Glenn Grothman

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Related to the border, speaking of numbers, every year we come out with new numbers of the number of people who die of drug overdoses in this country, and that is something that has been underpublicized. When I first got this job 7 years ago, about 57,000 people died every year of drug overdoses. We are now at 107,000. Twice as many people die of drug overdoses every year as died in 12 years in Vietnam. That is another story that should be banner headlines, and every newspaper reporter in this country or cable news reporter ought to be asking politicians: What are you going to do? Why is Congress not doing something to save the 107,000 lives a year? It is a huge national problem. And, again, I don't like to talk about race, but if you look at the last 4 years, particularly the number of Black men who die of drug overdoses is just going through the roof. I mean, normally we are always, particularly the Democratic Party, are always so eager to point out if there is a difference in statistics from one race to the other. Here there is a significant difference. They don't even talk about it. I am not sure what causes it. Normally they would attribute prejudice. I don't think that is it. I think to a certain extent it is police being less active than they have in the past, the judicial system not putting drug dealers in prison because we are all antiprison right now. But in any event, when you have 107,000 people die every year, isn't it something we ought to be talking about, both in this Chamber and on the nightly news? Spending in Congress

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, the next issue we should be talking about more is the overall level of spending that is going on in this institution. I think it was very predicted when the first bills passed when President Biden took office--and then we had the infrastructure bill; between those two bills we are looking at, I believe, over $3 trillion--that it would lead to inflation. But, again, the press corps, maybe because the press corps doesn't like to talk about numbers, does not like to talk about the size of the increase in spending. Now, it is a lot easier to break an economy than it is to put it back together. Since the inflation was caused by excessive spending, I think the only way to get a handle on things is to not spend so much. We will, this week, be voting on a variety of bills to fund the government, beginning October 1. I have not seen the press corps report what I think is enough on the size of the increase in those bills. It would seem to me we should go back to the days of sequester where routinely you were seeing these bills go up by 0 percent, 1 percent, 2 percent. What do we have in the bills we are going to vote on this week? We have a transportation and housing bill, up 12 percent. We have an agriculture and rural development bill up 8 percent. We have an energy and water bill up 6.4 percent. Financial services up 17 percent. Interior and the environment, up 18 percent. Military construction and VA up 18 percent. Again and again, what we are seeing here is just fiscal irresponsibility. It is just throwing more gasoline on the fire of inflation. I think the press corps, if they were responsible, should be asking Congress whether these numbers could be closer to 1 or 2 percent, which is where we should work toward. I think, quite frankly, Republicans during appropriations should be coming forth and saying that we would like to see these numbers at 1 or 2 percent. If we are ever going to get our economy back, we can't continue down this path of excessive spending or the amount of inflation is just going to continue to go up and up. The final spending vote we had today was on the National Park Foundation. I love the national parks. It wasn't a huge spending bill by the standards of what we do around here, but it was a 300 percent increase. Almost everybody in this body voted for it because who wants to be against the national parks. Think about that, a 300 percent increase. I hope the press corps wakes up a little and decides to report on the individual lines of these budgets, how much the spending is going up line by line and the overall increases in spending in each of the packages. I will deal with one more issue here tonight that I think ought to be covered constantly but is covered nowhere near as much. I think so many of the problems that we deal with in society, or at least the people back home feel are part of the problem, are caused by the breakdown of the family. I think America used to have very strong families in the forties, fifties, and early sixties. The breakup in the family did not just happen. It happened because we began with a welfare system in the 1960s that, quite frankly, put nonnuclear families in a position that sometimes was better off than a married couple, depending upon their situation. In any event, we went from a situation in which the people born without a mom and dad at home rocketed up between the early sixties to about 40 percent, went down a little, and has gone back up to 40 percent since the welfare reform of the 1990s. I find a lot of people in my age bracket think it is going to be very tough for the next generation, and when they talk about being tough on the next generation, above all, they talk about the breakdown of the family. I have pointed out before that Black Lives Matter--an organization that people should run from but apparently has been embraced by too many people in the majority party and some people in the minority party--originally came out saying they wanted to disrupt the traditional nuclear family. I would be very concerned when an organization that claims on their website that they want to disrupt the traditional nuclear family is received positively around here. I know some people will say that Black Lives Matter is a diffuse organization, and just because the founders say they want to disrupt the nuclear family doesn't mean every segment of Black Lives Matter wants to disrupt the nuclear family. But I would feel better if more people came down to the well and boldly said: I am in favor of strengthening the nuclear family; I don't care if I happen to have my picture taken next to Black Lives Matter. I haven't seen that happen. You might say, what is the nature of the marriage penalty? I will tell you where to begin to look. I would look at some of my local administrators of low-income housing. I think particularly 42 housing, which is newer housing, is frequently superior to other housing. I would ask people about that in your neighborhoods, my colleagues, and see what type of incentives we have when we have new housing, new apartments going up, some of them quite lavish, better than the old apartments that other people have to rent. Is that a good or bad thing? I would ask the clerks in grocery stores, as far as the expensive food that people are buying, if they are more being provided for by the government than provided for within the family. I would ask tax accountants about the earned income tax credit and some of the perverse incentives that are involved in the earned income tax credit. I would also ask the tax accountants what people are doing with the earned income tax credits when they get that $6,000, $7,000, or $9,000 check once a year. I think when we get done asking these questions, we can ask ourselves if we want to continue programs that prevent children from having both parents, particularly a dad, at home. I think there are so many problems in our society that would, to a certain extent, be improved if only we got back to what we would call old-fashioned, traditional family values. In any event, those are some of the issues that I think the press corps ought to be covering but aren't covering and some of the issues that I think our body ought to be addressing that we are not addressing. Mr. Speaker, I thank the wonderful staff for being here so late, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I will talk about a variety of issues tonight. I will start one more time. I direct this talk not only to the Chair, not only to my colleagues in the legislature, but also the press corps that normally doesn't cover this because I think I am going to touch on some stories that ought to appear in the press corps but for whatever reason they don't. The first thing, and I have addressed it several times from this microphone, is what is our goal in Ukraine, okay? It would seem to me a good goal would be to end the war. We have a lot of Ukrainian troops who have died; we have a lot of Russian troops who have died; we have a lot of Ukrainian civilians who have died; and it seems to me that every week or month that the war goes by, those numbers get greater and greater. Not only that, but particularly Russia is also a country with access to horrific weapons, and every week or month that goes by, the chances that eventually some horrific weapons will have to be used goes up. I will also point out with regard to these two countries, not that losing any young life isn't a tragedy, but it would seem to me there would be special tragedies in these countries because both countries have low birth rates and declining numbers of young people. For two countries that have been around--I believe Ukraine has been--for millennia, we would kind of like to see these countries continue to exist into the future. Of sizable countries around the world, Ukraine has the second lowest birthrate, trailing only South Korea. There are also people who emigrate from Ukraine. In any event, I would think one of the primary goals of Ukraine is to make sure that they hang onto the young people they have left. Russia is in a similar situation. They also have a low birthrate. I repeated this story about 7 months ago before this war began. I was at the San Diego sector of our southern border, and San Diego is only one tiny sector of a large border, and it was only talking about the week or month that I was there, but in any event, at that time, the second biggest nationality crossing our border came from Russia, which kind of surprised me. So not only do they have a low birthrate in Russia, we have a lot of people emigrating. It would seem to me a primary goal of the governments of both Russia and Ukraine is to make sure the few young people they have left don't die in a war. Now, I do not know what President Biden's goal here is in this war. I try to talk to some Democrat colleagues; I try to talk to people who should know President Biden. I think he himself may be a little bit mixed on the situation, but the press corps ought to be calling upon him and saying: What is your goal in this war? Is our goal to end the war and perhaps give President Putin an off-ramp; give Mr. Zelenskyy an off-ramp; find a way for both to declare some sort of victory and stop the carnage? Or is our goal to continue on for another 6 months or year or 2 years, and we don't care if another 5,000 or 10,000 or 15,000 Russian or 15,000 Ukrainian troops die; not to mention the monetary damages that take place when you have a war in your country? I would like to know where President Biden stands on this. We collectively have not had a decent briefing for congressional Members since March 31. And given that we have been asked to give tens of millions of dollars to Ukraine--this week we were asked to affirm or accede in the policy of adding Sweden and Finland to NATO--I don't think it is too much to ask that the administration invite its key Cabinet members over here, as they did in February and March, and let us know where the Biden administration stands on this war. I don't think we have such a great relationship right now with Russia that we can moderate a conclusion to the war, but I think perhaps Israel, perhaps Turkey, perhaps some other country should do that, and perhaps we could grease the skids a little bit. I mean, I realize back home right now everybody is focusing on inflation, but I will tell you if something bad happens in Ukraine, people are going to be focusing on that very, very quickly. It would be a lot better if we wrapped up this war. I know there are hard feelings that will probably last for generations, but nevertheless I think the United States had very good relations with Russia only a few months ago. It would be good if we were able to wrap up this war, and it would be good if President Biden, if it was clear that we knew that his administration was working his way toward that. So, again, I ask the press corps to kind of lean in a little bit on President Biden, find out where he is. I ask my Democratic colleagues in particular, insofar as they have access to the administration, to point out that it would be good to end this war, good to find countries that would mediate ending this war, and insofar as people on that side of the aisle get to see President Biden, carry that message to him. Vitamin D and COVID

Mr. GROTHMAN. Another topic that I have addressed before from this microphone but haven't talked about for a couple months, so I am going to bring up again is that of vitamin D. People know I have talked about it before, but it bothers me that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis has not really addressed this issue. The most recent study that came out was that done by an Israeli researcher, and in that study, it indicated that if you had inadequate amounts of vitamin D, which I believe he described as 20 nanograms per milliliter, that you were 11 times more likely to die of COVID than if you had adequate amounts. If you break it down by race--and I don't like it when we break things out by race, but I am going to do it for these purposes--it is even scarier in that studies show that 35 percent of the White population is inadequate in vitamin D, 57 percent Hispanic, and 85 percent Black, which means having an adequate amount of vitamin D in your system should be a huge priority for people of color. I think the COVID committee ought to have a hearing solely on vitamin D. We ought to find out, given the trillions of dollars we have thrown at COVID and billions of dollars we have thrown at trying to solve this problem, why the public health establishment has not talked about vitamin D like they should. They may say we don't know whether this is a matter of causation or a matter of correlation, but if that is so, we should certainly be doing more studies on this matter, because I think it is possible that hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved if we began to promote vitamin D when it appeared to be the cure, as it appeared before the vaccines were even invented. Nevertheless, to this day, it is not discussed. The next question that the committee ought to look at is why are we not routinely testing people who are at risk for vitamin D deficiency? I would think anytime anybody over 65 went to a doctor today, they should be tested for vitamin D. Now, some people say you can take vitamin D without getting a test, which is true, but my personal experience in telling people about vitamin D is if they take a test right now, say the low level of adequate is about 20 nanograms per milliliter, if somebody goes and takes a test and they wind up being a 12 or 8 or 7, they immediately go out and take vitamin D because they have the result of the test that says you have got big trouble coming if you don't take more vitamin D. Having the test specific to that individual is much more relevant than just a doctor saying it wouldn't be a bad idea to take vitamin D. I do believe we would save a lot of lives if that was done. As I understand it, you can get an online vitamin D test for about $40, so it shouldn't be a cost-prohibitive thing. Given the trillions of dollars we put at it, we should even be paying for the test. But if we don't, individuals should be encouraged at getting those tests. I do believe vitamin D is good for other things. It is good for bone health, another reason why people should be taking it. There is really no downside. Again, people back home that I know or even experts in the field begin to wonder if the reason we don't push vitamin D is because you can pay $20 for a bottle from Walgreens or CVS and there is not a lot of money to be made, and they seem to be more in favor of trying antidotes that will make money for somebody--there have been billionaires made on this disease--rather than focusing on vitamin D. I really beg the committee to look into it a little bit more, get some experts there. Even though this pandemic seems to be on the downside, hopefully we will be ready for a different sort of pandemic in the future. So I encourage the COVID committee to spend a little time looking at vitamin D because they could have cut the number of people who died maybe in half. Crisis at the Southern Border

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, the next issue that maybe has bored the press by now, but they shouldn't stop reporting on it, is what is going on on the southern border. We recently got the estimated number of migrants remaining in the interior who crossed the southern border for June. The good news is it is down a little bit from May and April, and it is expected to be down because June is such a hot month, fewer people cross our border. But if you look at June of this year, about 142,000 migrants remained in the interior. Of those 142,000, 50,000 are what they call got-aways, which means the Border Patrol didn't even touch them. We didn't even have a perfunctory interview with them. They just came across the border, which should be particularly scary. What I want to point out, though, is that almost 150,000 from this June is compared to 79,000 last June. So we have gone from 79,000, which was a crisis at the time, to 142,000. Two Junes ago, under another administration, we were around 9,000. So when we go from 9,000 people a month to 79,000 people a month to 142,000 people a month, that should be a banner headline in every newspaper around the country. Now, I know the newspapers don't like to do anything that would make the current administration look bad, but there is a reason why people don't subscribe to newspapers anymore or don't listen to the news at night, and that is they caught onto the idea that you are not going to be well informed if you read the local newspaper or turn on the news at night. Again, I will repeat those numbers: 9,000 people in June of 2020 migrants crossing the border. We go from 9,000 to 79,000 to 142,000. Massive increases. In addition to that, as we know, almost all these people who cross the border paid $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000 to the Mexican drug cartels. I have been at the border about eight times. Every time I am down there, the Border Patrol tells me they think the Mexican drug cartels are making more money letting people across the border than they are selling drugs. This brings another thing which hasn't been brought up enough, our poor neighbor to the south, Mexico, is right now in very, very bad shape due to the strength of the drug cartels, and part of that is our inability to close our border. We are making the Mexican drug cartels wealthier and wealthier and wealthier with all their crime, with all their corruption. I think the United States, just as we refuse to enforce our border, we refuse to stop taking illegal drugs crossing the southern border, and as a result we are making Mexico a complete mess. I beg my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to express some interest in the flood of people coming here. I beg our newspapers to begin to report these monthly numbers with the banner headlines that they deserve so America can know what is really going on here. Drug Overdoses in America

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Chair, I have seven amendments in the en bloc, and I will talk on two issues, in general, that cover, I think, all of the amendments. The first thing is an overall concern of spending. It is a lot easier to break an economy than to fix an economy. And the American Rescue Plan and the very high-spending infrastructure bill--between them, spending over $3 trillion--I think is the primary reason for the huge inflation we are having to deal with today. Look at these underlying bills--the T-HUD bill, up 12 percent; financial services--in general government up 17 percent--these programs have to be held at an even or slight decrease level for years to make up for the damage that was done with those two big bills. I am not going to say there wasn't damage done before that. I think a little bit of the COVID bills that were originally signed by the prior President were not exactly the most frugal things either, but everybody knew at the time this was a problem. And my amendments are along the lines of not destroying programs, not taking out programs altogether, but going back to the amount that was spent last year, or the amount that was spent in President Obama's final year. I sometimes use President Obama's final year to show that I am not being reckless here, but what I am saying is, there ought to be a little bit of restraint in the Committee on Appropriations and a little bit of restraint of the new bills coming out. A couple of my amendments also address this obsession with hiring bureaucrats to enforce diversity. America is supposed to be a country in which we view ourselves as individuals. There are people who, I think, want to destroy America, and try to set one group against the other group. When I look in my district, I know a lot of people who are Hmong. I recently got to know a lot of people from India. I know people from Russia. They have had no problem succeeding in America. And they all tell me the same thing: The easiest place in the world to succeed is America. But there are people who try to divide us and set up programs in which you say, I am not going to succeed because of who I am. I want to succeed as a group of people determined by where my ancestors were born three or five or ten generations ago. Not only are these programs, first of all, a waste of money. We have to have some people administer the programs, we have nowhere near enough people to work in American business as it is. Secondly, they are designed to train people that what goes on in Washington is a fight or a contest between ethnic groups--that is a cancerous way to think. The fact that so many immigrants come here without even being able to speak English and succeed, wildly show it as a lie. I am trying to reduce funding or get rid of funding all together for some of these programs.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, in the midst of all the talking about the love affair the Democratic Party has for abortion and talking about Ukraine and making another vote there, I am afraid the press isn't going to pick up on the numbers that have just been released for border crossings of illegal immigrants or people we have not appropriately vetted for June of 2022. It is a hot month in Mexico and a hot month on the border, so the numbers are not as great as the prior month, but compared to past Junes, we have once again set a record, and nothing is being done about it. If you look at two Junes ago, June 2020, a total of about 11,000 people were allowed in this country. Last June, we shot up from 11,000 to 79,000, and this year we are at 142,000. Madam Speaker, that is 142,000 in one month; once again, a record in June of the number of people crossing the border, and all this body can talk about is Ukraine and abortion. It is time to talk a little bit about the future of the country and ask what the Biden administration is doing to stop this invasion.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I would like to address the current situation in Ukraine. Obviously, everyday people in Ukraine and Russia are dying, and I am concerned that the current administration has no particular plan, or at least we are not told of any plan or goal, as to where we want to wind up. Ukraine has the second lowest birthrate of any country in a country of that size in the world. It is lower than all but South Korea. Russia also has a very low birthrate. Even before the war, a lot of Russians were leaving Russia, at least subjectively from what I have seen when I toured the southern border of the United States. The combination of immigration and low birthrate means that the primary goal of the leaders of both these countries should be to make sure we get the number of Russians and Ukrainians up, not going the opposite direction. In any event, I do not know. We have not met collectively since March to have a briefing for all the legislators as to what the opinions of the Biden administration are. So I am going to ask the press maybe to ask a few questions to find out whether they are working with anybody to try to reach some sort of end to this war or if they don't care if it goes on for another 6 months.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, our country was sent on a journey a week ago to see how we would respond to the Dobbs decision. This decision challenges all Americans to decide where they will stand on the abortion issue. It is particularly a challenge to the churches of this country who are supposed to provide moral guidance to the country as to where to stand. These are decisions that will have to be made by the citizens, in part, when they vote. Decisions have to be made by State legislators, district attorneys as to whether they are going to uphold pro-life laws, and perhaps, most important of all, individual decisions that are going to have to be made by women or families who are in a situation in which some people are going to try to persuade them to have an abortion. It is interesting when we talk about this to remember that in 1973, as far as I can determine, no State between California on the West Coast and New York on the East Coast had entirely open-ended pro- abortion laws. Nevertheless, at a time where we didn't really have ultrasounds, every other State ruled that something barbaric was going on. You just heard other statistics--we know at 6 weeks a child has a heartbeat; 7 weeks, feels pain; 10 weeks, jumps if startled, and has fingers and toes; 15 weeks, sense of taste. Obviously, anybody who says: What would God want us to do in this situation realizes a human being has been created by God, and that human being should be cherished and kept alive. It was, again, apparently the clergy in 1973, or society as a whole, did a good job of informing people that something so horrific was happening in abortion that it should be barred and made illegal. Since that time, the clergy of this country and the churches of this country have had 49 years to weigh in with the public and guide them as to how they should think. We are soon going to find out what a good job they did or a bad job they did. In any event, we thank the Supreme Court for reaching the right decision. Now we put the ball in the court of Americans as a whole, whether they will respond, recognizing the precious lives that we have to protect in America, or if they are going down the shoot toward more of an atheistic view of the world, similar to countries like North Korea, Red China, countries in which atheism is part of their roots. The challenge is yours, America--the challenge to the churches.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, first of all, just so you all know, you don't have to worry about waiting 30 minutes. It is not going to be that long. I would like to talk about some issues tonight that I don't feel have been adequately addressed in this forum. The press--not the people back home, but the press--keeps trying to make a big deal out of January 6. When I go home, as I am sure for all of my colleagues who go home, 80 percent of the comments deal with inflation, insofar as other things are being dealt with. It is not January 6. Nevertheless, there is something that bothers me. Since we are apparently going to have these hearings on January 6, everything ought to be able to come out. If I was on that committee, the first thing I would ask is for all the video from the Capitol that day to be released. It seems to me if people genuinely want to know what is going on, that is where I would start. Therefore, on last October 5, myself, Congressman Norman, and Congressman Gohmert asked for all the video from the Capitol to be released that day. It doesn't seem that much of a difficult request. There were many people still being held in jail, and the press kept trying to rile up the population and let them believe something horrible had happened. I received inquiries from both Republican and Democrat constituents who felt it would be a good idea if we released the video of what was going on that day. It would be helpful if Congresswoman Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger also weighed in, saying all that video should be released. But for whatever reason, it hasn't been released. One more time, Congressmen Norman, Gohmert, and myself have had to make a request of the Justice Department to release these videos. It is getting to the point where no longer is it just an innocent inquiry because a few people asked for it. People are beginning to think that the Justice Department must be hiding something. One more time, we make the request. The request should be made by the Capitol press corps. There was a time when press in this country, one of their goals was to get behind the curtain in front of government and expose what was really going on, and both conservative and liberal journalists would have quickly asked for these videos. For whatever reason, they haven't asked for them. I, again, ask the Department of Justice to release them. But above all, because I don't think the Justice Department apparently cares what Congressmen Norman, Gohmert, or Grothman say, the press in this country that seems obsessed with January 6 ought to demand that the Justice Department release these videos. After all, it has been 16 months, 17 months, after this took place. It has been 18 months after this took place. It is high time we found out what was going on there. Every day that goes forward in which the video is not released, I think the American public, the small amount that is paying attention, is going to be more convinced that somebody is hiding something. Now, I don't want to accuse anybody of anything. I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but my constituents are wondering, when I write that letter, why we are sitting on the video. If it is so important to find out what really went on that day, please, Department of Justice, release the hidden videos and, please, comatose American press corps, ask that the videos be released. I have spoken from this microphone many times this biennium about a tilt toward the totalitarian sort of government that we see going on. And by totalitarian, I mean the worst type of totalitarian, a Marxist totalitarian government. We see a variety of danger signs on the horizon. We began this session with people being sworn in who, in order to get elected, got help from Black Lives Matter, a group whose founders made no bones about the fact that they were Marxist and made no bones about the fact that they were against the traditional American family, what they described as the Western nuclear family. We have then seen online media giants suppress free speech. Now, I suppose you could say they are private companies, and I suppose you could say it is their right to suppress free speech or prevent you from googling something, from getting a cross section of views that are out there. Nevertheless, we know, as a practical matter, they have almost a monopoly in this country, and it is concerning that these companies that have, as a practical matter, monopolies have decided to suppress certain speech. They certainly have the heart of a totalitarian atheist. The next thing we look at is a growing percentage of the gross national product no longer being spent by the people who earn the money but being spent by the government, by the politicians in Washington. That is another danger sign. We see a President openly talking about taking away the freedom to defend yourself. He wants the only guns to be owned by government employees. He didn't want the right of defense to rest with the individual. This would be another trait of a government very different from that which our forefathers anticipated. We saw an effort made to have our government deny visas or deny property to foreigners if they engaged in suppression of human rights. But the human rights that we know the Biden administration meant were not fear of murder or robbery or something. The human rights were aimed at the field of pro-life, so that politicians or other people abroad who fought for pro-life issues, or issues with regard to so-called gay rights, if you weren't on the right side, the Biden administration wanted to threaten foreign officials with taking away the right for a visa in this country, taking away their right to travel, as well as taking away their property in this country. Does that sound like kind of a dangerous thing? America had better wake up. We are going the wrong way. John Adams said our Constitution is made for a moral and religious people and is totally unfit for any other kind. When you listen to the things that have been going on in this country, what do you think? Aren't we headed for a very different country than the moral and religious country that is required to keep our country going? There are other things that kind of just amaze me. June is Dairy Month. Being from Wisconsin, everybody in Wisconsin knows June is Dairy Month. But for some people around Washington, they don't think primarily of Dairy Month. They call it Pride Month, and the U.S. flies the gay flag, and the Vatican, as well as many other countries around the world. Do you think our forefathers would have anticipated, particularly given all the blessings that our country has been given, that we would decide to fly our flag with, in essence, a sexual preference flag all around the world? Again, highly questionable. Then, we have another step in a very unusual direction for a country that was supposed to be a moral and religious country. We are sending out requests for grants from nonprofits around the world to promote humanism and atheism. Isn't that kind of unusual? Here we are, such a blessed country. What do we do with our money? Why, we say, does anybody around the world want to promote atheism? As recently as the 1960s in this country, only 2 percent of the people said they did not believe in God, only 2 percent in the 1960s. Look how far down we have gone. Now, we elect a government and are asking for grants to be given to organizations to promote atheism in our name. I mean, when you look at the State Department, I guess the two things that they will tell people abroad are, if you want to be like the United States, if you want to follow in its footsteps, follow the pride flag and follow atheism. Very, very disappointing. I think it is time that the clergy and the people of America wake up. I know we are just supposed to talk about inflation. Of course, inflation is bad, and, of course, this bad inflation was caused by excessive government spending. That is all true. But there are other issues that are going on out there as well, and I am very afraid, given how quickly we have gone downhill the last 40 or 20 or 10 years, where we are going to wind up in another 10 or 20 or 30 years if this sort of activity continues to come from our government in Washington. While we took our 2-week break, we hit 100 murders a year in the city of Milwaukee. If that happens in the second half of the year, we are going to wind up hitting the all-time-record number of murders in Milwaukee, a city that is directly adjacent to my district. We have to ask ourselves, what can we do to reduce the number of murders? Part of it, I have always felt, is the decline in the traditional family. We have spoken, again, from this microphone about the degree to which our welfare programs seem conditioned upon either not working or, above all, make sure if you have children, you don't have them in wedlock because if you have a two-earner household, it is very difficult to take advantage of all these grants. Mr. Speaker, this is where some of it comes from, but some of it also comes from kind of the neutering of the police corps by having irresponsible politicians calling the police, in general, racists. When you call all the police racists, which I don't think they are, you create a chilling influence. Police, particularly in big cities with high crime rates, where it may be more important they engage the citizenry than anywhere else, the police back off. When they back off, you have something that is almost unbelievable to see: a hundred murders in the first half of the year in the city of Milwaukee. By the way, I was born in the city of Milwaukee, and as recently as the early 1970s, Milwaukee had the lowest murder rate of the 20 biggest cities in the country. Milwaukee was always proud of how safe it was, and now we are kind of going the opposite way quickly. At least I believe one of the reasons is certain politicians. It has become politically expedient for them to trash the police departments, to, therefore, threaten individual police with lawsuits, resulting in police not engaging the population enough and resulting in a high number of murders. I, therefore, call upon all of our politicians to boldly speak out in favor of the police and boldly describe to the population as a whole that we do not have a racist country, which is something else that should be pointed out. In my own district, I talk to the Hmong, who came here not even knowing the language. If you talk to the Hmong, all of their children and their grandchildren are doing fantastically well, living the American Dream. I know an increasing number of people from India in my district, another example of a group that frequently came to America, didn't know the native language, and now they are living the American Dream. But for some reason--I personally believe they are trying to destroy America--politicians are out there talking about what a horrible, racist country they have. I think they do it to divide America and weaken America, but I beg them to stop doing it that way and to win elections based on issues, not on name-calling and not on teaching our young people that we have a horrible, racist country. Mr. Speaker, I guess for the benefit of all the people listening tonight, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, in the zeal to spend more money on our military, some of which is admirable, it is easy to forget that we still have a crisis at the southern border. Again and again, month after month, 160,000, 180,000 people are coming here. It should be brought to our attention because recently a horrific sexual assault of a 10-year-old made national news, and I don't believe it was anywhere near publicized enough that the assault was done by an illegal immigrant. This is what happens when we have an open border. People have to pay a horrible price for the laxness here. In addition, of course, to the sexual assault, we have the 110,000 deaths by illegal drugs in this country, and the current administration doesn't seem to care at all. It is time in this plethora of spending bills to have dramatic increases in the number of people at the border as well as to go back to the stay in Mexico policy.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I am sure every Congressman who has been back in their district for the last 2 weeks heard the same thing as the number one issue that is facing the American public right now, and that is inflation, be it gas, even more food, even more housing, again and again and again. People say: How are you going to get around that? It is simple to get around it; it is just sometimes a little more difficult. That is finally saying no to the excessive government spending around here that has forced the Federal Reserve to print dollars and decrease the value of the dollar. Within the next couple of weeks, we are going to vote on appropriation bills for the budget year beginning October 1. Let's look: Are we holding the line? Transportation and HUD, 12 percent increase; water, 7 percent increase; financial services and general government, 16 percent increase; interior, 18 percent increase; military construction and VA, 11 percent increase. Congress has not yet adapted to the new crisis.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 4176. This horrifying bill would require all Federal agencies that collect demographic data to ask Americans about their sexual orientation or gender identity; and that goes all the way to including the Census, ultimately, affecting every American. I realize the majority party will claim that you don't have to fill out this form. But we all know, as a practical matter, almost all people presented with a form will fill out the whole thing. There are very people who have the gumption or whatever to say, I refuse to fill out such and such a question. Now, honestly, this bill affects adults. And I am old enough to remember when the gay rights movement was supposed to be about, we are not going to poke around and see what people are doing in the bedroom. Now we are kind of going in the opposite direction. We are going to require everybody to talk about their sexual orientation which, by itself, is a little bit offensive. But I am also going to focus more on the fact that this bill requires--doesn't require but asks for responses from people under 18 years of age, which is just almost beyond belief. If a parent gets randomly selected to fill out the National Survey on Children's Health, Democrats want the Federal Government to ask parents to disclose if their 3-year-old son is attracted to boys or girls. That is why we should call this, steal our children's childhood act. When public schools report data to the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection, schools will ask kindergartners through 12th graders what their sexual orientation is or which gender they think they are. What exactly are you supposed to respond if you are an 8-year-old child? What are they supposed to do with this question? Johnny, here we have a question for you. And what is he going to say? I am gay because my favorite cartoon character is gay. I'm trans because I like my mother's dress. I don't know what they are supposed to do with this question, and I think it is absurd that we would ever expect anybody to ask these questions of a little child. But clearly, that is what the majority party wants. And we hear about today like people you couldn't tell what they are when they are 6 years old or 5 years old. I mean, really beyond belief. And like I said, our corrupt popular culture today, we are told people are identifying as something or other when they are 7 or 8 years old. So in any event, I think it is obvious to vote ``no'' on this bill. I don't know how, as a country, we got to a place where we are asking 7- or 8-year-olds to declare a sexual preference, but that is where we are today; and the majority party thinks it makes perfect sense. The Democrats must know this is wrong.

Mr. GROTHMAN. I guess we can about wrap this up. I want the American public, though, to stop and think where we are today. We are going to pass a bill in which 7- or 8- or 9-year-olds are supposed to declare a sexual preference. I will close by saying, the clergy of this country should ponder how we got this far and what they want to do about it.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, not a lot has been said about the conflict in Ukraine right now, but it doesn't mean we should take our eye off the ball. There is a division, I think, on elected officials between two groups, and it is important for the press to identify which one of these two groups has the upper hand, not only in Congress but in the Biden administration. Some people feel that it would be good to wrap up this war, including me. Ukraine has the second-lowest birth rate of any sizeable country in the world, and the population of Ukraine has sunk about 5 percent in the last few years. Russia also has a low birth rate and is having a lot of people leave their country. So we have two countries that should be primarily concerned about keeping the few young people they have alive rather than engaged in a war. For that reason, I would like to believe that if an off-ramp is provided for Mr. Putin then we could end the war before we have more people dying. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the press corps to weigh in a little bit and find out where the Biden administration stands on this.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, every weekend we go home, and I am about to go back to Wisconsin for a couple more weeks. When we get back home, of course, we always talk to our constituents. I would like to address my speech tonight to the issue that is most on their mind. Now, when we go back to Wisconsin in June we spend a lot of time on what they call breakfast on the farm because June is Dairy Promotion Month in Wisconsin, and with Dairy Promotion Month there are breakfasts on the farm where you have an opportunity to see so many of your constituents. When back home, I go through the number one and number two issues. The number one issue is gasoline inflation. Everybody talks about it. They talk about how it is squeezing their budget and about how they are not able to go on trips as much as they used to. They have got to cut back on the type of food that they buy. So number one would be gas inflation. I suppose number two would be food inflation because they talk about having to buy cuts of meat that aren't as good or other food products that aren't as good as they were before. I think probably number three is housing inflation. When you look for a new house now, Madam Speaker, it costs so much more than it did a year ago. I personally believe there are other issues that are as significant and perhaps in the long term more significant for America: Are we going to wrap up Ukraine? What are we going to do at our border? What are we going to do about the over 110,000 people dying of drug overdoses every year? But, obviously, in my district the number one issue is inflation, and I want to talk about how we got there. How did we get there? Any middle school C student should know that inflation is caused by excessive government spending which has to be covered by the Federal Reserve. What are President Biden's signature accomplishments? First of all, a $1.9 trillion bill called the American Rescue Plan came right out of the chute. His second biggest accomplishment was a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. These bills were in addition to a regular appropriation bill with excessive spending. What would happen was as predictable as night following day. Multiple Republicans, including myself, warned last January and February against out-of-control inflation. Larry Summers, Barack Obama's director of the National Economic Council, called this bill the worst economic policy in the last 20 years. But whatever Larry Summers said was ignored as, sadly, the majority party charged again, spending $1.9 trillion that America did not have. So now we are told we have the worst inflation in 40 years at 8.3 percent. Don't believe that 8.3 number. It is much worse than that. It always bothers me when people say that we have such a problem at 8.3 percent inflation. It is just so much more. Changes to inflation calculation over the years have grossly underestimated the real number. I am going to lead off with housing. When I look at housing, I talk to builders, I talk to landlords, and I talk to real estate brokers. Housing is listed at a 5.5 percent increase in the last year. Ask any of these people if rents or new construction have gone up only 5.5 percent in the last year, and they will laugh at you. Madam Speaker, 5.5 percent is what the government is telling people it is at. When I talk to builders, they tell me that a new house this year could cost 30 percent more than what that same house was going last year, and rents are clearly well over the 5.5 percent figure as well. But government, for whatever reason, does not use the cost of new construction. They use what they refer to as the rental value of your new house, which is a much lower number. I have a graph here showing the difference between the actual rent and the CPI rent, and you can see here, Madam Speaker, that there is about a 15 percent gap and that the actual rent has gone up about 15 percent more than the so-called CPI number which has gone up as well. So that is one of the reasons why I think Americans feel that they are in worse shape than only an 8.6 inflation. That is true. I also want to point out that these numbers are only updated once every 6 months. That is one of the problems. Although another problem we have is when they talk about the cost of housing, which usually would mean buying a house. They do not take into account the cost of interest on a mortgage, for whatever reason. In the last year, interest rates have gone up again probably because of the inflation, the interest cost on a 30-year fixed mortgage has gone up 39 percent--a 39 percent increase in interest payments on the house, assuming the cost of the house hasn't gone up at all. But is that in the equation? No. When we calculate inflation we do not take into account the massively higher interest rates that you have to pay now compared to the past. By the way, as we look at things like housing, I beg the press corps to do a little bit of research. Don't just report this 8.3 percent number. You have the ability to talk to the brokers, to talk to the grocers, and to talk to the car dealers and find out what an appropriate number is. Back in the good old days when reporters were a little bit harder working, they would have done their own research and found out what the real inflation rate is. Now, the next thing I am going to look at is used cars. On the official numbers they claim that used cars or the cost of having a used car has gone up about 16 percent. I have talked to a variety of car dealers from various different places in my diverse district. Everybody laughs at the idea that used cars have only gone up 16.1 percent. They all insist 30 percent on minimum. So here is another number that is thrown out to calculate that 8.6 number the government claims, and they are just way off on the cost of a new car. If you buy a new car, Madam Speaker, of course, interest rates are going up as well which further increases things. In any event, the point I am trying to make is that the amount of inflation is well over that 8.6 percent. It is certainly double digits over that when you talk about housing and double digits over that when you talk about used cars. Subjectively talking to people who do the grocery shopping for the family, they believe that when they go through the checkout their costs are up way more than a few percentage points and the 10 percentage points that the Federal Government claims food at home has gone up the last year. I beg the American people to demand action on inflation. I am trying to educate the American people that that action will inevitably have to mean undoing the out-of-control spending that took place around here in January or February. As we do it, we are going to have to reduce the amount of government. But I don't think we can go on with these housing prices and these car prices for the rest of our lives. Madam Speaker, we want to get back to the days in which a young couple had a chance of affording a house. We want to go back to the days when you can eat like Americans are used to eating, not where you have to deal with inferior foods just because you can't afford it anymore. We want to go back to the days in which you can buy the type of car that you would like to buy. So I encourage my colleagues this year, if possible, but if not then next year--maybe we are going to have to wait 3 years for some of this--we have got to get the spending back down where it was when you could live life in America like Americans are used to. I beg the other side, when it comes to passing the new budget and preparing for the appropriation bills that are going to pass for the calendar year beginning October 1, let's stop spending so much money.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Now buy that cheese. Remember that June is Dairy Month.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, this is directed to the press as much as to the Chair and whoever is listening at home. Everybody knows we have a lot of inflation. We are supposed to repeat again and again that inflation was at 8.6 percent in May, which is the highest it has been in 40 years. The press should report that there is no way inflation is only 8.6 percent. Housing is listed as going up 5.5 percent. Have you talked to any landlords? Have you talked to any builders? There is a contorted way that you arrive at that 5.5 percent. That number should be more like 15 to 20 to 25 percent. Talk to some car dealers. See if they think the cost of used cars has gone up only 16.1 percent in the last year. That number should be 30 percent. We should not let the administration get away with such low numbers. I call upon the American press to do a little bit of research for once and tell us what the real cost of living has gone up in this country over the last year. It is way more than 8.6 percent.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I would like to comment on the recent developments regarding those brave Border Patrol officers who used their reins to prevent people sneaking into a country illegally, prevent them from getting stomped under their horses' hooves. I have been to the border several times. Uniformly, all the Border Patrol felt those people behaved appropriately, and I think continuous studies have shown they behaved appropriately. But sadly, President Biden has decided to pick them out for punishment. It reminds me when he calls the police of this country racist--both completely unfounded. He only does it, I think, to divide our country, create divisions here. I would demand that President Biden apologize to the brave Border Patrol, those great guys or gals who, on that day, prevented the Haitians trying to slip into this country from getting stomped underfoot. I would also like him to apologize to the police of this country who are not racist and are doing a great job to try to hold down our murder rate.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I want to give a story to my good friends in the press corps because they always feel they have a shortage of interesting things in the paper. This concerns the excessive inflation we have under the current administration. The current administration claims that inflation last year was 8.6 percent. I am going to focus on two different parts of that, one is 5.5 percent for housing and 16.1 percent for used cars. I ask the press corps to call some local builders or builders anywhere around the country--builders, landlords, and assessors--and see if you can find anybody who thinks the cost of housing has only gone up by 5.5 percent in the past year. My goodness, the cost of interest by itself has almost doubled in that time. The cost of many parts of a house has gone up. There is no way that it is only 5.5 percent. I think if you look around and ask builders and Realtors, they will laugh at that number. I would also ask you to call some car dealers around the country and see what they think about the idea that used cars have gone up 16.1 percent in the last year. They, as well, laugh at that. The number has to be significantly higher. So there is a gift to my friends in the news business.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, we will talk a little bit about the border again and what I think is kind of an inappropriate way to handle some recent events that happened down there. First of all, we have got to give the backdrop, right. We are all familiar with the most recent statistics available. For April of 2022, 184,000 people crossed in the country that were not appropriately vetted and we do not particularly want here. A year ago, that 184,000 number was at 66,000. Two years ago, under the prior administration, it was 5,700. So, first of all, the American public should kind of let that sink in: 5,700 a month to 66,000 a month to 184,000 a month. Horrific. Part of monitoring the border is showing respect for the Border Patrol. I have been on the border eight times over the last 2 years, and I think they are the most professional of law enforcement agencies I have run into. Last September, when potential Haitian immigrants tried to cross the Rio Grande and get up on shore, agents on horses used reins to protect the Haitians from the horses' hooves. Every agent I have talked to felt this was an entirely appropriate way to protect the Haitians who were trying to come into our country. But President Biden, the new expert on horsemanship, felt that the new immigrants were strapped, whatever that meant, and said that they would have to pay. Now, the Department of Homeland Security claims that the Border Patrol agents should be disciplined for protecting the Haitians from the horses' hooves. Since then, President Biden's budget, the last budget which he signed, the last appropriation bill, provided millions of dollars for monitoring and disciplining the Border Patrol. This is kind of a mental problem we have seen before in Washington. It reminds me when we had record murders in our big cities, and Washington responded by saying that we had to pass a bill making it easier to sue the police. In other words, all these people dying, records in the last 2 years in Milwaukee--which is adjacent to my district, and they think the problem is the police. In any event, that is what the Biden administration did. They claimed the police were racist, making it easier to sue police. Obviously, that is inappropriate. The other thing I think is inappropriate is we hired a new Border Patrol head who used to be a police chief. When he was a police chief, he wouldn't cooperate with ICE when they had problems with people who they were trying to deport or people who were here illegally. I mean, can you imagine what type of effect that has on the Border Patrol agents when the person who is supposed to be the boss doesn't seem to be on board with the underlying mission? I believe he also had a problem in which he was accused of some harassment in his prior job. Now, we have got to hire some more Border Patrol agents here, and the way to do it is to not have the administration treat these brave, honorable people inappropriately. So I call upon Congress to try to weigh in with the President. If you have taken a trip down to the border, tell him how great the Border Patrol agents are. Make that an attractive job because we need top-flight agents to save our country from people who don't belong here and also to save our country from the sea of fentanyl that is flowing in here and that apparently is not something that concerns Congress a whole lot.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, the talk of everyone back home is over inflation. I want to give the press corps something to do. We are told the current inflation rate is 8.2 percent, the highest it has been in 40 years. I believe the number is higher than that. They claim that the cost of rent or the cost to buy a house has gone up 5.2 percent. I have talked to builders in which the cost of identical homes has gone up 30 percent. Interest rates have gone up from 2.5 to 4.5 percent. I know somebody who is looking to perhaps flip a house that has gone up 20 percent. I would like the press corps in this country to look for examples of housing that has only gone up 5.2 percent. The other thing I would like them to look up is used cars have gone up 16 percent. I have talked to car dealers, and they tell me the price of used cars has gone up 25 to 35 percent. So I beg the somewhat slumbering press corps to look into this and see whether our leg is being pulled by the claim that the CPI is only up 8.2 percent.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, we heard a little bit about inflation, and we are going to talk about the economy a little bit more. As has been widely reported, inflation is at a 40-year high, the worst it has been since 1981. Over 8 percent. However, I feel that we are doing a disservice to the current situation to pretend that inflation is only 8.3 percent. In the official figures they talk about housing going up 5\1/2\ percent. Does anybody think the cost of housing has only gone up 5\1/2\ percent in the last year? I know somebody who builds houses; the cost of a new house that he sells has gone up over 25 percent in the last year. We look at interest which has to be eaten by landlords or a person buying a house that has gone up from 2\1/2\ percent on a house to 4\1/ 2\ percent in a year. That doesn't sound like any 5\1/2\ percent to me. You look at, anecdotally, how much rent has gone up. You look at assessments, how much they have gone up on property taxes. In Wisconsin, I am told it is not unusual to find 10 to 20 percent increases in assessments. When politicians talk about this 8.3 figure, I think it is really a lot higher than that. There is no way the cost of housing and rentals in this country has only gone up 5\1/2\ percent in the last year. I also had the pleasure in the last few days to talk to people in the automobile industry. The official numbers say used cars have gone up 16.1 percent in the last year. Where are you going to find that? People I know in the automotive retail industry talk about used cars going up 30 or 40 percent in the last year. First of all, we ought to be honest with the American people. When we talk about inflation at 8.3 percent, it is a lot higher than that. Now, in order to correct it, we have to look at the cause. What is the cause? We can start with the American Rescue Plan, one of the first things President Biden did. Larry Summers, an economist for President Obama called it the ``least responsible'' macroeconomic policy in the last 40 years. So they had advanced warning. The expert who worked under Barack Obama told them this was going to be irresponsible, but what did they do? They charged ahead anyway, spending another $1.9 trillion the taxpayers didn't have. And not long after that we got the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Nice sounding, wasn't it? American Rescue and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. I always think it is kind of interesting the way they come up with names of irresponsible bills under here. That was another $1.2 trillion. Between these two bills--at a time where it was so important that Congress stop spending money--we hit the gas for another $3 trillion. If it weren't for our friends, the Senators from Arizona and West Virginia, they would have doubled that with a Build Back Better bill for another $4 trillion. I beg you all, please stop spending. In any event, the American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, I think, are more than anything responsible for the out-of-control inflation. I believe they are artificially holding down the numbers to only 8.3 percent. When I talk to people back home, particularly on housing, particularly on used cars, to a certain extent on food, I think those numbers are artificially low. I think it is higher than that. People say: What can we do to get things back to where they should be? We just have to work our way back from that level of irresponsibility. Right now we are working on the budget for calendar year 2023. In that budget we have a 13.5 percent increase in nondefense discretionary spending. The days of 13.5 percent increases have got to be over. That number has to be reduced to zero, and I mean zero for defense as well. We all know there are things in the defense budget that--at least rumors are--that are done more to benefit the people who are making the equipment than are actually going to be helpful in an all-out war. My suggestion is for both sides to agree that inflation is out of control. To recognize the only way to get it under control is to stop having the Fed print money and to show the rest of the world that we can contain things by committing ourselves to a zero percent increase in discretionary spending for 2023. Part of the problem here, too, by the way, is the press corps. I don't know if the press corps ever listens to us here. If the press corps wants to make a name for itself--as people with journalism degrees used to--they can do some poking around on that 8.3 percent and do their own research by talking to car dealers, by talking to people who build housing, and by talking to landlords. They can find out, is that 5.5 percent housing cost up in the last year, is that accurate, or is the government trying to pull somebody's leg? I know the answer, and it is time the press corps stops allowing people to get away with it. Madam Speaker, the second issue that I think has been underreported is what is going on in Ukraine. We last had a briefing, for Congress collectively on Ukraine, on March 30, 2022. I want to know, and I would like to request right now of the majority party another briefing, by that I mean representatives from the Department of Defense and representatives from the State Department, to see how exactly we are going to get out of this. I voted for more money for the plan because I felt that it is important for America to appear united, and in that vote, we knew it was going to pass. We know the majority party wanted a commitment to make sure that Ukraine was not short of munitions. However, I think it is important for the majority party to bring representatives of the key departments before Congress as a whole. The reason I would like to talk to them is I don't think enough has been talked about this. Are they working toward ending this war or not? We all know there are people in this building who, for whatever reason, seem to want to heighten the tensions in the war and get more American troops over there. There are the responsible people--of which I will classify myself as one--in which they want to work toward some sort of peace treaty here before things get even more out of control. We are dealing with a country, Russia, that has the ability to create economic havoc all over Western Europe, and, quite frankly, economic and human dislocations in the United States. We should be briefed to see where the administration is on this topic. These are confidential briefings. In the past, I have sometimes gotten answers I like, and sometimes I have gotten answers I don't like. It would be good if the administration would hear from Congress and see what they want. Do they want this war heightened--tensions heightened? Do they want the United States to provide troops as backup here? Do they want the administration to be working toward an end to the war? As I said before, we are dealing with two countries who have problems. Their birth rates are low. Ukraine has the second lowest birth rate of the 100 largest countries in the world. Russia's birth rate is not that high either. Both countries have people leaving their countries, sometimes to the United States and sometimes other places. In any event, I would like to make a request to the majority party that we, one more time, be briefed collectively to see what is going on. I think, by the way, that is something that our incurious press corps ought to be looking at as well. Madam Speaker, the next thing I would like to address--not one of my top 20 topics--but for the mainstream media, they feel what happened January 6, 2021, is very important. It is important. We are having a committee on it. I don't think I would rather spend my time on the committee. I would rather spend my time fighting inflation, trying to find solutions to the Ukraine problem, trying to find solutions to the border, trying to do something about the huge number of people who are dying of drug overdoses in this country. Nevertheless, it is in the news that a committee is looking into what happened on January 6. I feel it is important to put all the cards on the table, and it is important that America know exactly all we have available to determine what happened on January 6. A considerable time ago, me and two congressmen--8 months ago-- myself, Congressman Norman from South Carolina, and Congressman Gohmert from Texas wrote a letter to Merrick Garland and asked the Department of Justice to release any footage of tapes as far as what went on here that day. Unless it is going to be released, we really don't know all we should know. I am sure there are both Democrats and Republicans who would like to know all we have as far as what actually happened that day. What tapes were available because they are taking picture of us all the time from this building. To my dismay, 8 months later, the Department of Justice has still not answered our plea for these tapes. Eventually it gets beyond the idea of just we want everything to be available, people begin to think that the Department of Justice is hiding something. Madam Speaker, I will make the request verbally and eventually follow up with some sort of written document asking the Department of Justice to release all the video footage of what happened in and around this building on January 6. I think until it is released there are going to be members of the public who believe that something is being hidden that day. Right now it is part of this country's history, but I see no reason to continue this game of not allowing the American public to know what the Justice Department must already know about what happened that day. By the way, I also feel if Congresswoman Cheney wants to be a little bit of an asset on that committee because she has a bigger mouthpiece than myself, she could demand and create a little bit of a raucous on that committee and demand to see all these tapes, so we know who really was behind things and what to make of various theories that are out there. That is another issue that the press corps back in the good old days, where they liked to report on what is going on in this country, would routinely be against secrecy in government and would demand that those tapes be released. I do not know where the press corps is. They have the potential to improve this country, but they don't like to get out there and apparently inform the people. And they are not adequately skeptical of people in power. Now I will address another issue that I think the press corps ought to be picking up and the American public ought to know more about. I have addressed COVID many times. Over 1 million people have died. When COVID broke, several briefings were held for all Congressmen and others for the Oversight and Reform Committee on which I serve. I would bet in the first 3 months of the COVID crisis I must have attended five or six hearings in which I had a chance to talk to the relative experts, Anthony Fauci and others, about COVID. Then we switched to an isolated, small subcommittee where only a small fraction of the people in this Congress got a chance to ask questions. And at that time, with the rest of us left out, I think there are a lot of topics that the press should be looking into that we would have a chance to ask questions about but are not being asked. As I said, when over 1 million Americans have died, I would think the press would express an interest. I, many times before, have stood at this microphone and talked about the benefits of vitamin D, and experts beginning two Septembers ago, well before the vaccine was even released, were putting papers out there saying how much vitamin D could prevent deaths. Now people who don't like to push vitamin D will say that the studies out there only show correlation, not causation. But the same thing could be said about other things that clearly are connected with COVID deaths. Recently, Dr. Amiel Dror of Israel found that people with vitamin D levels under 20 nanograms per milliliter were 11 times more likely to die than people who weren't. Isn't that something interesting? Can you imagine, Madam Speaker, how many less people would have died if the public health establishment and the medical establishment had pushed vitamin D initially? This study is interesting and consistent with prior studies. Where is the medical establishment? Where is the public health establishment in either pushing vitamin D or apologizing for not pushing it in the past? By the way, when calculating vitamin D deficiency--which they are calculating at 20 nanograms per milliliter, not very much--84 percent-- I don't like talking about race; I don't think America is this horrible racist country that some people on the other side of the aisle claim-- but when calculating vitamin D deficiency, about 84 percent of Blacks in the country are vitamin D deficient compared to 35 percent of Whites. Blacks are 70 percent more likely to die of COVID. Every expert I have talked to believes the reason of heightened deaths in the Black community is the result of a lack of vitamin D. By the way, it is even higher among Native Americans. I do not know why the public health establishment and the politicians have not gone out of their way to share these numbers with people of color. All Americans should have been alerted to the benefit of vitamin D. All people over age 60 should have been given a vitamin D test to see if they were under that 20 nanograms threshold. I think anyone of color regardless of age should be given the test. But for whatever reason, no money was put into this, not a lot was publicized. One million Americans died. Black Americans were 70 percent more likely to die than White Americans, and nothing was done. I think that is a scandal. I think we ought to have more hearings before Congress collectively so we can have a chance to ask the public health establishment why they were dropping the ball here. I think the American press corps--which was asleep at the switch here--should have been publicizing these numbers a lot more. And the American press corps should have been out there asking questions to Anthony Fauci and the other bureaucrats as to why it was not more publicized and why didn't they specifically highlight the increased number of deaths among people of color. I personally believe if it was the other way around, they might have been a little bit more forthright in explaining what is going on and the degree to which a lack of vitamin D correlated with additional deaths from COVID. One other thing for the subcommittee to look at, if they get done talking about vitamin D, now that COVID is a lot less likely to lead to death, recently a new drug called Paxlovid was introduced. You can get a 5-day dosage of that drug, which is recommended, for $530. It is not cheap. Pfizer right now, I am told, expects to earn $27 billion dollars in sales from Paxlovid--$27 billion. That is a lot of money. They made a lot of money on other things as well on the COVID. When you are talking about making $27 billion on a drug, just a few little pills, a 5-day dosage, $530, I would think the subcommittee would want to look into that and see if there is an excessive amount of money being charged for that drug. I would think the slumbering press ought to be looking into it as well. Twenty-seven billion dollars in sales? That is what it says. So if anybody out there wants to find something to talk about rather than some of the trivial issues that dominate our newspapers, they can look into the rich and powerful one more time and see whether the payment for Paxlovid are a little bit excessive. The final topic tonight is a topic that is no secret but right now people are planning for the next session and seeing what problems in America we should address. I personally have been outspoken. I think one problem that needs immediate attention is what is going on at the border. We also have to do something to make sure that we don't wind up in a more serious war with Ukraine or a war with China. These are vitally important. But in the long run, the future of America comes down to its moral fiber. This country has since the mid 1960s strongly subsidized or strongly discriminated against the American nuclear family. We know that Karl Marx--and there are a surprising number of academics in America who are drawn to socialism--Karl Marx felt in order for socialism to exist, you had to get rid of the family. We all know that in the last election Black Lives Matter was a powerful group and that Blacks Lives Matter, the founders anyway, were opposed to the traditional American nuclear family--or as they describe it, the Western prescribed nuclear family, which is a lie by the way. We have nuclear families in countries that are not Western countries. There are nuclear families all over Latin America, sub-Sahara Africa, and Asia. But, in any event, it is apparent that powerful groups in this country want to destroy the nuclear family. And probably no policy did more to aid in the destruction of the American family than Lyndon Johnson's war on the family. I think he called it the War on Poverty, but it was really the war on the family is what it amounted to. I hope after almost 60 years or approaching 60 years after the war on the family and the huge expansion of the welfare state that this Congress would begin to address the discrimination against the traditional family. Madam Speaker, if you look at the welfare programs--whichever program that you look at, be it health insurance, be it SNAP, but be it WIC, be it the earned income tax credit--which was a very anti-marriage program which was actually initiated by a Republican--all low-income housing, daycare, TANF, Pell grants, and other provisions--program after program after program--are designed to take tax dollars from the traditional family and give it more to other families. It is no problem to help everybody, but I think when you clearly set up programs designed not to go to the nuclear family, you are discriminating against them. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, America has been through a tough time the last few weeks due to serious incidents that happened in Buffalo and in Texas. But last week, I was down at the Mexican border, and I talked to some Border Patrol guys, who, because we were Congressmen, brought up what happens when we make it as difficult as possible for law-abiding people to own guns. Right now, if you compare Mexico and the United States, Mexico has-- per capita--about five times as many murders as they do in the U.S. Not 5 percent more, not 50 percent more, five times as many. I am sure the Mexican elected officials who passed those laws making it so difficult to get a gun thought they were going to have a peaceful paradise down there. Right now, many people are running all over each other to say: Let's pass law. Let's pass this law. Let's take a look and see what happened in Mexico and whether the sole answer is more laws. Meanwhile, I have a bill making it more difficult to bring guns into schools, and right now, that bill is not moving. I think that would have a good impact.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, there are a variety of topics that I think have not been discussed enough lately but I think should be addressed on the floor. We have been gone for 2 weeks prior to reconvening this week, and in that time I took one more trip to the southern border. I took the trip to the border because other than arguably the threat of an absolute catastrophe over the Ukraine, it is easily the biggest cause for concern in this country at this time. I went down to McAllen, Texas, with 11 other Congressmen. Rather than having a trip of twelve which, as I understand, is the biggest group that has been at the border since COVID, we should have had 80 or 90 people there to see what is going on. Prior to talking about things that I saw on the trip, I will talk about the size of the problem, because the numbers tell the story. In the most recent April, we let 183,000 people in the country. Frequently, the press, for whatever reason, and some politicians, talk about the number of people who have contact with the Border Patrol. 183,000 is the number who actually came in the country. A year ago in April, that number was 66,000. And 2 years ago it was 6,000. So we have gone from 6,000 let in the country in April of 2020, April of 2021, 66,000 and, most recently, 183,000. These numbers are staggering. The press should be reporting every monthly number with banner headlines. Perhaps, because the story seems old, they get tired of reporting it. But it is a more significant story every month. Of those 183,000, about 60,000 are what we refer to as gotaways; that is, not people who checked in at the Border Patrol and got a cursory review. They are people who did not touch the Border Patrol at all. We don't know whether they were sneaking in this country with drugs. We don't know whether they had diseases. We don't know whether they have criminal background problems. We don't know. So from 6,000 to 66,000 to 183,000. Who knows what it is going to be by this time next year. Obviously, it is changing America dramatically. We do have ways to come in this country legally. We like to make sure that the future America is people who have proved themselves, law- abiding, hardworking. Here we have no idea who we are getting. I point out that one of the reasons more people are sneaking across the border is that, as we have approximately 120,000 people who check in with the Border Patrol, the Border Patrol has to spend more of their time doing paperwork and not doing what they want to do, which is guard the border. That is why we are having a much more significant number of people come here without any contact whatsoever. The Biden administration says they inherited a mess. They inherited 6,000 a month; and now we are at 183,000 a month. As far as other observations along the Rio Grande, the heartlessness of the Mexican drug cartels continues to be shown. When they want to get drugs here, because they know the Border Patrol is understaffed, what they do is they send a group of people across the river, and they know the Border Patrol will be obligated to deal with that group of people. And then they send another group of people, say, a mile or 2 miles further on down or further up river, where they know they can get across with their drugs. They also know the cartels are so brutal and heartless that they will throw a young child overboard in the Rio Grande because they know our ethical Border Patrol will save that child, rather than deal with the people who are sneaking across, perhaps sneaking across with drugs. For the first time since I have been at the border--I have been down there several times, in part, due to my subcommittee assignment, the fact that I am a ranking member. The people who showed me the Rio Grande pointed out at the bend of a river, here is where we have a lot of Chinese come across. Again, I think people are under the impression these are largely Mexican, Central American folks. I was surprised to hear from my guide that they pointed out this is the bend where we see a lot of Chinese coming across; which is, by the way, typical of what I have seen in other regions. This is people from all around the world. They also pointed out that one of the reasons so many people are coming here, they come here because the drug cartels are making money off them and advertising on social media all around the world, be it Central America, be it Brazil, be it Peru, be it India, or Pakistan, or Bangladesh, the drug cartels are making money on these folks. The further you come, the more they make per person. Maybe they are getting six or $7,000 for Mexican, maybe 9 or 10,000 for Central American, maybe 15 or $20,000 from Asia. One more time--and I repeat things up here I find almost hard to believe. But one more time, I was told by the Border Patrol that right now the Mexican drug cartels make more money smuggling people across the border than drugs, and that is really saying something. So, in addition to the other problems, we are strengthening the financial hold the drug cartels have on Mexico and, to a lesser degree, on the United States. It is not rocket science how to stop this. You stop it by going back to the migrant protection protocol in which people coming here were held in Mexico pending a hearing. When I talk about the non getaways, about 120,000 a month, these folks are let in the United States and told to show up for a hearing at some time. They rarely show up. When people are paying 10 or $15,000 to get this far, they would not come here in the first place if they were on the Mexican side of the border. People are not going to pay $15,000 to sit in Mexico and hope a hearing goes their way. So we should go back to the common sense provisions we had just a year and a half ago, and we would quickly get back down to the six or 10 or 15,000 a month, rather than the massive amount that is coming across the border. Another benefit of not having so many people cross the border, is we would decrease the number, the horrifically high number of drug overdoses we have in America. These numbers have been repeated, but it is another story that I think the press is dropping the ball on because they think because it is an old story it is not an important story. When I was elected to this job 7 years ago, about 47,000 Americans were dying every year of drug overdoses. That is now over 110,000. By comparison, 57,000 American troops died in Vietnam. Over twice as many Americans die every year from drug overdoses in this country as died in 12 years in Vietnam. The apathy of the Biden administration on these numbers and, quite frankly, the apathy from the people in this Chamber is stunning. 110,000 people are dying. Not only does that, by itself, mean we have to do a lot more at the border, we should greatly increase the penalties for people who smuggle fentanyl or sell fentanyl in this country. Think about that. 110,000 people. Think about their parents. Think about their children. Think about their siblings as, for the rest of their life, they are going to carry that death with them. And what do we get from this administration? Nothing. The border is not a priority. We don't care how much fentanyl comes here. So again, my request to this body and the request from the Biden administration, show a little bit of sympathy for the families, where the people who use these drugs die, and care a little bit about the future of America. In some years, over 800,000 people are sworn in as new citizens. Nobody complains. They have been in the country 5 or 6 years. They have proven they are not going to go on welfare. They have proven they are not going to commit crimes. I have attended their ceremonies. They make one feel very good about being an American. I don't know why we wouldn't want to have everybody come here under those circumstances, rather than this massive increase of people coming across the border. The next topic which should be discussed, and every Congressman who didn't spend the last 2 weeks in their house heard about it, is the dramatic amount of inflation that is out here. One thing that bothers me, and it bothers me about my own party, is I don't think we spend enough time talking about where the inflation came from. It came from excessive government spending and the need of the Federal Reserve to, in essence, print money to deal with that spending. I point out that this was not a surprise. I personally--I could say who am I--personally pointed out at the time the original stimulus package that President Biden signed almost immediately upon getting-- coming into office, the $1.9 trillion stimulus package, predictably caused this dramatic increase in cost of food, cost of oil, certainly, cost of housing. I remind people that Larry Summers, key economist, key economic adviser to Barack Obama, said at the time that this was the least responsible economic policy in 40 years. That is what Barack Obama's economic adviser said. But, instead, we got from the other side of the aisle, they ignored Mr. Summers' concerns. They ignored the concerns of Republicans. And upon President Biden taking office, whoosh, a new $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Soon thereafter, they added to that an over $1 trillion infrastructure bill which was bipartisan because they got a few irresponsible Republican Senators to vote for it. But, again, outside of regular budget process, these massive bills. And predictably, what happened is what Larry Summers and, quite frankly, me and many Republicans said was going to happen, dramatic increase in inflation; huge increases in the money supply; increases in the money supply even greater than what we saw in the 1970s under the Carter inflation. It is such a dangerous path we are taking. And I think, in the future, as President Biden continues to ask for more spending, and I think the level of spending he asked for in the regular budget is excessive in its own right; over 12 percent increase in nondefense spending there. It would be good if not just the Republicans, because we are in the minority, but the Democrats as well would stand up to President Biden and say no. We cannot have any more inflation. Inflation used to be known--and what it is is a regressive tax on the public. The average person spends more on gas--the average middle-class person spends more on gas than the wildly well-off person. They spend more on housing. They spend more on food. This is a policy that harms the middle class and harms the poor, quite frankly, far more than the billionaires which have such influence politically and get so involved in the last election. I know there were times where Republicans stood up to President Trump when he wanted to issue new checks on some of this COVID bills and voted ``no.'' It would be refreshing in the future if we had some Democrats stand up and say, I voted for you President Biden, but this spending was just irresponsible and out of control, and I cannot stand with you. I would love it, in the appropriation bills, if we pass--in the current fiscal year, had no increase at all. That is not a dramatic thing. They should be cut dramatically. But it would be good if both the Republicans and Democrats got together and said we are going to go back to sequester sort of increases; things that we saw under Barack Obama even, and try to hold the increases into under 1 percent, or perhaps nothing, because it is going to take quite a while to recover for the excessive COVID spending, as well as the huge stimulus package that President Biden led off with. This is not something that was a surprise. It was not something that was caused by Ukraine. It was something that every middle schooler should know. You cannot just print money and not have a huge impact on inflation. The next thing we are going to look at here tonight is, quite frankly, the reason I ran for the job, and what I thought was the major problem in America, and still believe, other than the border, which maybe is nudged by it, or the threat of some catastrophic war in Europe, and that is the role that the Federal government has played in the breakdown of the American family. The number of children born without a father in the home was under 5 percent before World War II, and kind of in the golden age of America, that is what was the norm. It is hard to believe anybody would not want the nuclear family to be the standard that American children grow up in. However, we do know that Karl Marx--and there is this romance with socialism that permeates part of the Democrat Party, permeates a lot of our academic institutions. Karl Marx felt that we had to destroy the American family. As I have said many times before, Black Lives Matter, on their website around the time of the last campaign, said that they wanted to get rid of the Western-proscribed nuclear family. First of all, it is an insult to the rest of the world because families with mothers and fathers at home are common in Asia, common in Africa, common everywhere. But in any event, it is apparent that the powerful Black Lives Matter at least said they wanted to get rid of the nuclear family. Karl Marx wanted to get rid of the nuclear family. What happened in America that we went from very few children not having a mom and dad at home to working our way to 40 percent of the children born in America without mom and dad at home? It didn't just happen. It happened because this institution, beginning with who I think is the worst President in the country's history until now, Lyndon Johnson, began a war on the family. I guess he called it a war on poverty. He really should have called it a war on the family. He began to put the government in a position in which they would take care of the children instead of both parents--traditionally, the father. So, in other words, they substituted the government for the father in the home. Quickly, we reached the point where it ramped up from the middle sixties to the nineties, then dipped a little with welfare reform in the sixties, and now is on the upward climb. Forty percent of children go home to one parent. There are some parents who are able to swing it and do a good job, but let's face it: It is much more difficult to raise kids in that circumstance, and the statistics show it. So, how has this body responded? It has responded by increasing the incentives to not form a nuclear family. Right now, all the government transfer payments, be it medical care, be it food stamps, be it low- income housing, be it the earned income tax payment, be it the TANF payments, are all conditioned upon families being in poverty. A lot of people considered in poverty I don't think we would consider in poverty. They maybe have an air-conditioned apartment. They may have iPhones. They may have cars. But you are considered in poverty if you are not earning a great deal of money. And the bag of things you are getting can, in many cases, exceed that of what a working parent, frequently a father, in the home can provide. The government says provided you don't get married to a guy with an income or much of an income, we are going to give you a free apartment, frequently a nicer apartment than people who are not in the system yet. We are going to give you free food. When I talk to the clerks at the grocery stores and such, they frequently say the food one gets is more expensive than the clerks who work at the grocery stores can afford. When you give free healthcare, when you give additional checks of some basis, TANF checks, you can quickly wind up in a situation in which, like I said, you are better off financially not getting married. This was, I think, the biggest policy mistake we have seen in America, perhaps in hundreds of years, the decision in the 1960s to, in essence, have the government replace the husband. I think so many of the problems in America today, including the crime problems that we addressed or tried to address in the gun bills that were passed earlier today, actually wouldn't be anywhere near the problem they are had we not done what we could to destroy the American family as Karl Marx wanted. It is the bag of things one gets. Efforts have been made throughout the last year and a half, some successful, some not, to push more and more money in the system for people or for single parents--could be a man, could be a woman--who are not married to someone with much of an income, the efforts made to increase the earned income tax credit, the increases in the food stamps, the efforts made to put more low-income housing out there. I remember, too, as I mentioned, I talked to some of the admittedly more liberal people who administer the low-income housing. I asked them: What about the program don't you like? Well, it is a good program I am glad to be part of here, but these people are getting nicer housing than I am getting. It kind of reminds me like when you talk to the clerk at the grocery store. The people in the system are getting nicer groceries than the people not. The people getting the low-income housing, once they get off the waiting list, are sometimes getting better accommodations than people who are off on their own, particularly couples starting out. In any event, I think if there is one thing I would like to have the Republican Party do, if we ever do get both Houses and the Presidency again, is to make a concerted effort to change these welfare programs so never again will the United States be in the business of encouraging families without both parents, particularly encouraging families without a father at home. The results of Lyndon Johnson's policies have been written about for 50 years now. Whether we are talking about Daniel Moynihan or George Gilder or Robert Rector, everybody points it out. This breakdown in the family, which everybody knows is ruining America or is largely responsible for causing the moral decline in America, it didn't just happen. It happened because the U.S. Government and people in this body wanted to take money and give it to people living a certain lifestyle and take it from the tax dollars of people living the nuclear family lifestyle. I strongly encourage people in this body, including Republican leadership, if we take control of this House 2 years from now with the Presidency, to make their number one priority flipping around these welfare programs which have done so much to lead to the moral decline that we have in America today. I realize it means standing up to the media. It is standing up to--a former Democrat mayor of Milwaukee used to refer to the poverty pimps. I don't know whether they use that word anymore. It will take standing up to the poverty pimps and finally getting the strength of the American family back where it was in the 1960s, back where it was in the 1950s where our schools seemed to be doing a better job, where it didn't seem like the crime was anywhere near as great as today. By the way, things like the murder rate should be falling precipitously because of improved medical care, but we still have a higher murder rate today, last year, than we did in the fifties, which is just preposterous but one of the effects of Lyndon Johnson's war on the family. I leave that goal for both the Republicans and Democrats, to stop and think what they can do to get the American family back where it was 60 years ago. Those are some of what I consider the major issues in America, issues that should be talked about today and are, quite frankly, of more significance than some of the things that the media talks about. I hope when we get done taking our break near the end of June that we do something to address the border, or President Biden would address it immediately, that we do something to address the huge number of drug overdoses and all the broken hearts out there of the people who died because of this problem. I hope we begin to address the breakdown of the family that didn't just happen. It happened almost by design of the government. I hope we do something about the excessive spending, which results in this inflation that makes it difficult for people at all ages of life. But I think it must make it so difficult for the youngest people as they look forward: Can we buy a home? Can we have children?