Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting time sitting here and listening to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about the issue revolving around the budget, the budget deficit and spending problems we are experiencing. It is…
Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting time sitting here and listening to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about the issue revolving around the budget, the budget deficit and spending problems we are experiencing. It is undeniably true that we are spending far too much money. It is fascinating to hear the discussion of this particular phenomenon, spending too much money, and having Members on the other side of the aisle decry that particular activity.
It is fascinating because I sit on the Budget Committee, and on that committee we have for a number of years now looked at budgets that are offered by not just the administration, by the Republican Party, but by Members of the other party. To the best of my recollection, we have yet to see any budget proposed by the other side of the aisle that would address the issue
of spending. Not one. In fact, every single budget proposed by Members from the other side of the aisle spends more.
At no time to the best of my recollection have we said on this floor, while we debated any particular appropriations bill, any one of the 13 appropriations bills the House has the responsibility to address and pass to keep the government moving, I do not recall, and I certainly could be wrong, but I just do not recall any time during the discussion of any one of those appropriations bills where the issue was we are spending too much from the other side. That is to say that they were complaining that the bill was too rich.
They were oftentimes complaining about where the money was spent, but not that we were not spending enough. Nobody was complaining about the fact that it was overspending; complaints were almost always that we were not spending enough on particular programs.
On every single appropriations bill, or at least a majority of the appropriations bills that come to the floor, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley), who has been around for approximately 20 years and has certainly seen a lot of budgets come and go in this process, but every year he stands up and to almost every single appropriation bill he attempts to add an amendment. He offers an amendment that is a limiting amendment.
It does something really very scary. The ramifications would be incredible if we were to ever pass it. We fail to pass it every single time; but what this amazing, incredible thing that he offers to the Members of this body who are supposedly concerned about spending, he suggests that we should cut spending on each one of the appropriations bills by an enormous amount, or enormous around here, and that amount is 1 percent. Every single year he gets up and offers this amendment to every appropriations bill, let us just cut 1 percent off of this appropriation, and he fails. Almost all of the Members on the other side of the aisle vote against it, as do many Members on our side.
Mr. Speaker, I do not rise here to defend the spending activities of this Congress, but I do suggest that when one does propose that we should not spend so much, when one stands up at this microphone and condemns the body for spending a lot of money, they should be willing then to vote to stop that, not just criticize it, but stop it.
What, is the devil making us do this? That is what it sounds like: please, somebody stop me; I cannot control myself. Please, somebody out there deal with it. Institute some rule, institute some program because I have to continually vote to spend all of the money that I can possibly vote to spend, and then some. And then it is somebody else's fault. And the one continuing theme that ran through almost every one of the discussions that preceded mine here tonight discussing the appropriations process and the budget process, the continuing theme was this: the real problem, the real dastardly thing that we, the Republicans, have done over the course of the last 4 years is to reduce taxes. That is the most heinous crime with which we have been charged during the last hour.
There was a lot of discussion about the economic condition that most Americans find themselves in and many families are wondering about how to pay the bills and especially their health care costs. All these things are undeniably true.
Here is the solution, then, as I heard them explain it. The best thing we can do to those people who are trying to figure out how to pay the bills in America is to increase their taxes. This will help us all. This will make everybody happy. It will solve all of our problems because you and I both know, Mr. Speaker, that there are just too many Americans out there, middle-class Americans who are not paying enough to keep this thing afloat.
Again I want to stress, I absolutely do not wish to defend the spending practices of this body, both Republicans and certainly the Democrats. We spend too much money. That is undeniably true. It is also undeniably true that something happened called 9/11 and as a result of that we did have extraordinary things occur. One, a dramatic drop in the economic activity of the country and, two, an inordinate increase in the amount of money we spent on homeland security and on national defense. Those things, I think, are understandable. Our expenses went up, our revenues went down as a result of an event. But I do not excuse the fact that we still spent money beyond what we took in to an ever greater extent every year. I believe that we should have made many more decisions about how to cut in other areas. Whenever the Labor, Health and Human Services bill comes up, which is a huge, huge, huge spending bill, all for social services, we shall see how many amendments will be offered by the other side to that bill to cut spending. We shall see whether or not anybody would vote for that 1 percent cut in that $400 billion or $500 billion bill in order to reduce the size of the deficit that we all decry. I will vote for it. I guarantee you I will vote as I did every single time for every single 1 percent and I would have voted for a much higher percentage cut had it been offered, but I voted for every single one of those 1 percent cuts. What a scary thing that we proposed, 1 percent. We failed to get it.
As I say, the issue evidently is spending. Nobody really tries to stop it around here. But the real scary thing to our friends on the other side of the aisle is that we may in fact be allowing people to keep too much of their own wages, too many of their own dollars. This absolutely astounds the other side. It is frightening to them. Everybody would be happier, as I say. We could go to every one of those families that are sitting around the table, that they talked about earlier tonight, wondering how to pay their bills and say, ``We'll help you figure out how to pay the bills. We'll take more money away from you in taxes. That will be better. Believe us. Trust us. That's going to help you out.''
Does this sound weird to anybody else out there? It is a very strange philosophy but it is decorated with a lot of rhetoric so that all of a sudden it sounds logical. ``Of course, we just need to do that. We have to raise taxes, naturally. We have to spend all this money, take money away from everybody, it is only right. Everybody would be happier if we did, right?''
I do not think so. I do not think so. I think most Americans do not think so, either. They are not delusionary. Most Americans want us to spend less. That is undeniably true. I am with them. I am with them in that regard. I do wish that we could spend less and I do wish that we could prioritize better than we have been able to prioritize and I believe that it is incumbent upon us to continue the effort. But the last thing I think we should do is to turn over that process to the folks whose only history in dealing with budgets, by the way, around here for 40 something years prior to the time that Republicans took control was to develop dramatic spending increases ad infinitum. I just really do not feel safe in thinking that the other way to handle this is to provide the other party with the keys to the treasury.
Of course that is not the issue that I wanted to bring forward tonight. I just had to comment on that as I listened to the discussion. I wanted to talk tonight about an issue that does compel me to come to this floor often and that is an issue dealing with the policy of this government with regard to immigration and to hopefully address the broader concept that immigration, immigration policy, has a tendency to affect. There are many aspects, many facets to the immigration debate. That is why I find it so fascinating, quite frankly. I cannot think of another domestic policy issue that should command as much of our attention as should the immigration debate, what little debate I should say, that goes on. There is not an awful lot. People suggest that we should really pay close attention to this in the presidential race. I hope we do. But the reality is there is not all that much difference, I am afraid and ashamed to say, between the two positions taken by the presidential candidates. One is strictly pandering for votes and one is pandering light, I guess I would call it, but they are both in the process of trying to figure out a way to gain votes among those folks who are here as immigrants and/or people who have come to this country even illegally and who sometimes, in fact oftentimes, do vote.
Let me talk a little about this whole concept of voting. This is really what
has propelled me to come to the floor this evening. About, I guess it was a year or so ago, maybe 2 years now, a year and a half, I read something that was a statement by the then candidate for mayor of Washington, D.C. I found it disconcerting, to say the least, and I have quoted it often because a lot of people when I talk about the issue of immigration and citizenship which, of course, go hand in hand, people are surprised by the fact that there are places around this country, cities in particular, that have called themselves and/or we have called sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities are cities that develop policies with regard to immigration. Of course, this is bizarre to say the least because the Federal Government is supposed to have the primary and unique role of determining our immigration policies. But what we are seeing happen all over the country, well, I should not say all over the country, primarily on the left coast and on the east coast, we see these peculiar things going on in local communities where they will say things like, in our community, in our city, we will not allow our police departments to communicate with the Department of Homeland Security. If they arrest someone and find out that that person is here illegally, we will not allow our police department to tell the government about that, tell the Department of Homeland Security. Some have gone farther than that, farther than saying that if you are in their community illegally, you will not be hassled essentially, that that little city will not participate in the process of trying to identify your status and/or have anything to do with the punishment of the crime. If, in fact, you have come into this country illegally, they will not help enforce the law of the land. I find this to be quite peculiar.
I have spoken about this. We have attempted to amend other bills, appropriations bills, to stop this from happening but something occurred here just the other night that goes along with what the then candidate, or, no, I am sorry, he was mayor at the time, Mayor Anthony Williams. I see this article was back on October 1, 2002, when he was running again but he was the mayor. Mayor Anthony Williams said on October 1, 2002, that noncitizens in the District of Columbia should be allowed to vote in local elections. He had said this in response to a complaint from a Latino coalition where they issued a report in which they identified a lack of services and access to local government. Mayor Williams said, ``I am committed to expanding the franchise. The city needs to develop a new standard for voting.''
This is the mayor of Washington, D.C., the Nation's capital. Again, only here on the east coast or maybe in some scattered pockets of the left coast would a statement like this not be incredible and would go without a great deal of attention being paid to it, but he says, ``The city needs to develop a new standard for voting, but it isn't citizenship.'' When the council's executive director, I think there they are talking about the city council of D.C., the executive director, Eugenio Arene, suggested that all local taxpayers be allowed to cast ballots, the mayor added, ``Sounds like a good standard to me.'' Asked about extending the vote to noncitizens, Williams pledged to work with local government officials and experts on the idea and he said he hoped it would be possible in elections for mayor on down.
By the way, in this proposal, there was nothing at the time that would even indicate that they were entertaining the idea that people who are noncitizens should vote but excluding it from people who are here illegally. There is nothing in here to suggest that that was the case. In fact, it is just the opposite. Anyone who they say is a resident should vote. Anyone who is a resident should vote. This, of course, is an attack on the whole concept of citizenship. It is becoming less and less meaningful to many people, it is true. We are trying our best to eliminate anything that distinguishes a person here as a citizen from someone who is not and to accommodate, therefore, the massive numbers of people who are here illegally. If this is not pandering for votes, you tell me what is, Mr. Speaker. How can we possibly define such a thing, that a statement of this nature could be made and that people could possibly think that it was for any other purpose but to go after a voting group that perhaps is not solidly behind you or you want to sort of encourage, you want to make sure that you pay them back for whatever kind of political support they may give you, that you would even go to the extent of saying that citizenship in this country is not important, it is essentially meaningless. Because, you see, if it is not meaningful to the mayor for voting purposes, what in the world could it be meaningful for? What purpose does it have? What does citizenship mean? Is it of any value whatsoever?
There is an oath that is taken when someone wants to become a citizen of the United States. It has been around for a couple of hundred years. In it we talk about the need to disavow any allegiance to any other government or potentate, I think the words are, in the vow itself. We are talking about somebody who is separating themselves from whatever they were in terms of their political affiliation to something new. We do that for a purpose, because it is important to have that distinguishment. It is important to have people who come here as immigrants. It is important to have people who are born here understand the importance of citizenship. It does distinguish someone here and it distinguishes us from other nations and other people groups. I think that that distinguishment is a good thing.
I am constantly amazed at how much time and attention is spent on trying to minimize the importance of the whole concept of citizenship, that we are all just residents, that is the theory, that we are just here on the planet in this particular location. Nothing really holds us together as a nation except for the economic benefits that can be obtained by living in this particular geographic area. That is all. As bizarre as that sounded back on October 1, 2002, and to a certain extent I did not really worry about it because you can write that off to a political campaign and the rhetoric of someone looking to pander to voters. Certainly that is the only way I could read what he said there.
Come to find out last week, this particular little seed, bad seed, has begun to sprout.
The other day several Councilmembers here in the District of Columbia introduced the ``Equitable Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2004,'' a bill that will extend full local voting rights to documented permanent residents of the District of Columbia. The bill was co-introduced by Councilmember Jim Graham, and it goes on to describe them. The Voting Rights for All D.C. Coalition is actively seeking other co-sponsors. So in the City Council of Washington, D.C., they are proposing now to implement the Mayor's idea of having people who are noncitizens be eligible to vote.
We know we will have the Washington, D.C. appropriations bill up here soon, and we will certainly look at that for an opportunity to address this particular issue, as the Federal Government does have a responsibility for oversight, and I will have an amendment prepared. But whether or not we offer it, whether or not it passes, I mean the idea that this is happening in cities across the country and here in the Nation's capital has got to be a sobering thought even for those people who press for more and more of the elimination, if the Members will, of anything that distinguishes individuals here as citizens of the United States.
Massive immigration into the country, both legally and illegally, has consequences. And it is absolutely true that we have been successful as a Nation in assimilating hundreds of millions of people into this country and into this culture over the past 200 years. And it is true that sometimes that is assimilation happened easily and sometimes not so easily. It is true that many people faced hardships and discrimination and that it was not an easy thing to do, and that groups came into the country, and every time there was a wave of immigration from any particular area, there would be people here saying we have got to stop that. There is something bad about that particular group coming into the country.
The country not only survived it but grew and prospered, and I think, for the most part, we can look back at the experience and say it was positive for the Nation.
But there is a different phenomenon today. It is a different immigration, not just in terms of numbers. There are far more people coming into this country today legally and illegally than ever before in the Nation's history. But there is also this growing problem, this sort of cult of multiculturalism, as I call it, that has taken over much of certainly the media. Certainly our colleges and high schools and textbooks are influenced by this peculiar philosophy. I say peculiar because it is this: It is not just a recognition of our differences, which I think all of us can appreciate. It is not just extolling the virtues of diversity, of which there are many. It is not that at all. The cult of multiculturalism to which I refer is the kind of thing that pushes this idea that we should no longer identify ourselves as Americans because that is, of course, some unique distinction that is in some way troublesome; and that we should in no way extol the virtues of American society or the American creed. We should not tell our children in schools that there is anything of value in what we have established here, that there is nothing in Western Civilization in our history of which we can be proud, that everything is negative, that the only way that we can portray a sympathy and express a sympathy and an appreciation for another culture is to degrade and debase our own. That is the cult of multiculturalism, and it is rampant throughout the country.
There was an interesting little spot on National Public Radio not too long ago about a school in Los Angeles, a public high school, 5,000 students, most of them, as they said, had ``recently arrived,'' almost all from Mexico, almost all speaking Spanish. And in this NPR spot, they were interviewing the teacher, and they were talking about the fact that they did not have enough textbooks in the school, especially civics or history textbooks. And the teacher said, I do not care that we do not have any textbooks in the school because the textbooks that we have prepared for us and are given to us by the school district do not teach our kids about who they are. She said, They only teach about this other culture.
Now, what was she talking about? Who were their kids and who they are, and who was the other culture that she was deriding and in saying that we should not be teaching children today? That other culture was, of course, ours, America's. Who were these children? She said ``our children.'' Not American children? No. No. So, therefore, she said, I have devised a different curriculum for these kids, and I do not want them using textbooks provided by the Anglo community. She said, Instead of using textbooks, we are going to go out and study murals.
Mural, that is a euphemism, most of the time, for graffiti.
So they went out, and the reporter went out with them, and they walked along the streets of Los Angeles. The school kids, instead of being in class studying American history, this was her alternative, a ``mural walk.'' That is what she called it. And when the students got there and they talked to the ``artist'' who had created this thing, this mural, this historical monument, this psychological jewel, they asked him to teach the class. This was on radio. They were interviewing these guys, and this was all recorded. And the guy said, I want the students to know you do not belong here. That flag is not your flag, pointing to American flag. He said, You are just all a colony. This is a colony of the United States. You really do not belong here. You have no allegiance here.
This is the cult of multiculturalism to which I refer. And it is there, and it permeates our society, and it is problematic when it meshes with massive immigration, when there is no longer a press for assimilation or pressure for assimilation, but all the pressure is just the opposite. It is all to divide us into subgroups, into hyphenated Americans in every way.
I had a meeting, I remember, with a bishop in Denver, Bishop Gomez. And we were arguing this issue, and he said to me, I do not know why you are so concerned about people who are coming here from Mexico. He said, They do not want to be Americans.
I said, Bishop, there are two things about that statement that really get me. First of all, that you assume my problem with immigration is that I do not want the people who immigrate here to become American; and, secondly, the fact is you are right. That is the problem, and it is exactly why I am worried. It is not that I should not be worried about that. It is that every American should be worried about it. There are many people doing exactly what my grandparents did and your grandparents and everybody else's grandparents or great grandparents or great great grandparents did. They all come here because they all make a very difficult choice to come to a brand new land. And it is true that that is the one thing we have in common, people coming today and people coming when my grandparents came: They want to come to America. But let me ask you if there is now a difference. Let me ask you if you can just get a feeling that, in fact, something else is different. They want to come to America. The question is do they want to be American?
The answer, according to Bishop Gomez, is no. This is different.
I see the gentleman from Virginia has joined me, and I will ask him to express his observations here in just a second.
But I just want to point out that this cult of multiculturalism is truly having an impact on our society because historically public schools, we could at least rely on them. When I went to school, when my grandparents went to school here, we could rely on a public school as a place to help assimilate children into the American culture. There was a pressure to do so, first of all, of course, to learn English. That was an absolute must. Secondly, to learn about the history of this country and attach ourselves to it, which I did. That is gone. That is gone from most schools in this Nation.
According to a study of San Diego high school students in the early 1990s, after 3 years of high school, the proportion of students identifying themselves as ``American'' dropped by 50 percent from the time they came into the school. The proportion identifying themselves as hyphenated Americans had gone down by 30 percent, and the proportion of identifying themselves with a foreign nationality, overwhelmingly in this case Mexican, had gone up 52 percent.
What did we teach them? To what did we say that they should attach themselves? As immigrants or as citizens who have been here for years, whatever that citizenship concept is in anybody's mind anymore? What we taught them is there is nothing unique, nothing that they should, in fact, attach themselves to; that they should stay separate, keep their own language, keep their on special identity, separate identity.
I tell my colleagues this is the problem that the immigration policy has got to address. And I am pilloried many times certainly by the press, my opponents, because I talk about this issue. And there are always attempts to characterize my debate or my desire to debate this issue in the most nasty of terms. And the epithets that are thrown around here and at me oftentimes, we just have to accept that people wish to change the debate away from these kinds of issues that I am trying to address tonight on to the stuff of racism and xenophobia and that sort of thing.
I have watched over the years, and there are people who have been here longer than I and have done far better work than I, far more productive work in many cases, I am sure, in this particular area than I have ever been able to do, and one is the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goode), who is here tonight and I am proud to say is a friend.
I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goode).
Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Speaker, there is another issue when we talk about spending and deficits that I think is intriguing. We just passed last week the foreign operations bill. This is most often referred to as the foreign aid bill. There is an interesting aspect of this particular spending plan that really deserves our attention here, and I think we seldom ever address it.
It is this: That beyond the money that we appropriate in that bill for governments all over the world, most of them, unfortunately, corrupt, and much of the money, of course, as we know, does not get to the intended individuals that most desperately need it, but we, nonetheless, distribute moneys to countries all over the world in the form of foreign aid.
But most people I think do not understand or know that a great deal of wealth is also transferred in another way from the United States to other countries, and this is by the process of what is called remittances.
Now, ``remittances,'' that is just a term that refers to the dollars that flow from people who are working here in the United States to people who are in other countries, mostly to family members who are in other countries.
I was in Mexico not too long ago speaking to a gentleman who was the head of a newly created ministry down there called the Ministry for Mexicans living in the United States. I think it has changed its name, but that is what it was originally. But Mr. Hernandez, the minister, was telling me that part of the responsibilities he had as a minister of this particular agency was to make sure that the movement, the flow of Mexican nationals into the United States, was maintained, and, in fact, increased.
That was such an odd thing, in a way. When I asked why in the world would a government agency be set up to increase the flow of their nationals to another country, he said, ``Well, it is actually kind of simple.'' He said, ``There are actually several reasons, but they are all beneficial to Mexico, and you can see why we would be doing this.''
He said that the number of people between the ages of 18 and 25, Mexican citizens, that particular demographic profile, the number of people in that profile had doubled in 10 years, and he said the unemployment rate for that same group is about 40 percent.
So on the remittance issue, he said the people coming into the country were in desperate need of a job, and what would happen when they get here, they get employed, and then they send money back home, in this case to Mexico. That was 2 years ago, and that amounted to $13 billion. $13 billion.
Now, you say, well, so what? That is a significant portion of the GDP of Mexico, as a matter of fact. Mr. Hernandez referenced it. He said this was an important thing, to have the money be sent back. It actually now approximates the greatest amount of foreign investment in the country of Mexico.
Remittances. Far in excess of any sort of investment by any other corporation in the world; far in excess of the money that goes into Mexico from tourism. It is the highest source of foreign investment they have, except for PEMEX, the government-owned oil company.
``Therefore,'' he said, ``it is important for us to have this continual flow.'' He went on to explain there were other important things. He said, ``You know, the more Mexican nationals we have living in the United States, the more your government will be influenced in a positive way to treat Mexico.''
Finally, he said, when I told him I thought these things were incredible in a way, that any government would be set up for the purpose of trying to actually influence our policy vis-a-vis their government by exporting people
into our country, he said, ``Congressman,'' he said this in a relatively condescending way, he said, ``Congressman, it is not two countries. It is just a region. It is not two countries.''
Interestingly, Vincente Fox was here just a couple of weeks ago in the United States campaigning. The President of Mexico was in the United States of America, in Illinois, in Michigan and in Wisconsin, campaigning, talking to Mexican nationals living here, trying to get them to vote, and also promising them, by the way, that he would defend their rights in the United States, asking them to vote in the election in Mexico, saying that they will pass legislation to allow them to do so, because they wanted them to remain connected to Mexico.
That gets us back to this issue we talked about earlier, about whether or not people come to the United States because they want to be in the United States, or because they want to be Americans. Two different things. In this case he is saying, ``I want you to come to America; I just do not want you to become Americans. I want you to stay connected to Mexico.''
He is not the only person, and that is not the only country. The countries in the world, there are now seven or eight countries that have actually over 10 percent of their gross domestic product as a result of the remittances coming from the United States.
Now, I suggest that we ought to reduce our foreign aid to every single one of those countries by the amount of remittances that are going there. Actually, the remittances are a better way of getting foreign aid to them, because it actually is going to people and not the corrupt governments.
I have written the committee. I have written the gentleman from Arizona (Chairman Kolbe) and asked him to consider this in the creation of the bill. He chose not to. But I suggest to you there is no reason we should not at least count this into the amount of money that we do in fact provide for foreign aid.
The reason I think we should do this is because we have to, I think, begin to eliminate the allure of the remittances to other countries, because as they begin to depend more and more on the United States and their nationals working here to send money back home, then they press us more and more for open borders and for reduction in any sort of obstacles that might be placed in the path of immigration into the country, legally or illegally.
Then we see the Mexican consulates and the Guatemalan consulates, 15 countries that are now handing out these matricula consular cards, these cards to their nationals living in the United States, for the purposes of, again, making it easier and simpler for them to live here, and make money and, of course, send it home.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I am certainly proud that he is a friend and has become, and has been for a long time, not become, but has been a major and important voice for reason on this particular issue.
Stay tuned. Stay tuned.
Mr. Speaker, I will end this Special Order with just this last reference. It is to one thing that was written in a book called ``Who Are We?'' By Samuel Huntington. This has become I think one of the most important books written, and it just came out actually in May, but it is a fascinating analysis of this whole issue we are talking about in terms of trying to understand the merging of multiculturalism, this sort of cult of multiculturalism and the issue of massive immigration and the erosion of the concept of citizenship.
Samuel Huntington puts it this way: ``The erosion of the difference between citizens and aliens, the overall declining rates of naturalization, and the naturalization spike of the mid 1990s, all suggest the central importance of material government benefits for immigrant decisions. Immigrants become citizens not because they are attracted to America's culture and creed, but because they are attracted by government social welfare and affirmative action programs. If these are available to noncitizens, the incentive for citizenship fades. Citizenship is becoming, in Peter Spiro's phrase, one more generally available `Federal social benefit.'. If, however, citizenship is not necessary to get the benefits, it is superfluous. As Peter Schuck and Rogers Smith argue, it `is welfare state' membership, not citizenship, that increasingly counts. Membership in the welfare state, in contrast to membership in the political community, is of crucial and growing significance; for some, who are wholly dependent upon public benefits, it may be literally a matter of life and death.''
It is citizenship, it is the concept of a nation State that we are today debating. Whether or not its existence can be assured, certainly we do not know, but I can guarantee my colleagues this, that the threats to its existence are great and are exacerbated by the cult of multiculturalism and unrestrained immigration.