the things that I would like to get rid of and I thought it would take maybe 10 or 12 years to do, Donald Trump--at least temporarily until we have a Democrat President--got rid of it with a stroke of a pen.

In 1965--and something I think should have been unconstitutional-- Lyndon Johnson, with the stroke of a pen, said he would no longer enforce Executive Order 11246, which was an order put into effect by Lyndon Johnson that--well, he would argue it wasn't requiring--as a practical matter, it created an affirmative action type system in which preferences were given to women over men and preferences were given to people based on racial background.

Now, there are absurdities in the order in the first place. You could be a very well-off, say, Asian American worth millions of dollars, but you

would be considered a minority in need of help. You could be somebody who just came to America a week ago, and you would be considered a person who needed help, and, for diversity purposes, would be given preference over a person of European descent who was around here for 50 years.

I have told the story when I was first made aware of this before, and I will tell it again so you can see how it worked out as a practical matter.

I got a call from a human resources professional who worked for a company that had at least 50 employees and did at least $10,000 of business with the Federal Government. They hired out a firm to tell them how to negotiate this executive order.

I might have these numbers off by one, but they were told that when they had five engineers and wanted to hire a sixth engineer, that sixth engineer better be a woman. It didn't have to be a woman, but they had to prepare to show the Federal Government that they did all they could to find a woman.

They went from three to four members of management, and they were again told: If you are going to hire a fourth member of management, see if you can make it a minority. If you can't, that is fine, but you have got to prove that you went out of the way to find someone.

As a practical matter, we had the Government weighing in, giving preference to one person over the other person for different jobs in this company. Because I tried to do something with this when I was in the State legislature, people would come up to me with other examples. There were plenty of examples.

This applies not only to employees of Federal contractors, but the Federal contractors themselves. Recently, I had even heard stories of people in which the Federal Government is going to pay significantly more--which I think is illegal--for preferred contractors rather than men of European descent. It is not only costing the taxpayer money, but they were incredibly unfair to these people.

Sometimes you get around it by maybe it is a guy, maybe he puts his wife in charge of the company, and that way he can say we have got a woman-owned business, and they should get preferences.

In any event, Donald Trump, with the stroke of a pen, got rid of this ridiculous law. It could be challenged in court. I am sure the Supreme Court will uphold President Trump. I would hope this body would get rid of this law once and for all. It would be hard to get it out of the Senate. I think a lot of Americans don't know it exists. I didn't know it existed until 12 or 14 years into my political career.

I thank Donald Trump for making sure one more time we are hiring the most qualified people we can find. We are contracting with the best that we can find. In any event, there are three stories for you today, Mr. Speaker. Let me remind you one more time that we are a republic, not a democracy, and our forefathers were scared to death of having a democracy.

I, one more time, will point out the huge penalties that the welfare system has on a man and a woman who want to get married together and raise a child. I hope that this body takes up that problem. It is not an easy problem to take up, but if we care at all about the next generation or the generation after the next generation, we have to walk our way back from the insane policies put into place by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.

One more time, we thank Donald Trump for allowing the government and contractors of the government to hire or contract with the best they can find.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 39 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, February 13, 2025, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, as we wrap up this week, we will go home. If it were me, I would read books or read various topics. Last night, I saw a book I read many years ago and am going to read again. It is called: ``Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem.''

Right now, we have a huge problem in that men are being kept out of their families. Now is the time to address this problem, with Republicans having the Senate, House, and Presidency.

We cannot seriously say we are taking on the fentanyl crisis, the crime crisis, and the education crisis unless we do something about getting men back in the family.

There have been powerful forces in this country. There are a lot of people and important people who, sadly, follow Karl Marx. The feminists in the sixties followed Kate Millett, the mother of women's studies. Later on, it was Black Lives Matter. All of them wanted to destroy the nuclear family.

Now is the time we have to undertake policies to get men back in the family.

Mr. Speaker, it seems like every day there has been such good news coming out of the White House. It is easy to lose track of some of the executive orders coming from President Trump, but I would like to bring attention to one today.

Once this executive order is in effect, there is nothing Democrats will be able to do to stop it. That is the executive order reinstating servicemembers discharged under the military's COVID-19 vaccination mandate.

It is hard to believe that only 4 years ago we had a President who was demanding that all our brave servicemembers had to take an experimental vaccine, and if they didn't take it, they would be removed from the service.

President Trump has reinstated these folks. President Trump is a great man of compassion. He is a man who respects independent thought; unlike a lot of people who feel: One guy who went to college told me this, so I better do it.

I know a lot of other people who didn't get the vaccine. They did a very good job of researching the vaccine and had solid reasons for not getting it. I thank President Trump for reinstating all of our brave servicemen who were unfairly forced from the military.

Mr. Speaker, there has been so much in the news in the last 2 weeks, it is hard to know where to start.

I will cover a couple issues that the mainstream media has picked up on, though not done the best job uncovering, and one issue that made a huge difference in the lives of the most vulnerable of us that Donald Trump weighed in on not by doing something but by allowing an administrative rule to die.

The first great victory for Donald Trump, which hasn't been reported out there, concerns the effort by the Biden administration, which ran out of time, to get rid of what they call 14(c) certificates.

Everybody may be familiar with light manufacturing or packaging done in their district by people who are handicapped. Maybe they have spina bifida, maybe they have Down syndrome. In any event, for this reason, they are not able to be profitably employed for above minimum wage or minimum wage dollars.

Each State does it a little bit differently, but the States make an estimate of what that employee is worth, and maybe they are paid $5 an hour for, like I said, light manufacturing or packaging.

If you tour these facilities--and I think every Congressman ought to tour them at least once--it is one of the most enjoyable things you can do, because you will find the people who have been dealt a difficult lot on life so happy to see you, so happy to see what they are doing with you, so happy to make friends with the other employees there who have different abilities and other employees who are usually in a supervisory capacity.

These are also a godsend to the parents or guardians of these folks. Under normal circumstances, they have to worry when the guardians or parents die off what type of friends and what type of social life they will have, but because they frequently stay in these facilities or work in these facilities for 20 or 30 or 40 years, they develop lifelong friendships which are so important for these folks to have.

Now, had Donald Trump not won the election, it would have continued to work through the administrative rule process, and it is entirely possible that these sort of facilities would have been shut down by a Biden or Harris administration. They were working toward that. You might say, why would anybody take away the right for these people to have these jobs.

The reason is, they will say, because if we are paying somebody $5 an hour, we are taking advantage of them. We can't take advantage of them, so we would rather have them shut down.

How horrible is that? To the most vulnerable members of our society, Joe Biden was prepared to say, if you want to work here for $5 an hour, tough. We are going to close that facility, or we will leave the facility open, but you will no longer be able to work. You will no longer have the pride of being able to get a paycheck and spend it on clothes for yourself or gifts for your parents, what have you.

Mr. Speaker, I thank President Trump for not continuing with that administrative rule. At least, probably for the next 4 years, we know the jobs of these folks, which mean so much to them--more to them than I would say the average citizen in our society--I thank President Trump for allowing the most vulnerable members of our society to have the choice to continue to work for, in some cases, subminimum wage, but have the enjoyment of that independence.

I should point out that almost all the people I am talking about have some SSI payment in addition to that, so it

is not like they are expected to pay a mortgage with their $5-an-hour job. They get other governmental assistance, as well.

I know there are a lot of other things we have been grateful to President Trump for these last couple weeks, but keeping the 14(c) certificates is a tremendous victory for the most vulnerable of us. I don't think it would have happened if President Trump didn't get elected.

Now, the next thing to look at. We have heard people talk about Elon Musk and what he wants to do to USAID.

First of all, I will point out that the reason people are mad at Elon Musk, who can't do anything on his own--all he can do is advise the President. The reason they are mad at him is, horror of horrors, he thought there was a government program that wasn't necessary. That is not the way things work here.

Nobody believes that if Elon Musk had Donald Trump's ear and came out for more preschool, if he came out for more mental health funding, if he came out for expanded government daycare, the folks on the other side of this aisle would be praising Elon Musk for being a forward- looking person and for doing what people on that side of the aisle want to do, which is either expand old programs or come up with new government programs.

Quite frankly, as long as I have been here, I am sure there must be some government program that ended, but I can't think of any.

Elon Musk is under attack for actually suggesting a government program is unnecessary. I praise him for that. There is nothing wrong with him advising President Trump. I don't know if folks would feel better if they gave him a position and $100,000-a-year salary. I don't know, but it is refreshing that some of the most successful people in America can use their mind, their brains to advise President Trump on how to be a good President.

It is particularly good to have somebody outside this building who is not used to the swamp-type mentality of we never under any circumstances get rid of a program; the only question is whether we are going to expand it 2 percent or 8 percent. It is great to have a friend who can look at some programs and say, hey, maybe this program sounded good when we first created it in 1963 or whatever, but it hasn't worked up to snuff.

Of course, I agree with Elon Musk that some of the money spent on these programs is even a moral stain on the United States of America, particularly a moral stain because we are spending money in other countries.

When we talk about gender-affirming care, that is where they give puberty blockers to young children. I think it is horrific that we would give puberty blockers to a 12 or 13 year old in America, but America is supposed to be the light unto the world.

Can you imagine the United States weighing in and giving gender- affirming care to the poor little children in Guatemala?

I mean, how bad can we be? How embarrassing can we be? That is what we do with the incredible amount of wealth that this country has been given? We take our wealth and try to screw up--what I would say is ``screw up''--the poor little children in Guatemala?

I am glad Elon Musk came across this program, and upon people pointing out what is in the program, I am glad that Donald Trump, when he heard about it, full bore put his foot on the brake and said if the people running this program are spending the money that way, we have to stop spending money right away and look a little bit further into the program.

In any event, what I am going to do is, I am going to ask people on that side of the aisle to take an honest look at themselves. If Elon Musk announced that we needed more preschool, if Elon Musk announced we were going to need more mental health, with where the mental health professions are today in favor of these puberty blockers and that sort of thing, would they really be concerned that he is advising President Trump, or would they be praising him? Would The Washington Post and The New York Times be praising Elon Musk for being openminded and ignoring the hidebound conservative members of the Republican Party? Of course, they would be praising him.

The only reason they question whether or not he can advise President Trump is because they don't like, for almost the first time, the first time that I have been here, that we genuinely are seeing a government program begin to end, hopefully.

The third thing I will point out is that President Trump signed a bill today dealing with men in women's sports. It was a good bill. There are not a whole lot of men participating in women's sports around the country, but it is certainly a little weird that when one sets up a swimming tournament, a track meet, or something where it is very clear we have the men's event and the women's event, that under any circumstances we take a man and say, well, just because you feel like a woman today, we are going to pretend you are a woman. I think that is unusual enough.

I am going to hope--and President Trump has had executive orders on this topic, as well--that we are able to do something statutorily about getting rid of government funding for programs that do things like give surgeries on minors, give puberty blockers on minors. There is no shortage of intelligent people who will say this is damaging, not to mention there are a huge number of people with just plain common sense who realize that you don't try to engage in irrevocable medical procedures with 14- or 15-year-olds.

In fact, I would say it is medically inexcusable to engage in these procedures when people are 24- or 25-years-old. After all, in this country, you know, you can't buy a beer until you are 21 years old, can't buy a cigarette until you are 21 years old. I wouldn't think any medical professional with any morality--I realize they are making money on this--would harm these young people.

Now that we took care of the ridiculous idea that men should be able to pick whether they are men or women, depending upon, I guess, whether there is a track meet that day, I hope our leadership team begins to go after these so-called medical professionals who are doing irrevocable damage, either with drugs or surgeries, on people under 18.

Quite frankly, they ought to be barred for people under age 21. Quite frankly, the medical society ought to, on their own, make it clear that it is medical malpractice to do this sort of thing even on a 25- or 26- year-old because we all know very well that the way we feel about things when we are 20 or 24 or 25 is frequently very different from the way we feel about things when we are 30 years old.

I thank the gentleman from California for allowing me to address these issues. Remember, folks out there, if you have a ward or a child who worked for what used to be called a sheltered workshop, President Trump kept your ward or child employed the way they want to.