Glenn Grothman

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, we have another weekend gone by and another speech of our President on the issue of illegal immigration and what to do with the wall on the southern border. I take this opportunity, after spending the weekend talking to several constituents of the Sixth Congressional District, to deal with some misconceptions in this debate. The first misconception I would like to talk about is whether Donald Trump can compromise, because there are some people out there who feel that the delay in opening the government was because this, admittedly, type A individual could not compromise. The shutdown was caused because we had not passed an appropriation bill that both, I can say, sides, both the pro-wall and anti-wall people could agree with. President Trump previously--this is his third year--signed two appropriation bills funding the Department of Homeland Security and the rest of the government without getting a wall. It was not until the third time that President Trump and Congress could not reach an agreement on the Homeland Security bill. And I will point out that was largely because Congress couldn't get along, not President Trump. After a delay of over 30 days, President Trump has, one more time, compromised. He compromised to allow 3 more weeks of the government to be open on the promise, or the implied promise, of the Speaker that she will, in good faith, negotiate about a wall. President Trump, during this time, also agreed to an extension, a DACA extension, which the border patrol, quite frankly, would disagree with, because they feel it will encourage more people to be optimistic and come here illegally across the border. He also extended temporary protected status, another thing which may or may not be right, but was a further olive branch towards people, who, so far, would refuse to vote for a budget with the funding of a wall. In any event, I think, if you look at the past, President Trump has been more than willing to compromise, signing bill after bill in his first 2 years, despite not making due on his number one campaign promise, extending temporary protected status, a DACA extension, and now a 3-week extension. You can say a lot of things about Donald Trump, but you cannot say he is not willing to compromise. I think very, very many people feel he has compromised more than enough. The next question is: Do we need a wall? Is a wall necessary? And the fact is it is. We need a wall because we need secure borders. First of all, as has been pointed out, 70 percent of the heroin in this country, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths, comes across our southern border. Some of that heroin comes across points of entry, and at the points of entry, it is not unusual to catch people sneaking in heroin. Some people have made something of the fact that not a lot of heroin is caught in the 60 percent of the southern border that has no barrier at all up. That is because there is no barrier. We have no idea how much heroin is coming across there, but common sense will tell you, if you wanted to sneak illegal drugs in this country and have a choice between going across a regular point of entry with perhaps dogs and border control agents or somebody out in the middle of nowhere, you would go somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. It is hard to tell me that anyone cares about the heroin crisis in this country if they do not want a wall. The next thing to look for is all the people sneaking into the country. The border patrol itself will tell you they have no idea how many people are coming across the border. We can say, at a minimum, we have 11 or 12 million people in this country illegally, but for all I know, talking with somebody from the border patrol today, it could be 20 million. And the question is, if we are going to let more people in this country, are we going to let people in this country who are sneaking across the border or people who are coming here legally? Another problem with people coming here legally, I would argue, is they may be more likely to use welfare or that sort of thing when they come to the country. Talking to the customs agents, I have found evidence, when they looked at people's purses, when they looked at people's wallets, of evidence of people using EBT cards or Medicaid cards, taking free goods from the American taxpayer. People are committing crime. One can see when more walls are built on the southern border; crime goes down on the other side of the wall. A large percentage of people who are in Federal prisons are illegal immigrants, which is not surprising, given that they broke the law to come here. It is a dangerous way to get in. Thousands of people have been found dead trying to sneak across areas not at a point of entry. And having been down in the desert in Arizona, I can easily see why that would happen. People are giving children to other people to come across the border, knowing it is easier to stay here if you come with children. Obviously, that is a dangerous thing. As President Trump says, it is a humanitarian crisis not to shut off the flow of people who are coming across the desert hoping to get to America. Finally, it is a huge cost to the American taxpayer. Something is said about the almost $6 billion President Trump is asking for a wall. A variety of different organizations make different guesses as to the cost of illegal immigration every year. It is probably more than $50 billion. It is not surprising when you take into effect the free healthcare, the free education, the welfare given out, and the cost to our criminal justice system. In any event, do we need a wall? If we care about heroin, we need a wall. If we care about the cost to government, we need a wall. If we care about people who are hurt by criminals who come across the border, we need a wall. And I should point out that, right now, that border is controlled by the drug cartels in Mexico. We need a wall. The third issue I would like to address is there are some people who feel that Donald Trump is anti-immigrant or America is becoming nativist by requiring a wall. That is not true. Every year, in this country, over 700,000 people are sworn in legally to become citizens in this country. Almost 4 million people are given work visas to come into this country. Another close to 2 million people come into this country hoping to be students or to become students in this country. All we are asking, if people want to sneak across the border, is do it legally. Get in line to be one of the 700,000 people who are going to be sworn in legally. Get in line to be one of the almost 4 million people who get work-type visas to come here. I think compared to other countries, quite frankly, there is no comparison. You look at other countries--Mexico, Germany, countries like that--you will find the number of people that they are allowing to naturalize into their country is percentage-wise much less than the United States of America. It is incredibly open-minded, and with open arms, that the United States continues to let these large numbers of people come into this country to naturalize, to become students, or to work in this country, and nobody is talking about reducing those very large numbers. All we are saying is: Don't skip in line. The next issue I hear people talk about is: Do walls work? If you build a wall, will it prevent people from coming across the border? We can look at the southern border already, and we can look at walls around the world. Look at the southern border. In the 1990s, we built a border wall between San Diego and Tijuana. People crossing at that point dropped 92 percent, an incredible success. We have built other walls, walls near El Paso, walls near Tucson, walls near Yuma. All of these walls currently built have reduced illegal immigration by over 90 percent. Look around the world in other countries building walls. Israel built a well-known wall around 2010 between themselves and Egypt. Before they built the wall, they were having about 1,500 people come across their border illegally. After they built the wall, bit by bit, that number has dropped all the way down to nothing. That is a pretty good success rate, going from 1,500 a week to nothing. You don't hear those people saying: Oh, people are sneaking across. They're going over the wall or going under the wall. No, a well-done wall reduces immigration almost entirely. Right now, 10 EU nations in Europe, countries similar to ours, have walls. Hungary built a wall on its border with Syria and had a 90 percent drop in the number of people crossing the border, another example of a very successful wall. The other thing I will point out, having spent last week down on our southern border, the Border Patrol, every one of them who I talked to, says they want a wall. They live with it every day. The Border Patrol would not want a wall if it was not effective. The next thing I would like to point out is the cost of a wall. President Trump is asking for $5.7 billion. $5.7 billion is a lot of money. But now we have to put it in context with what we are spending in other parts of our budget. What President Trump is asking for is one-seventh the cost of foreign aid that we spend year after year after year, and all the people who are keeping the government closed because they refuse to vote for a wall, they have no qualms--or almost all of them have no qualms--about voting for seven times as much every year on foreign aid. It is about one-twelfth the increase in defense spending under President Trump, one-twelfth just the increase. For the protection of our country in the future, I can think of few things that are more important than stopping the invasion from south of our Nation. It is about 0.1 percent--one-tenth of 1 percent--of our overall Federal budget, and about four-tenths of 1 percent of what we refer to as the discretionary part of our budget. So while $5.7 billion is a lot of money, when you look compared to the other money that Congress appropriates again and again, year after year after year, they usually don't object to the money being spent on other things. Now, you hear it said that walls are immoral. I will point out that I think this is a new and rather silly argument. I think keeping heroin out of this country; I think keeping a potential criminal class out of this country; I think making sure that our future immigrants are people who stand in line coming here are not considered immoral. But I will detect a little bit of hypocrisy of people who make that argument. I mentioned a second ago the wall between Tijuana and San Diego, which was built during the term of Bill Clinton. I am sure, if you go back and check the papers of the time, when Bill Clinton felt it was necessary to build a wall between San Diego and Tijuana, nobody said it was immoral. Later on, more of the wall right now was built on an appropriation passed when President Bush was President. Some of that wall, or improvements in the wall, were built when President Obama was President. I have a feeling, if we go back, we won't find anybody saying the wall was immoral when it was built by President Clinton or President Bush or President Obama. So one of two things is going on here. Either we have partisanship rearing its ugly head, and people are perfectly happy to vote for a wall under other Presidents, or some people, both Republicans and primarily Democrats, are becoming a lot more radical since parts of the wall were built in the 1990s or the zeros or the teens. The next thing I would like to deal with is that you sometimes hear it said by people who have kept the government closed by their refusal to build a wall that everybody wants border security. Sadly, that is not true. You would feel any citizen with common sense would want to enforce our borders, but if you look, the Governor of California has said that he wants illegal immigrants to be given free medical care in his State. The mayor of New York has said much the same thing. There are over 500 sanctuary cities in the United States of America. A sanctuary city is a city where the local mayor or city council has said that we are not going to ask citizens in our jurisdiction whether or not they are here illegally. Look, if you have a city, or a county, or a whole State like California that has become a sanctuary city, those governors or mayors or legislators or city councils of course do not want immigration laws taken seriously. In the last 2 years, a bill was brought forth to try to end sanctuary cities. A few Republicans voted against the bill, and all but three Democrats voted against the bill. I try to put in my mind, what would cause someone, if they really cared about enforcing the border, to say we have no problem with counties or cities, in essence, putting up a sign to say: We are not going to ask people whether they are here illegally. The point is that, obviously, there are a lot of people out there who don't care about border security. We have several Congressmen getting elected on the platform of saying that they don't want to fund ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Why would somebody not want to enforce the immigration and customs authority and, at the same time, want to have our borders taken seriously? The answer is, they don't want our borders taken seriously. There are a lot of people who believe, as the Minnesota Attorney General and former Congressman Keith Ellison say, that national borders themselves are an injustice. They want the idea of a separate United States of America, I guess, to permanently change. You may think it is ridiculous to say that the idea that we shouldn't have national borders is a disgrace, but this has become, sadly, mainstream among the left wing segment of the political class. The Oakland mayor recently sent an alarm, telling people, including particularly people with a criminal background in Oakland, that ICE was going to make a sweep and try to pick up criminals. Why would she do that if she wanted our immigration laws enforced? The answer is, more and more people are getting elected in this country who do not want immigration laws enforced. Now, I have a few more suggestions for President Trump. I think it is unfortunate that we have not built the wall yet, but having talked to some members of the Border Patrol, perhaps, in some ways, it is a blessing in disguise. The $5.7 billion that President Trump wants will be nowhere near enough to secure the entire border. It will secure more of the border than now, and it will be a big step in the right direction. That is true. But I think perhaps President Trump, now that they have kind of bit his hand after he has compromised and compromised and compromised, rather than build for just $5.7 billion, should try to increase the size of the wall, so that we are covering all of the easy entry points on the southern border, which would take about $8 billion. I do feel it is important enough to secure our borders that that would be an appropriate thing to do. There are other things that, having been at the border, are suggested. We are right now not making anywhere near a good enough effort to see if cash is going from the cartels back from north of the border to south of the border. I would ask President Trump to include cash-sniffing dogs that can detect this cash. If people try to sneak across the border without declaring that cash, that cash can be taken, and it can be very devastating for the cartels. We could use more density meters for cars, in which you can detect whether there are drugs within cars. That is another thing that would help our Border Patrol become more effective. Finally, he can try to engage people, if there are any people out there who care about our borders, about the ridiculous asylum laws. I don't know if everybody is aware out there--not enough Americans are aware--that anybody who comes to the southern border can say they are fleeing from violence or religious persecution and, after being detained briefly, they eventually will be let go for a court date, which might be years in the future. As long as that law continues in effect, we will continue to have millions of people stream across the border. I want to look here at some of the walls that we already have, walls that were built by other Presidents and proved to be very effective. Here we have a wall in San Diego built by President Clinton. It is not an immoral wall. It is a very effective wall that has decreased illegal border crossings in the San Diego-Tijuana area by over 90 percent. We have another wall here that ends in Nogales, in the Arizona area. I think this wall was built under President Bush. It might have been somewhat improved under President Obama, another very moral wall that is protecting people on the north side of the border. I want to point out another reason why we need the wall. I talked to some ranchers in the area. They came across the Salvadoran gangs that we know are so brutal, and they fed them. They weren't harmed. But can you imagine living near the border where we have people crossing the border, either south to north or north to south, who are members of the violent El Salvador gangs? Here is another picture and a wall near Sasabe and another point where the wall ends. This is an area in which, even if President Trump gets the wall he wants, they will not be funding an extension of this wall. It is one of the reasons why we should ask for a little bit more than $5.7 million for this wall. I will point out that the new walls they build will be better than walls in the past. We can make walls higher than this, and we can make walls in which we have sensors designed to track people coming up, and walls in which we have flat areas on top of the wall that would be very difficult to climb over. It will be very difficult to get over these new high-tech walls. In any event, here is another picture of a wonderful wall in Sasabe. We just wish the wall was a little bit bigger. Here we are going to look at another couple walls that countries feel are effective. Here we have a picture of where a wall is in Jordan. The feeling is that the United States may have built part of that wall to protect the poor Jordanians from terrorists coming across. I don't remember anybody objecting to that wall. Here we have the wall in Israel that was built and has cut illegal immigration coming across the border from Egypt down to literally zero. Now, looking at these walls, these effective walls in the past that have been built by other Presidents, and thinking that I do not want to have another shutdown in 3 weeks, the tremendous inconvenience for the government workers, the inconvenience for people who are relying on the government for inspections and that sort of thing, I will ask my colleagues who refused to vote for a border wall during the last shutdown to just imagine, stop and think for a minute, and pretend that, instead of President Trump, we have a President Clinton, or a President Bush, or a President Obama, and maybe, to help you pretend, you can pretend that the border wall is not there to protect the residents of Texas, or New Mexico, or Arizona, but it is there to protect the residents of Jordan. Just like in the past, when you voted for bills to protect the residents of Jordan, or voted for Presidents to build walls other than President Trump, just sit back, close your eyes, and pretend we are building a wall to protect another country, or building a wall at another time, and just vote ``yes,'' so that we don't have to go through another shutdown, and so that we can protect American citizens from drug lords and protect them from people coming across the border out of line, to be fair to those people who are coming to this country legally. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to address the current government shutdown and the status of the government wall. It is kind of a frustrating issue to address, because there is so much misinformation out there. The first thing I will address is the unpaid employees. We can pay the unpaid employees, particularly the employees who are working, if we would pass a bill now. We do not have to end this whole thing. There is a wonderful bill, H.R. 271, introduced by Congressman Brooks--I am a cosponsor--that will immediately pay all of the current, working Federal employees. I do not have the power to put that bill on the floor, because I am just a regular Congressman from Wisconsin. But the majority leader, if you see him, could put that bill on the floor any time. And if the real concern here is for the Federal employees who work in our airports, who work in the Coast Guard, who work in our prisons--many of whom I know and are great people--if these people really cared about them, that bill would be on the floor next Tuesday and winging its way to President Trump's desk by this time next week. It is a mystery to me why, when so many politicians purport to care about the Federal employees, they will not bring forth this bill to pay them without having the whole issue solved. The next issue I am going to address is these people who say President Trump cannot compromise. I don't know whether they haven't been paying attention the last 2 years, or whether they just love to make things up. For the public to understand, under normal circumstances if we are going to build a wall, the wall is in what we call an appropriation bill, or what people back home would refer to as a budget. President Trump ran on the wall, and the wall is necessary, and we will talk about that in a second. Nevertheless, President Trump would have wanted funding for this wall in some budget. For his first 2 years, President Trump was sent budgets by Congress, or spending bills by Congress, that did not contain a wall. That was frustrating to him, but because he did not want to shut down the government, and did not want to penalize the government employees, President Trump, particularly, with a big omnibus bill about a year ago, signed big spending bills without a wall because he compromised. You will recall that originally people talked about this wall being $20 billion. President Trump is now asking for $5.7 billion. In the last week, I have taken time to meet with the former head of the Border Patrol. I have been on the Arizona border, and it disappoints the experts in the field, the people on the border themselves, that Donald Trump has compromised so much as to want only funding for a fraction of the wall. So I would say, coming down from $20 billion to $5.7 billion is a big compromise. I would say twice signing entire appropriations for his first 2 years in office without the wall, is a big compromise by President Trump. President Trump, last Saturday, also decided to extend DACA, and decided to extend temporary protected status on people. Now, what I found out from listening to the Border Patrol is that when you talk about DACA, insofar as the President talks about it, it encourages more people to come here from south of the border because they will assume DACA is a permanent thing, and that more and more people will be added to it. But, despite the fact that it might have been irresponsible to talk about DACA and extending it again, President Trump, in an effort to compromise, decided to throw these other policy items in the mix on Saturday. I sometimes slip, instead of calling President Trump the Commander in Chief, I call him the compromiser in chief, because he has given so much to twice sign annual bills without funding for the wall and asked for funding for only a fraction of the wall. When I was down on the border, I saw places where the wall needed extensions. President Trump is not asking for enough money for the extensions that the Border Patrol needs. But in the interest of compromise, President Trump has asked for $5.7 billion. I will talk in a second about how much money that is. I know for me, $5.7 billion is a huge amount of money. But let's talk about what other people are willing to vote on around here. Madam Speaker, $5.7 billion for the wall is about one-seventh of what we spend every year on foreign aid. I never hear Congressmen come up here and rail against all the money we are spending on foreign aid and how we could do wonderful things if we only kept that money at home. But all of a sudden, with one-seventh of the cost of foreign aid, we have a battery of people on the other side of the aisle saying we could do so many better things with that money, when in the wink of an eye, they are going to pass appropriation bills spending seven times that much, year, after year, after year, after year on foreign aid. President Trump greatly increased the defense budget--more than I would have liked. I complained about it a little bit. The funding for the wall would be about one-twelfth of the increase--not the total budget--the increase in the defense budget under President Trump. Again, I objected. Almost nobody around here, however, objected to this large increase in the defense budget. But now it comes to the wall, and all of a sudden, they can't bring themselves to vote for it. Is this a crisis? You bet it is a crisis. Like I said, I was down on the border last week in Sasabe, Arizona. First of all, we have a huge cost to the government at the border. People are coming across the border using our medical facilities. The Governor of California has outright said he will be happy to have all of the immigrants. I guess everybody in the Western Hemisphere can come to California and have the government, which to a certain extent means the Federal Government, pay for medical costs. Madam Speaker, 90 percent of the heroin comes across the southern border. Now, you hear people say that most of that is at selected points of entry. But the reason most of the heroin comes in at selected points of entry is because we are not catching virtually anybody between the points of entry. They are just walking in where there is no wall. I don't know--given the huge number of people who die of heroin every year--that we can say that not putting walls in the gaps in the current system is not something that is necessary and not something that we need to do to solve that heroin crisis. There are a lot of parts of that heroin crisis, but when that amount of heroin is coming across south of the border, part of the answer is to complete the wall. We are getting more and more children on our border. What is going on right now, so people understand, is parents are sending their children to the border. And if the children come to the border, which is all the easier, because they may have somebody escort them to the border, we will take those children and deliver them to a relative around the country. I would say if a child is taking the hazardous trek, albeit helped along the way, to come to the United States, and the parents are sending the children with somebody who may not be their relative, sending their children because once the children are here, the children can say they are living in America, and the parents can come here under the family rules and join them; it is a huge crisis. Other people coming and trying to get between the points of entry are frequently found dying. I have been told--I haven't confirmed it--that in the Tucson sector alone, in the last 15 or 16 years, over 2,000 people have been found dead of dehydration, starvation, and what have you. That is what you call a humanitarian crisis. The overall cost on our overburdened government--different people can argue how much illegal immigrants cost this country. The Heritage Foundation--some people may not agree with them--feels it is over $50 billion a year. Madam Speaker, when it is costing us $50 billion a year between the healthcare costs, the welfare costs, the education costs, and the criminal justice costs, how can you not spend $5.7 billion to begin to solve this crisis? The next thing to address, it is sometimes said, and people say it to my right, that everybody wants to do something about the border. I question that, given what other people are saying. It may surprise Americans out there to know that there are a lot of people out there who buy into the idea that the United States can be kind of like Europe and we can have open borders and everybody can walk wherever they want. How do we know this? All around the country we have sanctuary cities in which mayors or sanctuary counties in which county executives or, in the case of California, a whole State in which local officials are forbidden to ask people whether they are here legally or not. The only explanation for that is Americans are electing people around the country who do not believe in borders and who are perfectly happy to have tens of millions of people come across our southern border, some good, some not so good. But, obviously, these people do not believe in border security. If you believe in border security, Madam Speaker, the Governor of California would not be openly inviting everybody to come to California for free medical care. It is clear that a lot of people out there do not want a closed border. Another piece of evidence for that, Madam Speaker, is you have Members of Congress saying we should get rid of ICE and get rid of immigration enforcement. People who publicly say we should get rid of immigration enforcement--even though it is a preposterous idea, of course--border security is not a priority for them. They are the type of people who, on examining the situation, can see no reason why we cannot accept 5, 10, 15, or 20 million other illegal immigrants across the border. By the way, one other thing I found out talking to Border Patrol is nobody knows exactly how many illegal immigrants are in the country. Madam Speaker, you sometimes heard it said 11 million, 12 million. It could be 15 million, or it could be 20 million. We really aren't counting, and the people on the border, Border Patrol themselves, will admit that they don't know how many people are coming across the border. Now, Madam Speaker, the next thing you hear is: Oh, I care about border security. I just don't believe in the wall. Why don't I believe that? I don't believe that they really care about border security because walls work. Now, behind me, I have pictures of four parts of a wall in other parts of the world. Here we have a wonderful wall which cut illegal immigration by over 90 percent in the San Diego-Tijuana area. That wall works. I was in Nogales, Arizona. Here is a wall that was recently refurbished, and that wall works. Unfortunately, as you will notice, the wall ends, and the Border Patrol and the ranchers who live near this area, one of whom I recently talked to, said all of a sudden MS-13 showed up and they had to give them dinner at the ranch. These people desperately want this wall to be extended a little bit. Here we have more wall in Sasabe, Arizona. Here we have a wall that has cut illegal immigration down to almost nothing in Israel. I was not able to find a wall, which has also been successful--I have got to get a picture. We will be back next week with a picture of a wall between Jordan and Syria. Madam Speaker, you might say: Why are you talking about a wall between Jordan and Syria? Because a lot of that wall was paid for by the United States. Now, why did the United States have no problem funding a wall in San Diego or a wall in Sasabe or upgrading the wall in Nogales? Many of my colleagues on the right side of me here had no problem voting for these walls. But there is something different about these walls from the walls President Trump wants. These walls were proposed by somebody other than President Trump. When it was President Clinton proposing to build a wall in San Diego, people didn't say it was immoral to have a wall. When President Obama was extending or upgrading the wall in Nogales, Arizona, people didn't say: ``President Obama is an immoral person. Walls look bad.'' You never even heard about it. I didn't know about it until a couple weeks ago. When you have a wall going up in Sasabe, which desperately has to be extended, that wall was built under President Bush, under appropriation bills, and not a peep. Nobody said it was immoral when President Bush built a wall. So, Madam Speaker, now we get down to, I reluctantly conclude, because I have to wonder when you have these other successful walls around the world, when we have no problem voting for walls for Jordan for goodness' sake, why, all of a sudden in this large budget--and every budget has things in it we don't like. Why, all of a sudden, do we go through all this heartburn, put all these Federal employees through financial distress, why do we do it when, in the past, we have built walls all the time? I have to conclude, sadly, part of it is some people want President Trump to fail. The fact that not building a wall means all that much more heroin across the border, it means many more people sneaking across the border or escorted across the border by the Mexican cartels--and, by the way, today the Mexican cartels run the border. So to come in this country means you are hostage for awhile to the Mexican cartels, which may be one of the reasons why they don't do a very good job of protecting the women down there. It is why it can be very expensive for people. It is why people who try to escort you across the border who aren't a member of the cartel, if they are caught, will be killed and, apparently, in some cases, skinned alive. But we don't want to stop the current situation. Again, the folks back home will have to wonder: Why can people build a wall in Jordan, why can we let President Clinton build a wall in San Diego which is very effective, why can we let President Bush build a wall, why can we let President Obama upgrade our walls, but all of a sudden, President Trump becomes President and we have to have a shutdown because we can't vote for a budget with a wall in it? I have voted for spending bills under chief executives who were Democrats and Republicans, and I usually agree with the Republicans, but it never occurred to me to vote against a spending bill because I didn't like other policies of the chief executive. So here we have it, Madam Speaker. We will refresh your memory one more time: walls work. They work in Israel; they work in San Diego; and they work in Nogales. We have paid for many walls both in this country and in other countries; and other countries build walls, and they are successful. If we do not build a wall, we will continue to have people starve as they try to come in here inappropriately. We will continue to have bad people come across the border who commit crimes. We will continue to have people come across the border who are here for our generous welfare benefits. This is something that didn't occur to me until I got down to the border and talked to Customs. They said that, when you look in people's wallets and you look in people's purses, they find food stamps--EBT cards--in those purses. In other words, people are coming here to get our welfare benefits. It would be much better if we completed the wall and funneled people through the normal entry points so we could keep some of the criminal element out of the country, so we could keep people who are coming here just to take advantage of our generous medical systems--all with Federal dollars going into this that our Governor of California and mayor of New York are so eager to give away--so we can solve this crisis. All it takes is somebody to be willing to pass a budget, a budget that is too free-spending otherwise, by the way. I don't like all the excessive spending in the budget, but every budget is a compromise, and we are willing to build the wall. I hope, in the interim, that my colleagues who at least are pretending now to care about the Federal employees will bring a separate bill to the floor, which they can do at any time. A wonderful bill, H.R. 271, Mo Brooks, a great guy, bring that bill to the floor so we can pay the Coast Guard, we can pay the guys and gals working in the Federal prisons, and we can pay the TSA guys. So, Madam Speaker, even if you don't feel like spending anything on the wall today, at least they can get paid for the work they are doing. Madam Speaker, you are crying crocodile tears if you do not cosponsor those bills and bring those bills to the floor but then claim that you have sympathy for the Federal employees. We do not have to solve the other issues to get these people paid. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I know we have had a lot of people talking today on the issue of the shutdown. I thought I would like to give a little different talk, or a little bit of explanation, as far as what is going on here, to the American people. The first thing that offends me is when people imply that the position of the President is that he is anti-immigrant. Every year, in this country, we swear in 700,000 new people to become citizens of this country--700,000. On a per capita basis, that is, for example, twice what Germany swears in and over 50 times the number of people who become new Mexicans each year. We should not apologize for swearing in 700,000 new people, and President Trump has made no effort to reduce that amount. He is just saying people who want to come here illegally should get in line and be one of those 700,000. I also want to point out, in addition to that, we let in another million people every year, primarily because they are relatives of other people who are already here. We let in over 180 million people for other reasons, including about 70 million people, every year, who want to work here. There is no reason why anybody should, under any circumstances, as President Trump let's these things go on, say that he is anti- immigrant, or anybody who wants to build a wall is anti-immigrant, because that will not affect these very generous numbers. Now, let's look where America is compared to historically. We, right now, have a higher percentage of people born in other countries in America than any time since World War I, and those are people who we can confirm. It is very difficult to get accurate numbers on the people who are here illegally, for obvious reasons. We have had an increase in the number of people who speak a foreign language at home, and that is wonderful. I am sure all of our ancestors, or most of our ancestors, at one point spoke a foreign language. But it is nice if, over time, we accept enough immigrants that, at any given time, most of us are speaking a common language. The number of people who spoke a foreign language at home in 1980 was about 11 percent. It is now 21 percent. Again, these numbers have not caused Donald Trump to ask for a cut in legal immigration. The American people should realize Donald Trump and the people who want a wall are pro-immigration. But the next question is: Do we have a crisis? First of all, about 80 percent of the heroin in this country comes across our southern border. Now, some of it can be prevented by a wall, some can't. But the huge number of people who are dying around the country, to me, makes this a crisis. We are getting more and more children at the border. Why are we getting more children? Because, I think, the word is out, particularly in Central America, that if you come to America with children, you are going to be able to find a way to get in. We need a border wall, not only to prevent people from coming in, but to send the message that America is treating its immigration laws seriously. People who sneak across the border, who are, after all, breaking one law, while very few are horrible criminals, of course, are going to bring a given number of people who break the law. We believe, in the last 10 years, illegal immigrants coming across the border have, during their lifetime, been charged with over 1,000 homicides. We have enough high crime areas in America as it is without letting people come through here without being appropriately vetted. There is a huge healthcare cost to allowing our borders to be open because, of course, people come here without health insurance. Now we have the Governor of California openly saying that he wants to give free healthcare to all illegal immigrants. People disagree on the cost of illegal immigration to our country, but when you add up the healthcare and the welfare and the cost to the criminal justice system, organizations easily come up with costs of over $50 billion a year. Donald Trump is asking for under $6 billion for the wall, and that is one-time funding to build the wall. The cost of illegal immigrants is over $50 billion year after year after year. This is a country that already is over $22 trillion in debt. Can we really afford to be the healthcare provider for the entire Western Hemisphere? There are people who feel that Donald Trump has to compromise more, that he is being hard here. Donald Trump is not a perfect person. I have talked to him about some of his tweets, but Donald Trump has been very patient here. I don't think the American public knows or understands exactly why we have a shutdown. If we are going to fund a border wall, it is going to have to be part of an appropriation bill, which I think people back home would refer to as a budget bill. We don't refer to it as a budget bill, but I think people back home would say it is part of a budget bill. President Trump has been President now for 2 years. He has signed many appropriation bills, and, obviously, he wants a wall. But because he does not want to shut down the government, for 2 years, he has been signing appropriation bills without funding for the wall. Finally, in his third year, he has had to say: I am tired of signing appropriation bills which include much spending that he doesn't want, all sorts of provisions that are higher spending than President Trump wanted, but, finally, he had to say: I am tired of signing appropriation bills without getting my wall. I think that is a reasonable position. When we talk about the wall and the inability--I want to say we have good news here. About an hour ago, I noticed that eight Democrats left the door open. They were bipartisan toward building a wall, and I would like to thank those eight people for reaching across the aisle. But I have to wonder why we can only get eight Democrats to appear to say that it is okay to fund the wall. We have to remember that there is a very effective wall in the San Diego area that was built when President Clinton was President. It is well known that when President Bush was President, the second Bush, we built still more of the wall, and at that time prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Chuck Schumer voted for the wall. Why is the wall now immoral? And, by the way, some of that wall funded during George Bush was built during President Obama's term. Why was it okay for Bill Clinton or George Bush or Barack Obama to build a wall, and all of a sudden we hear it is immoral for President Trump to want to add to that wall? I am not sure. I think part of it is a sad and unfortunate move to the left by not all, but by many Democrats who more and more are, whatever they say, for open borders. I think some of it is just pure party politics. They want to go ahead and let more people in here for 2 years just to embarrass President Trump. But again, the American people should remember that for 2 years Donald Trump signed appropriation bill after appropriation bill. He wanted the wall. He didn't get the wall. Finally, he is saying: I am sorry. I desperately want to open the government, but I am going to ask members of the Democratic Party to do what they did under President Clinton or President Bush or President Obama and let me build more of the wall as well. Now, some people will claim that this is an expensive wall, and I agree that $5.7 billion is a large amount of money. But then we have to look at it in comparison to other things that this body funds without objecting. The amount of money we are spending on this wall is about one-seventh of what we spend every year in foreign aid. A few people complain about that, but the vast majority of people in this body have no problem with voting for over $35 billion a year in foreign aid. All of a sudden, we are told that when it comes to building the wall for one-seventh of that amount, one time, and they spend this amount on foreign aid year after year after year, all of a sudden we are told this is too much money. And something I thought was a little excessive, there was a large increase in the defense budget last year, a little larger than I would have liked. The wall would cost about one-twelfth of the increase in defense spending since President Trump became President. It is about one-ninth of the increase--not the total, one-ninth of the increase--in nondefense discretionary spending, and it is less than one seven-hundredths of our overall budget. Is that really too much to spend that amount of money when we are spending so much money in other places? The next thing I would like to address is this idea that the wall won't work. Under President Clinton, we built a wall between San Diego and Tijuana, and the border crossings at that time dropped 92 percent. It would be a great victory if we got the number of people coming here illegally every year to drop 92 percent. I would not say that is nothing. I look at the border wall that Israel built when they were having a huge problem of people coming up into Africa and breaking the law by coming into Israel. Israel was getting about 1,800 new people a year coming into their country that they didn't think should be coming into their country. How many people came into their country in the last year? None. That border wall caused the number of people coming into Israel to drop from 1,800 a year to nothing. There are other walls around the world. There is a wall between Jordan and Syria and Iraq that has been somewhat successful in keeping ISIS out of Jordan. The interesting thing about that wall, it was, to a certain extent, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. It baffles me that people around here have no problem paying for a wall for Jordan to protect itself, but all of a sudden if Donald Trump wants to build a wall for the United States of America, we can't get it done. Seventy countries around the world have walls. Ten countries in the EU states have walls. These countries are not building walls because they don't work. They build walls because they do. The next thing I will address, frequently people get up here and they preface their talk by saying everybody wants security. That is not true. There are, sadly, a lot of people around here who are for open borders. We just heard a speaker prior to me imply that building a wall was racist, which certainly implies that preventing people from coming into this country is racist, and they do not want to have this sort of security. Keith Ellison, the new attorney general for Minnesota who used to be part of this body, recently said: I don't believe in borders. And this kind of thinking that maybe we don't need borders, maybe we just need one big country around the whole world, is more well known than one would think. There are sanctuary States, counties, and cities all around the United States. If people believe in border security, why, if you were a mayor, why if you were a county executive, why, if you were a Governor, would you say: We want a sanctuary State or sanctuary city where we can't ask people whether they are here legally or not? And that would include people in charge of doling out welfare benefits. It would include law enforcement. Obviously, people who run these cities and States do not think border security is an important thing, which is kind of scary. In the last session, we took up bills trying to sanction cities and counties that are sanctuary cities or sanctuary counties so they don't open themselves up and, in essence, beg people from other countries to come here. By the way, this includes the three largest cities of the United States: New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. When Republicans tried to prevent this, I believe there were only three or four Democrats--and I love my Democrats, but there were only three or four of them who would stand up against sanctuary cities. That sure sounds to me like they don't consider border security that important. We have a new wave of people coming in saying that we don't need ICE. We don't need immigration enforcement. They are on record with this. Several people have signed on. Maybe I am wrong, but to me, if you are saying we want to get rid of the agency that enforces immigration, I think we can say there are a lot of people in this body who really don't want any immigration enforcement. In summary, I would ask the American people to look beyond some of the main talking points in the mainstream media. We are letting 700,000 people here legally. We are not anti-immigrant. And that is before you talk about the tens of millions of people who are let in this country every year to work. This is a crisis. It is a crisis with regard to cost. It is a crisis with regard to the change in our fabric as we let people in here who commit crimes up to and including murder. It is a crisis insofar as we let people in here who wind up, some of them, adopting a welfare lifestyle, which will further erode the morals of America. Donald Trump has been very patient, waiting 2 years and signing bills with much more spending than he wants because he didn't want to shut down the government. I would now like to ask, in this third year, more than just the eight brave Democrats to stand up. If you want to, you can close your eyes and pretend that Bill Clinton or George Bush or Barack Obama was President, because we know then you wouldn't have a problem voting for it and open our government. I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the Federal employees who thought their jobs were secure and that every month they would be getting a constant paycheck. But because of playing hardball, treating Donald Trump differently than you would treat President Clinton or President Bush, we have a problem; and that is we do not have an appropriation bill that is an appropriate compromise like funding the wall would. And let me point out, even President Trump's request of $5.7 billion is a huge compromise. Several months ago, we were told we needed $20 billion or $25 billion to fund the wall. Now we are dropping to $5.7 billion. That is a huge compromise. Please give Americans the protection that Israel or dozens of other countries around the world have. Please allow us to build the wall. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

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

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support life. Mr. Speaker, 46 years ago when I was a senior in high school, it was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, or the U.S. Supreme Court felt, that the United States Constitution required abortion be legal in this country, despite the fact that, for much of the past century, every State in the Union felt that abortion should be made illegal. This decision directly led to the deaths of over 40 million children who should have been living a full life. John Adams said that our Constitution was meant for moral and religious people. How can a country built for a moral, religious people living under our Constitution allow this to happen? We know how it happened. About 10 years ago, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg let the cat out of the bag. This decision was meant to prevent the growth in populations we don't want to have too many of, the progressives' dream. But how did the progressives get their dream? Some politicians sometimes talk about science and say we don't take into account science enough around here. It is interesting that, in 1973 when this decision was reached, we didn't have ultrasounds. Now, with ultrasounds, it is more apparent than ever that every new baby in that womb is a unique individual, with its heart beating, with its feeling pain. Nevertheless, we continue to ignore that science and continue to allow this horrible stain on our culture. Indeed, right now, the United States is one of only seven countries to allow late-term abortions. There we are, in the same list as North Korea, China, and Vietnam. I guess you can kind of look back and see why, in the sixties, the progressives would talk about Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh and why they wanted the Communists to win in Vietnam. This is probably one of the reasons, the type of country that they like. Our forefathers wanted this country to be a country that would shed a light on the world. Nevertheless, we appear to be going backwards. The new majority recently brought a bill to the floor to allow the United States to pay for abortions abroad again. Is this what we want America to be known for: the United States telling countries all around the world that abortion should be legal and the government should be paying for abortion? What a stain on the moral record of the United States of America. This is the week of the March for Life. I would like to thank all the people from the State of Wisconsin who are there and come here diligently every year, hoping the people in this city, both the justices and the politicians, realize that this murder of almost a million people a year must end. I would like to thank them and hope that this is the last year that we have to continue this debate and that, finally, by this year, this time, we one more time think that life is precious and our government will not continue to allow the premature snuffing out of life.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to discuss the speech the President gave last night. I was disturbed to see that some people, in dealing with the crisis, including a leader on the other side of the aisle, said that some people felt that a wall would be immoral. There are people on late-night talk shows saying we don't have a crisis here. I am going to point out that 90 percent of the heroin that comes in this country, that kills over tens of thousands of people every year in this country, comes across the border. I don't see how anybody could be so insensitive as to say that is not a crisis and not something we have to deal with at this time. In the last 10 years in Texas alone, they have arrested over 2,900 people who they believe commit homicide who have come across the border. How in the world is it not a crisis when 2,900 people--that is almost as many people who died in the Twin Towers--are killed by people who are in this country illegally? It is completely undermining our immigration law.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I will just take a minute of your time to follow up on what Congressman Garrett just said. It seems to me, in my lifetime--I am not an expert on foreign affairs--there are good things the United States has done, and bad things. But the worst things are, when people who are counting on us, people who we set up and relied on us, we decide to leave them to whatever will happen. I think, in particular, a much bigger thing is when we stopped funding people in Vietnam. Obviously, during the Obama administration leaving Iraq, we left all sorts of people who were our friends, and created a huge vacuum. I am just very afraid today, and I would encourage President Trump to reconsider the decision to withdraw what troops we do have in the Syrian area because we have a lot of allies who felt they could count on the United States, whom I am afraid now will be left to whatever other forces in the region--who are not friendly to Western values--left to whatever they want to do with them. And I hope that is being taken into account right now.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Congressman Lamborn for setting aside this Special Order. We are following up National Bible Week, so as the listeners know, National Bible Week is the week surrounding Thanksgiving. Why is National Bible Week relevant to us today? As those of us who look at America and see storm clouds ahead, we have got to remember John Adams' statement: ``Our Constitution was only for a moral religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.'' We have to remember, if we are going to continue to enjoy the benefits we have of our Constitution, we must one more time become that moral and religious people who John Adams warned us we had to be. One more quote from John Adams on the Bible: ``A society that adopted the Bible as its only law book and lived according to its precepts would be a utopia.'' So, clearly, by a moral and religious people, John Adams meant a people who believe in the Bible. Now, which parts of the Bible did our forefathers look at? There are quotes all over the place from our forefathers in the Bible. It kind of surprised me a couple of years ago when I found out that the book in the Bible that our forefathers quoted the most was Deuteronomy. How often, when you hear somebody quote a Bible verse, do they turn to Deuteronomy? Not very often. Why did our forefathers turn to Deuteronomy? Because the rules and the buildup to the founding of Israel took place in the Book of Deuteronomy, which may have largely been by Moses himself. And I will point out in the room that we are right now, we have a relief of Moses. We have 30-some reliefs of various great thinkers throughout society in this room, but whoever put together this room in the Capitol put Moses in the head position overlooking this Chamber. Now, I will encourage listeners out there, including clergy, as they reflect on National Bible Week, to read a book of the Bible you usually don't read. Read Deuteronomy. Tell your congregation about it. It was the book that I think our forefathers felt should be read so that we could duplicate the Jewish republic, which was soon to be founded, because I think our forefathers wanted America to be a country blessed by God as well. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Congressman Lamborn one more time for setting aside this time on National Bible Week.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I will emphasize something I think that has been said before. You always try to think of something new. You can't help but notice that the number of people who do not want the gray wolf delisted live in areas that don't have gray wolves. The State of Wisconsin is maybe typical in this. They introduced gray wolves to northern Wisconsin. When there was controversy about it, they said, Well, that is okay. These are northern areas where very few people live. Of course, even then I had a problem with it because people did live up there. I don't think the people near where this judge lived would want the gray wolves wandering around the Virginia and Maryland suburbs. They would not want the concern, walking around at night with the wolves, even though they don't normally attack humans. They would not want the concern of the wolves out there if they have dogs or other pets around. If they had cattle, they wouldn't want that concern. Wisconsin being very typical, I think the gray wolves that began in the northern part of the State are now all the way down to areas like Columbia County or Sheboygan County in the southern part of the State. And they will, unless somebody does something about it, continue to grow, continue to go further south, and the herds will continue to grow. I would ask people who are going to vote against this: Think how you would feel if you have a significant number of gray wolves wandering around your subdivision--or even one gray wolf wandering around your subdivision--and then have more respect for the Congressmen who are living with these gray wolves.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would also just like to thank those businesses out there that are training people out there without the benefit of government education at all, because those are also sometimes frequently very good jobs.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on this bill. As anybody who talks to the average person knows, in this country today, we have a huge labor shortage of people ready to do the type of jobs that industry needs. I have more manufacturing jobs in my district than any other congressman around the country, and the number one problem we have is we can't find people to do those jobs. We all have medical facilities around this country, and again and again, nurses or other skilled people are not available for the huge number of job openings that are out there. Meanwhile, we have hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people getting 4-year degrees or part of 4-year degrees and not finding jobs that pay anywhere near as good as some of the jobs you can get at a technical school. Earlier this morning I looked at a local technical school here in town that had a demonstration project on some of the robotics training that they are doing, and we had people who are starting at $25, $30, $35 an hour, and that is before overtime. And these people, because the degrees take only 2 years to get and frequently allow you to live at home, are graduating without debt, unlike many people who have been foolishly told to go to a 4-year college and are not getting a lot out of it. So I am pleased today to vote for the Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, which will also reduce, to a degree, paperwork required by the Federal Government.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I came down to the floor today to address the resolution we have talked about regarding the carbon tax, but since then, I think something else has come up. We just heard one of my colleagues, I think, kind of belittle Uber drivers and waiters and waitresses. I tell you, when I take an Uber, I don't think it is something that you have to resort to, to take that job. I think it is a very hard job, going all about the city, being able to get along with sometimes difficult people, working nights. Waiters and waitresses, same thing. I have worked in kitchens. I don't think one should say that one has to resort to these jobs. It is kind of a thing that some Congressmen have around here that I don't like. They become removed, and they sometimes think that they are more important than people doing other jobs. I think those are both fine jobs. I respect the Uber drivers who drive me around this city. I used to work in a kitchen, and I respect the waiters and waitresses. I don't believe one should describe working as an Uber driver or a waiter and a waitress as something people have to resort to. They are fine jobs. Now, I guess I came down here for the carbon tax. I will point out that I think the carbon tax, if implemented and people throw it out there, the carbon tax will fall on the average guy the most. It is something that falls on people who drive a car, which will be a regressive tax. It falls on people who heat their homes, which will be a regressive tax. It bothers me, particularly when disproportionately it comes from the party that purports to represent the average guy, that when they think of a new tax to apply out there, they are going to promote a tax that disproportionately affects the average guy, because everybody has a heat bill, almost everybody has a car. I think, among the other things that would cause a damper on the American economy, I don't like taxes that disproportionately hit the average guy.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this amendment is to deal with the new rule entitled, ``National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone,'' which affects several Wisconsin counties that I represent along Lake Michigan. Since the original CLEAR Act came into effect, the Environmental Protection Agency has had the authority to regulate air emissions from stationary and mobile sources. They have--and this is a good thing-- over time, progressively come up with new rules, making the standards more and more stringent for the counties along Lake Michigan. If you are ruled a nonattainment, it is a burden. It is a burden on industry that has to spend substantial amounts of additional money dealing with stricter and stricter standards, putting them at a competitive disadvantage compared to other parts of the country and other parts of the world. It is also a difficult thing for individual motorists who find their cars have to be repaired. It is very expensive. Some of it is easy for people who have a high salary to deal with. Maybe they don't have an older car. But I have always felt that some of this disproportionately affects the people who are just struggling to get a goal in life. Therefore, when the EPA comes up with new standards, it is not without effect. They need to come up with new standards they proposed a couple of years ago. The purpose of the amendment is to prevent them from spending money promulgating these new standards so that our industries may have a predictable situation and not be at a competitive disadvantage. I should point out that, insofar as the counties along Lake Michigan are ruled a nonattainment, it may be through no fault of their own. In part, for historical reasons, they have monitored the ozone by placing the monitors real near Lake Michigan, where there are artificially high amounts of ozone. Secondly, we have a situation where, insofar as there are pollutants in the area, almost all of them come from south of Wisconsin, out of Chicago or areas further south. As a practical matter, it can be almost impossible, or even impossible, for these Wisconsin counties to deal with these problems. I have been working with the Environmental Protection Agency on this issue. After introducing the amendment, I have continued to work with the Environmental Protection Agency. While I would like to deal with this problem statutorily, I realize it would be probably better for all concerned if the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as the business community in Wisconsin, and I could reach a conclusion. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. Chair, I withdraw my amendment.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent to modify the amendment in the form I have placed at the desk. There was a minor change in the figure there.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Chair, I will address the amendment. The purpose of this amendment is to try to make a small dent in what I consider to be the overall excessive spending that is going on here. In the year which we are currently in, we anticipate borrowing about 22 percent of the Federal budget. A few years ago, we had that number down to around 11 percent--and to a certain extent because of the hurricanes, but to a certain extent not--we now are borrowing up to 22 percent. President Trump, at the time he originally submitted the budget for this time, which was before the budget agreement was reached, I think, anticipated spending over $50 billion less than the amount that was spent in the last year. I tried to look at something to just give a little bit, a tip of the cap, to President Trump's request. I think he is paying a lot more attention to the burden we are placing on our children and grandchildren than Congress collectively. And I looked at the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am requesting a 15 percent reduction in both of those numbers. It seems when you reduce anything else, it seems to plan that it is a matter of life and death, and horrible things are going to happen. I like the arts. I don't know if I like the humanities quite as much as the arts, but they are okay, too. But it is hard to believe, at a time when we are borrowing 22 percent of our overall budget, that a minor 15 percent cut in these two items would be inappropriate. We are, right now, going up in the National Endowment of the Humanities, hitting an all-time high this year, at the time of this huge deficit, and we are also increasing in the proposed budget the amount we are spending on the humanities. It seems to me that these things, you could argue, are not necessarily a Federal purpose at all. I am not like President Trump was 2 years ago and trying to zero out these two lines altogether, but I think it is a little bit of an insult to our President, an insult to our children, an insult to our grandchildren to go up to high numbers on both these items. So the purpose of my amendment, a minor 15 percent reduction. There is still more in both these accounts than we had just a few years ago. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Just a comment from the humble Congressman from Wisconsin. It was said that this is a small amount. I still think $300 million is a lot of money, okay? And we are only taking about $45 million out of that. We are leaving a lot behind. We are leaving--I don't feel, at this time, with such a big debt, we should be setting the all-time high that we have ever put in the endowment for the humanities and higher than any other amount we have put in the arts for the last 8 years. And when I run for this job, I don't find anybody running around saying that they have got a big crisis in this country. I have a lot of rural area. And we have got to spend a lot more money in Washington, we have got this big debt, on the arts and humanities. My local and municipal government are pleased to fund this. Philanthropists are pleased to fund this, and even people without a lot of money like me are happy to fund it on our own. I request that the amendment pass and we make a little dent in this huge level of spending, and take a small amount out of here; not as much as President Trump, who cares so much about our children and grandchildren, wanted to take out, but at least a small 15 percent out due to our huge debt. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 261.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 5891.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5891) to establish an interagency task force to improve the Federal response to families impacted by substance abuse disorders.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my Democratic colleagues for making this a fine piece of bipartisan legislation. I hope when the recommendations come back in 9 months, we can have another nice big bipartisan vote and move the recommendations out. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, my final comment on this issue, first of all, for the folks back home, is that when politicians talk about resources, they really mean money. Back in Wisconsin, when I think of resources, I think of timber, iron ore, oil, gas, and that sort of thing. But up here, I guess when we talk about resources, we mean money. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.