Glenn Grothman

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the crisis we have on our southern border. Last week, I was fortunate enough to go with three other Congressmen to see the Rio Grande Valley sector, and I want to educate the American public, as well as my colleagues, as to what I saw down there. It is my personal belief that it is the biggest crisis that we are facing today. First of all, let's just look at the raw numbers. In June, we have had contact with 190,000 people at the border. Now, a lot of those are turned around. We do not know, because the numbers are not yet available, how many are let in the country, but we believe about 16,000 children who were unaccompanied by an adult are let in; we believe about 24,000 other family members are let in; and we believe about 30,000 people who are not touched by the Border Patrol and who are sneaking across the line are let in. So, we believe that more than 70,000 people, who we did not pick and did not vet, were let in America in June, as opposed to about 6,000 people last June. That is kind of a dramatic change, 6,000 to 70,000 people. Normally, this time of year, by the way, those numbers are falling, but they went up in June compared to May. Why? Normally, it is hot this time of year, and people are less likely to travel south of the border, but more people are coming up here. I have been down to the border four times this year, and things are different from sector to sector. The Rio Grande Valley sector is that which borders the Gulf of Mexico. I want to point out that, there, people are coming from countries you would expect, primarily Honduras, then Guatemala, then Mexico, then El Salvador, although other countries like Haiti, Ecuador, or Cuba are also in the top 10, a little bit different than other regions where Brazil led the way or where Russia was very close to the top. I want to point out that according to the Border Patrol agents I talked to, frequently, these people are not necessarily starving or poor, with the exception of Venezuela and Cuba, where they have had to put up with socialist Marxist governments. They appear well fed. Some of them, particularly from Cuba or Europe, are actually, judging by their clothes or the purses they have, relatively well off. I stood on the border in a path between the Rio Grande River and where you check in with the Border Patrol. During the 45 minutes I stood there, again and again and again clumps of people, 15 people, 45 people, 25 people, were coming across. They were rather jolly, despite the fact that I was standing next to a Border Patrol agent. That did not intimidate them. They knew that, under our new laws, they would be escorted in. They just smiled, waved, and were completely happy. They knew that they would wind up being looked at, at the border. That is why people just kept coming, until 3 o'clock in the morning, as one of my colleagues saw. What other comments can I make about watching this huge sea of humanity cross the border? It is strengthening the cartels. I do not know if I believe it, but a Border Patrol agent told me that he felt the Mexican cartels are now making more money escorting people across the American border than they are from drugs. I can't document that. That is just what I was told. If you have to come across the border, if you come across the Rio Grande, people have to realize, you do not get to come across unless you deal with the drug cartels. They will charge someone from Mexico about $3,000; from Central America, about $5,000; from Brazil--and these are all abouts--you negotiate your own price with the cartels, maybe $10,000. I didn't see anybody coming from China, but our tour guides at the Rio Grande Valley said it was not uncommon to get people from China. They may be paying up to $20,000. You get different trips. When you come up from Central America, first of all, you are escorted toward a place near the border between Mexico and Central America. Then, you pay to get from a gathering place there to a gathering place just south of the American border. Then, you are escorted to the Rio Grande River and over the Rio Grande River. Maybe for a higher quality trip, it might cost you $12,000 to get a better boat, that sort of thing, as you worked your way north. You have to pay. We recently heard a story from the Border Patrol in which somebody from Ecuador refused to pay. He felt like he could just come across the border. The gangs just killed him on the spot, boom. That is the type of thing you are dealing with. A lot of sexual assaults, so as our Border Patrol interviews people, they try to do something about it. But, obviously, given the hodgepodge nature of the border, I think very rarely are they able to catch the assailant. To give you a further idea of how difficult it is, people might say: Why does the Border Patrol not intercept the boat coming across the Rio Grande? Because what the drug cartels will do if there is a little child on the boat, and there is frequently a little child, they will just throw that child in the river, knowing full well that the U.S. Border Patrol, being compassionate Americans, will help that 1-year-old or 3-year-old child to safety rather than go after the drug cartel or the person working for the drug cartel, escorting people across the border. I was told again today, talking to our Border Patrol, that is very common, that they would throw a little child in the river. Kind of an interesting thing, if you watch these people come across, it is so automatic that, nowadays, they get a little wristband, like you might get at a county fair. That wristband varies depending upon the quality of trip you are going to get, as well as which gang is escorting you across. It is just done automatically. Like I said, you come to the southern border of Mexico. Then, you take a plane, train, or bus through Mexico and enter another gathering place just south of the border. You are escorted to the river, and then escorted on a boat across. Like I said, depending on the quality of the trip, $3,000, or from Asia, $20,000--a very difficult thing. The next thing we learned down there, you might think: What does Mexico think about the new policies implemented by the United States? Of course, the biggest policy is that we got rid of the migrant protection program, where people who were going to ask for asylum had to stay south of the border. For whatever reason, the Biden administration decided to get rid of that. Since then, the Border Patrol agents I talked to felt they were getting less cooperation with Mexico. They are still getting cooperation, but it frayed the very good cooperation we had with the Mexican border patrol 6 months ago because the attitude of the Mexican border patrol themselves or the police themselves is: Why should I risk my life taking on the drug gangs when the Americans on the other side don't really seem to care about protecting their own border? The next thing to point out, that I didn't know looking at TV, is it is not unusual at all to have people come here without their own ID. Without their own ID, of course, you have to take their word for it, as to who they are. You can't do criminal background checks like you want to do. Bizarrely, even without an ID, the wonderful American taxpayer will fly you or bus you wherever you want to go in the United States. When I left that area, in the McAllen airport, I saw people with manila envelopes. On the envelope, it says: ``I do not speak English,'' but it gives directions as to where you should go. As we talked to some of the immigrants coming across, they knew where they wanted to go. ``I want to go to Chicago.'' ``I want to go to New York.'' ``I want to go to Louisiana.'' So, we dutifully put the instructions on the manila envelope, without ID, and they are allowed to get on the airlines without ID, something that none of us could do, and we take them wherever they want to go. The next comment I will have is people talk about keeping families together. Under the current system, as we open up the border, we see not a small number of children all alone in what I can only describe as cages. I would say they are maybe 20 feet by 20 feet with maybe eight kids in there all under the age of 5, or another fencing area with kids who are older than that crowded together, maybe 10 to 13. They are, obviously, kids. We do let kids in who claim to be under 18 who almost certainly aren't. But in any event, it is kind of heartbreaking to see these little kids under the age of 5 sitting on mats, asleep at 10 in the morning without any adults to accompany them, without their parents to accompany them. Now, you might say: What are they doing here? Bizarrely, I think, parents will send their kids north to live with an aunt and uncle or gram or grandpa or whatever, and they put the address and the name of the people on their T-shirts or with something the kids are carrying. Then, the kids show the Border Patrol their T-shirts, and the United States sends the kids to a nonprofit organization that takes them to New York, Baltimore, or wherever. It frustrates the Border Patrol because, of course, in the United States, if we knew parents who just wrote on a 3-year-old's shirt ``take Johnny to 123 Elm Street in Los Angeles, California,'' and dropped him off at the airport, those parents would be getting a call from social services. But here, in dealing with immigrants, we don't consider that unusual at all. ``Oh, Johnny, we are supposed to find a way to take you from McAllen to 123 Elm Street in West Bend, Wisconsin.'' Why? We have no problem doing that. It is just something that bothers the Border Patrol and bothers me as well. The next thing to think about, something new that the Border Patrol sees, and I am a big advocate for those people who are born with different abilities, but it is apparent to the Border Patrol that, more recently, they are getting kids who they wonder if they are coming from orphanages, who have different abilities than the rest of us-- you could say special needs. We are seeing more of that come across the border. Of course, America is a very wonderful country, and we do take these kids in. I am sure we will find special programs for them. But I think it ought to be openly discussed if we are seeing a new trend of countries south of the border feeling that it is up to the United States to care for this population. I am going to comment a little bit on the people they call got-aways. Obviously, if you have so many young kids who are being processed here, Mr. Speaker, the Border Patrol has to spend a lot of time filling out paperwork and interviewing these folks. What happens when the Border Patrol is filling out paperwork and changing diapers? They don't have time to guard the border. As a result, we have heard in certain sectors the Border Patrol is at one half the number of people they want on the border, which is why this time last year they had about 6,000 got-aways sneaking in every month, and now there are 30,000 got-aways sneaking in every month. A discussion of what I learned at the border is incomplete without talking about the drugs that are coming across the border. Ever since I have had this job, we have talked about the number of people who are dying in this country by illegal drug overdoses. I think after a while people's eyes tend to glaze over, and they may not be aware that in the last 6 or 7 years the number of people dying in this country has doubled. When I first got this job, it was about 45,000 a year, and I was just stunned at 45,000. It is not that far away from the number of people who died fighting in Vietnam, and every year that many people die of drug overdoses in this country. It has doubled. It is now up to 90,000 a year. When I talked to the local DEA agent in Milwaukee, he told me that he felt the drugs from all of the overdoses in Milwaukee County--which at the time was 540 a year--probably came across the southern border. Just like every other member of law enforcement in Wisconsin, they wonder what we are doing in Washington to prevent these drugs from coming across the southern border. Why is there such a big increase? I think two things: First of all, more drugs are coming across the border. As marijuana becomes legalized in more and more States and grown legally in more States, there is a speculation that the drug gangs who, after all, make money selling drugs, are shifting from marijuana to harder drugs. Secondly, the current drug of choice, the drug that is being used by these horrible cartels--and by the way, we ought to put more of these people in prison, not less--the type of drugs that are being brought across by these cartels is fentanyl. I had always thought that heroin was about the most dangerous thing you could take, Mr. Speaker. Fentanyl is much more dangerous than heroin, which is why I recently talked to a district attorney in my district, and in his area there were as many people who died from drug overdoses last year as the 3 prior years combined. It is what we see as the young people shift or older people shift from heroin to fentanyl on purpose or not on purpose, because frequently the fentanyl is put in with the heroin. So if we care about the 90,000 people who are dying every year in this country of illegal overdoses and we think about the poor families who lose their loved ones and wonder what we are going to do, it seems that a minimum part of the response has to be to respond at the border. One more time, it seems like we are going in the opposite direction. We are doing less at the border. More people are coming across, and more people coming across means more fentanyl; more fentanyl coming across means more fentanyl-laced heroin; and more fentanyl-laced heroin means more people dying and more broken hearts of the families of the people who are dying. So what can I recommend to the wonderful Congressman in the Chair? First of all, I will ask the Biden administration not to get rid of title 42. That is the section that allows the Border Patrol to turn people around because of fear of COVID. There are rumors that the use of title 42 is soon going to be dropped by the Biden administration. Perhaps the uptick in COVID will cause them not to do it. But as I said, already we have 70,000 people a month crossing the border, and if the word gets out that we are no longer going to turn away single adults or families with kids over the age of 7 who are right now being turned around because of COVID, that 70,000-a-month figure is going to shoot up even more. Secondly, with regard to COVID right now, the Border Patrol checks people, but they only check people if they have a temperature of at least 99; otherwise, they just send them on--which includes a lot of asymptomatic people--to the nongovernmental organizations who take these people next. If they test positive there, then these organizations put them up in hotels or apartments. But because they are here illegally and they want to get inland to America, what do the people with COVID do once they are placed in a hotel or placed in an apartment? They leave right away. So, right now, as a practical matter the policy of the Biden administration of people who come here--I am not talking about unvaccinated people, I am talking about people who literally have COVID--the response of this country is we let them in. I would beg the Biden administration to do something about that concern. So keep or expand title 42 so people can't get here because of COVID. And, secondly, when people test positive for COVID, don't let them out. That is kind of opposite of the whole story we are getting from the President. The third thing I would like to ask the President to do--and I made this request, I think it was 3 weeks ago now--please put someone other than Vice President Harris in charge of the border. She went down to the El Paso sector. She did a few-hour perfunctory check. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, I learn so much more every time I am down there, and usually I stay down there a couple days each. Every sector of the southern border is different, and there are nine sectors there. I happened to be in the Rio Grande sector this time. It is very different from what you learn in the Tucson sector, Mr. Speaker, and very different from what you learn in the San Diego sector. Please, President Biden, pick someone who either has a zeal to control the southern border or at least is personally responsible enough to go down there and do something. Because I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, that 70,000 figure now up from 6,000 a year ago is going to do nothing but grow; and if you ever get rid of title 42, it is going to rocket up through the roof. I don't think there is any country-- particularly a country with a generous welfare state like we have--who can survive purely open borders. So there is your primer, Mr. Speaker, for all the people fortunate enough to be in the room and fortunate to be listening at all. I beg President Biden to take the border more seriously, and I beg the media of this country to take the border more seriously. I do not think anything that the government does or does not do is more significant than what happens with the 70,000 people who are coming across the border today, and what I believe will happen as soon as the weather gets a little cooler and it becomes more apparent to people around the world, soon that number is going to go from 70 to 80 to 90 to 100 and maybe significantly more than that. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, recently, if you look at the CDC numbers, we hit an all-time record in drug overdoses for a 12-month period at 90,000. That is up from 45,000 only 6 years ago. There are two dangerous trends that are going the exact opposite way than you would think, if we care about the people who died and their families. First of all, because of the antipolice hysteria out there, the number of police are being reduced; and for that reason, at least in my area, they are no longer doing criminal investigations in some cities when there are drug overdoses. Secondly, I think the major reason for the massive increase in deaths is the increase in fentanyl deaths--fentanyl being actually much more dangerous than heroin. We now have this happening at a time when the Border Patrol is being pulled off the border to process unaccompanied minors and we have the horrible situation of not even increasing the budget of the Border Patrol. Mr. Speaker, if we care about the 90,000 people who die every year of drug overdoses, it is time to start caring a little bit more about the border and care a little bit more about the number of police we have in our country.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, due to an important meeting, I missed this vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 198. Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress Babin (Nehls) Boebert (Gosar) Cardenas (Gomez) Cawthorn (Nehls) Cohen (Beyer) Comer (Cammack) Fallon (Nehls) Gallego (Gomez) Garcia (TX) (Jeffries) Grijalva (Stanton) Horsford (Jeffries) Jacobs (NY) (Garbarino) Johnson (TX) (Jeffries) Kirkpatrick (Stanton) Lawson (FL) (Evans) Leger Fernandez (Jacobs (CA)) Lieu (Beyer) Long (Fleischmann) Lowenthal (Beyer) McClain (Bergman) Meng (Jeffries) Mullin (Lucas) Napolitano (Correa) Owens (Stewart) Payne (Pallone) Ruiz (Aguilar) Rush (Underwood) Sewell (DelBene) Steube (Franklin, C. Scott) Strickland (DelBene) Timmons (Gonzalez (OH)) Wilson (FL) (Hayes) Young (Mast)

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I stand in solidarity with the majority of Americans that oppose taxpayer funding of abortions. Despite how clear Americans are on the issue, President Biden and the Democrats in Congress are attempting to force Americans to pay for abortions. President Biden's recent budget calls for removal of the Hyde amendment, the appropriations rider that prohibits Federal funding of abortion. Congressional Democrats have committed to removing the Hyde amendment and other longstanding pro-life provisions from this year's appropriations bill. We must not allow longstanding abortion funding prohibitions that are widely supported by the American people to be gotten rid of at the whims of pro-abortion radicals. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committees on Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 18, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I will have to admit that when I first got this job and walked through Statuary Hall, I was kind of surprised at some of the people who are honored there. In particular, Alexander Stephens was one that kind of jumped out at me. And right before the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln talked about malice towards none and charity for all. And I think that charity for all was being a little abused when people like Alexander Hamilton Stephens got their statue down there. Be that as it may, there is another part of this bill that is put before us. We have talked about the Dred Scott decision. I am going to talk a little bit about Roe v. Wade and a history of Roe v. Wade that I think a lot of people don't know about. I get this history in part from an article put out by Planned Parenthood and in part from a book written by Bob Woodward. Obviously, Roe v. Wade could be described as the most significant court decision in that it legalized abortion, and we have 60 million fewer Americans than we would have if this decision had not happened. However, a change was made in that decision as they were debating it, upping that 60 million figure a little bit higher because a decision was made at the end to go from allowing abortions at 3 months to allowing abortions all the way until viability--late-term abortion. The author of that decision, Justice Blackmun, was just going to go 3 months, and he got a letter put out by Thurgood Marshall, who wanted it to be much higher. I can't tell you exactly how many abortions past 3 months we have had in this country, but it is probably over 5 million. And that was because Thurgood Marshall was in the right or wrong position--however you want to look at it--to go from 3 months to making America one of seven countries in the world where they allow abortions so late. And of those countries includes North Korea, Vietnam, Red China--not countries you want to be associated with.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, if this bill becomes law and we walk through there, we are going to see Thurgood Marshall--or at least I will always look at him as the guy who weighed in and felt after abortion was largely illegal in this country for its first 200 years, the guy who kind of put the foot on the gas and legalized late-term abortion and put the United States in with those other six countries. Madam Speaker, for that reason, I am going to vote against this bill today. And, hopefully, someday in America, the Roe v. Wade decision and putting the United States in the position in which even 6- or 7-month- old babies can have their lives taken away, hopefully that will eventually end.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to, first of all, applaud the fact that Vice President Harris is going to the southern border. I don't know whether she has done this on her own accord or with prodding from President Biden, but, either way, I am glad she is going down there. I have been to the border several times this year. I think it is very difficult to learn all you should learn in one day. There are nine sectors to the southern border, and what you learn in El Paso is very different from what you learn in Yuma. It is very different from what you learn in San Diego. It is very different from what you learn in McAllen. Nevertheless, I am glad she is going down there, and I would like to make some suggestions for her, which we will forward to her as questions she should be asking or things she should learn about the southern border. First of all, Madam Vice President, the Migrant Protection Protocols caused the Mexican Government to hold asylum seekers on the south side of the border. President Biden has since walked away from the protocol. What effect did the nullification of this agreement with the Mexican Government have on the number of people crossing the border? And what effect will it have on the number of people from around the world who will come here in the future? Secondly, we also had Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Central American countries that held people south not only of the Mexican border, but south of Mexico. What effect did President Biden's ending the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Central American countries have on the number of people entering southern Mexico? And what effect will this have on people coming through Mexico from around the world? Third, I want the Vice President to find out what type of drugs are coming across the border. Has there been a change in the fraction of marijuana versus fentanyl coming across the southern border? How lethal is fentanyl? Fourth, I hear horrific stories from the border guards as far as women and girls being sexually assaulted on their journey through Mexico. What percentage of women and girls are sexually assaulted as they travel to enter the U.S. illegally? Fifth, you will find when you get down there, Madam Vice President, that families consist of adults and children, find out how many times a family supposedly shows up and the Border Patrol suspects that the children are not part of the family, and what happens when DNA tests are given to children and the adults they are entering with? Six, how much does it cost for the migrants to enter our country? And by that, I mean how much are they having to pay the drug cartels? I think you will find different numbers for the cost of a Mexican, a Central American, a Brazilian, and Asian. But you should ask these questions when you are on the southern border. Seventh, got-aways are when people come in this country and have no contact with the Border Patrol. As the Border Patrol must spend time doing paperwork with the huge increase of unaccompanied children coming here, has the number of got-aways, increased from this time last year to now? Eighth, I think you should look at some demonstrations with some dogs. How effective are dogs in looking for fentanyl and other drugs, and should we be purchasing more dogs in this budget? Next, I ask you to look at the border wall which you will find is 30- feet high and 8 feet underground. Talk to the Border Patrol, talk to ICE, talk to local law enforcement, and see what they think of that wall and whether it would be worth expanding it or whether your administration was right to just cut it off with equipment just sitting in the open sun. Next, Madam Vice President, you said you want to focus on the root causes from countries whose citizens are coming here. I ask you to find out what countries are sending its citizens here and which countries have sent a significant amount of people. I think you are going to be surprised that it is not just a matter of people coming here from Mexico or Honduras. They are coming from around the world, but you should report back on the number of countries you would have to improve to prevent the demand from going up further to come here. Next, in the opinion of the Border Patrol, have you and the President's public comments during your campaign and after the campaign had an impact on the number of people coming to this country? I would ask members of the Border Patrol. The twelfth question is: Have your comments, as well as the fact that you have decided to take 13 weeks before you decided to go to the border, had an effect on the morale of the Border Patrol? You and the President have not visited the border, which I think is the biggest crisis facing your administration since you were both sworn in. What do they think about that, and what can you do to make up any dispiriting of these brave people due to your inaction to this point? Thirteen, and one of the scary things that I don't think we have talked about: Ask the Border Patrol if they keep track of how many people drown in the Rio Grande trying to come here every year, and how many people dehydrate in the Arizona or New Mexico or Texas deserts as they try to come here. And, finally, look for what policies we can implement from Washington to make your job of securing the border easier. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to discuss the threat of inflation on the future of America's economy. In other places around the Capitol at this time, people are discussing a new infrastructure bill. They are talking about a new 2022 budget. People talk about the importance of not raising taxes on the poor. Earlier this year, they rejected a possible gas tax hike because it would have fallen disproportionately on the poor. But there is no surer way to penalize the poor of this country than to inflate the currency. Look at where we already are on other commodities: aluminum, lumber, soybeans. How are our young people going to buy that first house? The cost of food, and even prepared food, is going up. Why is that? Take a look at the charts showing the amount of currency in banks. M1 currency, which is up by a factor of 5 times; not 5 percent, not 50 percent, but a factor of 5 times in the last year. Look at M2, up 30 percent in the last year. Of course, the cost of commodities is spiraling through the roof. America is a wealthy country because our dollar has been the envy of the world. But this Congress has not been acting like a Congress with the world's reserve currency. This Congress is acting like the Congress of a country such as Zimbabwe, and we all saw on TV what happened there. It is time for the people who are not only negotiating the infrastructure bill, but negotiating the 2022 budget, to take into account what they are doing to the poor of this country or the middle class of this country as they inevitably stoke inflation. Think of the people on almost fixed incomes, on Social Security. Think of all of the people on pensions, who are locked in at $15,000 a year, $20,000 a year, and think how their purchasing power will go down if we continue along this path, including the bloated budget proposed by President Biden himself. We must rein in our spending. The poor and the middle class are the ones paying the price. I beg the negotiators to stand up to the people who think that printing hundreds of millions of dollars more in the infrastructure bill or passing this bill with an excessively high spending increase in the regular 2022 budget will not affect the average guy. It is going to affect the average guy. It is going to erode their savings. It will shrink the values of their pension or Social Security. It will be a true disaster for middle class and poor America. Questions for Vice President Harris on Her Trip to the Southern Border

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. As we turn on the news every night and we think again and again about all of the changes to America that have happened in the last 4 months, it is so easy to just focus on the border or focus on the inflation or focus on the constant drumbeat that America is a horrible, racist nation. And by doing so, we forget the huge changes we have had in American law and American funding that affect the number of abortions that happen not only in the United States, but around the world. It is hard to believe that throughout most of this country's history, even before ultrasounds were invented, the consensus in this country was that abortion was horrific; it was murder. What have we done in the last few months? First of all, we have repealed the Mexico City policy so that funds are once again going to organizations abroad that don't directly but indirectly fund abortions. Secondly, we have overturned President Trump's Protect Life rule, which will reopen Title X Family Planning funding for Planned Parenthood. We believe that under this, Planned Parenthood has received $60 million a year, which not only, in part, goes to fund abortions, but also goes to fund an organization that is designed to encourage or change America's traditional dislike of abortion. We are restoring funding to the U.N. Population Fund, which supported China's birth limit law, and is also proselytizing for abortion. In the latest attack on unborn babies and pro-life Americans, President Biden released a fiscal year 2022 budget that removes the Hyde amendment, the longstanding provision that prohibits Federal funding of abortions. We don't believe this is what Americans want. The vast majority of Americans do not support taxpayer funding of abortion. So much for the unity that President Biden promised us. There is, over time, more and more scientific literature that demonstrates unborn babies can feel pain at a very earlier gestational age, at the 15-week-old gestational age. So much for science. This is pro-abortion extremism. We can start by making the Hyde amendment permanent by passing H.R. 18, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, we are back here after 3 weeks in our districts, and I think our minds should probably be on the border and the thousands of people--tens of thousands of people streaming across every month, or perhaps on the economic problems caused by higher inflation. But, instead, there was a few brief statements made by one of our prominent TV anchors that causes me to feel I have to speak tonight. While we were gone, we celebrated both Memorial Day and the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who have died for our freedoms. We celebrated another anniversary of D-day, the landing in Europe. And when we think about Memorial Day, we can't help but remember other names of battles during World War II: Okinawa, Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Midway, the Battle of the Bulge, as well as all the soldiers who died fighting the communists in Vietnam and Korea. It is a time for superlatives talking about the heroic efforts of these great men and women. Unfortunately, on a formerly major network, NBC or MSNBC, Brian Williams decided to compare or supposedly compliment all of our brave troops by comparing them to people who fight under the most evil banner I think that has existed, or one of the two most evil banners that has existed in the last 100 years, and that is the banner of antifa. Antifa is an organization. If we had their flag here before us, it is virtually identical to the flag used by the communists in the early 1920s in Nazi Germany. The socialist flag at the time, the communist flag, allied with the Soviet Union, which at the time millions of people were dying as they adjusted to life without the czar and life under communism. The Soviet armies were soon responsible for killing millions and millions of Ukrainians as they guarded the food so the kulaks would starve to death, the communist armies that in Red China caused tens of millions of deaths, the communist armies in Cambodia, these countries with their anti-God philosophy, proud in Red China when the final Christian churches were closed. Of all things, to compare our troops at D-day with antifa, I cannot imagine a greater insult to give these soldiers. I wish more of them were still alive so they could respond to seeing on television a TV anchor trying to compare them--these brave men to keep the world free-- to compare them to antifa, a group whose flag is almost identical to the communist flag. By the way, it is not surprising that we have a red flag for Nazi Germany and a red flag for the Soviet Union. Red at the time stood for socialism. Our young children should be educated on the comparisons between the two. During the 1920s, there were times when both ideologies entered into joint strikes because they both wanted to get rid of what existed of a free country in Germany at the time. We would like to hear from NBC. Shame on you, NBC, the once-proud network. Would you respond to the statements by Brian Williams comparing the men who died at D-day, the men who landed on European soil to free Europe? Will you respond to your anchor implying they were the equivalent of antifa, a group connected with communism? Shame on that once-proud number one network in America. What do you think of what you have done? The next issue I would like to comment on that I heard about again and again when I was back is an issue that is not surprising. To a certain extent, some of the policies of the past are responsible for this, but recently, we have had a new round of checks go out, a greater increase in the money supply, both M1 and M2. Not surprising, when the government prints money, we see an increase in the amount of gasoline, an increase in food prices led by an increase in soybeans, an increase in lumber, and massive increases in homebuilding. I am scared to death for the younger generation as a new economic ideology seems to have taken over in which there is a feeling that you can spend yourself into prosperity. When I look at the degree to which housing costs have skyrocketed within the last year, it is perhaps not surprising, given the degree to which money is being printed. But it is going to be much more difficult for a young couple to buy that first house today compared to 12 years ago. It is important that everybody in this Chamber sit back and question the idea that is being approved by the Federal Reserve that America can become wealthier just by printing money. America will not become wealthier by printing money. America will have inflation, and that inflation will strike hardest at commodity prices and hardest at housing. So everybody in this Chamber, before we vote for any more spending bills, ought to look at the rather boring charts of M1 and M2 as we analyze the money supply and look at the cost of all commodities over the last year as this Chamber has decided that the way to create prosperity is to print more money. I do feel it is also important to address one more time the crisis at the border and the variety of bad things happening because of that crisis and not caring like we did only a few months ago as to who crosses the border. I don't think we have spent enough time addressing the drug crisis in America. It has been around so long, it becomes boring even to think about it. Except recently, we hit the point at which 90,000 Americans had died of drug overdoses in a 12-month period. When I talk to people at the border or my local drug enforcement administration, they both agree that this is in part happening because more drugs are coming across the border. In part, it is predictable that more drugs are coming across the border because it is easier to get across the border. More people are crossing the border. But even more so, as marijuana becomes legalized in the country, it is no longer profitable to bring marijuana across the southern border. I heard an anecdote of a significant amount of marijuana coming across the border, and the people who owned it couldn't sell it. Because the marijuana produced by the now-legalized agriculture operations in the United States--not surprisingly, because we now do genetic engineering, that sort of thing--the marijuana produced in the United States in States like Colorado and Washington is superior to the marijuana brought across the Mexican border. Well, if the Mexican drug cartels cannot make money selling marijuana or bringing marijuana across the border, how are they going to make it up? They are going to make it up by bringing more and more dangerous drugs--meth, cocaine, heroin, but above all, fentanyl. They are going to bring more and more fentanyl across the southern border. Now, we have 90,000 deaths in this country in 1 year. A little bit of my district touches Milwaukee County, not a huge county, by nationwide standards, about a million people. Last year, 540 people died of drug overdoses in Milwaukee County. There were about 200 murders, which is the all-time record, and everybody couldn't believe 200 murders. There were over 500 illegal overdoses. Now, what do we do about that? Well, clearly, one of the things we have to do is we have to prevent these drugs from coming into the country in the first place. It is disappointing that we put the security of the border on the back burner and think of excuses not to deal with it. But in addition to thinking of all the people running across the border, take a minute to think about the 90,000 people, many very young people, dying primarily of fentanyl but also other illegal drug overdoses, and ask yourself: What is this body going to do to stop it? Of course, other problems are at the border. We have gone from checking in or touching about 17,000 people a month to 180,000 people a month. As far as got-aways, people who aren't even checked in, our Border Patrol estimates we have gone from about 6,000 this time last year to about 30,000 now--just massive increases. I would guess between got-aways and people who are checked into the country, we are looking at 60,000 or 70,000 a month instead of under 10,000 a month at this time last year. It is truly a crisis. Quite frankly, this body ought to be doing nothing else but dealing with that crisis until it is solved. The fact that we had under 10,000 people crossing the border only 4 or 5 months ago shows it is not something we don't know how to solve or that it is impossible to solve. It is that we are willingly allowing a massive increase across the border. Of course, that massive increase, since the drug cartels charge people to come here, also increases the power of those drug cartels, both in the United States and their country. It, to a degree, results in separation of children from their families, as unaccompanied children come here, as well as a given number of children are probably rented by people to come here because they know supposed intact families have a better chance of being allowed in this country than single people, who are still frequently turned around. In any event, there is a brief summary of issues. I hope I was enjoyable. And I hope NBC will let us know what they were thinking when Brian Williams decided to say that our soldiers landing on D-day were like antifa. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, a tragedy is going on in Israel. Over 4,000 rockets have been shot from Gaza and a handful from Lebanon. Twelve Israelis and about 200 Gazans have died. This is entirely unprovoked on Israel's part. It may have something to do with a future election on the West Bank. Iran is showing support for Hamas and is giving them financial aid, so they are partly responsible. Gaza, of course, could be a liveable, modern country. It used to be a vacation destination. And prior to 2005, when Israel turned it over, there were greenhouses for an agriculture sector. It is their own fault by collectively electing a government which not only declares a unilateral war, but chooses residential and commercial facilities as military locations, guaranteeing deaths of civilians, including children. Israel is a strong country, and, of course, they will not be defeated militarily. There is a danger, however. As explained by James Burnham in his book, ``Suicide of the West''--now over 50 years old--a decadent West may blame themselves for the corruption and lack of caring for human life in Gaza. Some Members of this body are already doing this. The United States and Israel must not shirk from our responsibilities as moral leaders of the world. We support Israel in defending themselves from the attacks of the morally bankrupt government in Gaza. We encourage them to continue this fight for as long as necessary to make sure their citizens are not at risk in the future.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, since our last couple of floor periods, I had a chance to visit our southern border one more time, and I would like to point out what is going on there because I think it is the most important issue in America today. So that our listeners understand, there are two classes of people who come to our border. There are people who are caught or deal with the Border Patrol--and a lot of people want to be found by the Border Patrol because they think they can come into this country through an asylum process--and there are other people who sneak across the border. In April, our Border Patrol touched--or dealt with about 178,000 individuals. A year ago, that number was 17,000. So we have voluntarily gone up from having the Border Patrol deal with about 17,000 to 178,000. As we deal with more people who are touched by the Border Patrol, the Border Patrol has to spend more time doing paperwork, particularly with the children. We have another group of people coming across the border called get- aways. Because they are get-aways, nobody knows exactly how many there are. We do have drones. We do have our new wall together with sensors. And we are guessing right now that the number of get-aways has gone from about 10,000 a month a year ago to 30,000 a month. We feel when you combine the two totals, we are going from about 10,000 a month people coming across our border to--just guessing--70- to 80,000 people a month crossing our border. One thing I found at the border is that it is a misnomer to say most or all of these people are necessarily coming from Mexico or Central America. The last time I was down there, we looked at the three western sectors of the Mexican border. There are nine sectors. We looked at the San Diego, El Centro, and Yuma sectors. In the San Diego sector, the second most common nationality coming across at the time we were down there was Russian. In the other two sectors, the most common nationality for quite a while had been Brazilian. While I was there, we watched Border Patrol process a group of about 40 people coming across. They weren't even from one country. It was a group, and some of the people were from Russia, some were from Romania, some were from Cuba. When we looked at the facilities the Border Patrol had down there, they had names of countries in--what else to call them--pens, where they were holding people. Sometimes a lot of people were kind of squished together. Another country that people are commonly coming from was Ecuador. I said a lot of people are coming here from Cuba. We saw a large pen for people from India, though, to be honest, nobody was in it. But in any event, people are coming here from all around the world. We also noticed at the border that the huge slats used to build the wall, which they had to cut short on, are apparently being stolen. Somebody paid for all these things that were supposed to be used to build a wall that was 30 feet high above the ground and 8 feet below the ground. We cut short the building of that wall right when President Biden was sworn in. We already paid for the equipment. There was a lot of equipment used to put together the wall that had been rented. Apparently that money was wasted. Right now, the slats used for the wall are apparently being stolen at night by people who are selling them on the market. One other observation about the wall: There has been an increase of traffic coming by boat in the San Diego area. And the reason the Border Patrol thinks that is true or the reason it is true is because of the effectiveness of the wall. Because the wall is doing a good job, people are more likely to get in a boat, go 20 miles out to sea and 20 miles back to come in. The people who are let in this country pending an asylum hearing are put all over the country. They are frequently left with a nonprofit organization, perhaps the Catholic Social Services, and they find somewhere for them everywhere you look. Another thing that you have to realize as things get worse with the wall is the number of drugs coming across the southern border. I had always wondered what would happen to the drug cartels as marijuana was legalized in the United States. One of the arguments for legalization of marijuana is it would weaken the drug cartels. Because they would no longer have to sneak the drugs across the border, that what would happen is that they would grow the marijuana in greenhouses here-- Colorado, Washington, where have you--and the drug gangs would dry up. Not so. I recently heard an anecdote in which a lot of marijuana was shipped across the border, and they couldn't find anybody to sell it to because the quality of marijuana grown in America is superior to the marijuana grown in Mexico. Because it is no longer that profitable to ship marijuana across the border, what happens is there has been a dramatic increase in more severe drugs: heroin; cocaine; meth; and the worst of all, fentanyl. We recently hit a new record in which we have had 90,000 deaths in a 12-month period in the United States. In Milwaukee County, of which I represent a part, there were 540 deaths last year. Milwaukee County is not big like Cook County or some of these other counties around here. It is about a million people. 540 deaths in Milwaukee County is a huge deal. For whatever reason, I think the press has underpublicized it. I think one of the reasons for the big increases is because you are seeing more and more dangerous drugs coming across the southern border. I would like to give a tip of the cap to the dogs that the Border Patrol uses at the border. When we were down there, we saw dogs who had detected fentanyl located in a gas tank. Of course, a gas tank smells so much, you figure there is no way that a dog could detect that because the smell of the gasoline is so strong. But even there, the dogs had detected it. The thing is, the dogs could only sniff so many cars coming across. It would be a good idea if the Border Patrol would get more dogs. In any event, if you want to talk about an underpublicized problem: 90,000 deaths in America last year from drug overdoses. At least at the drug administration in Milwaukee County, they speculated that the drugs that killed every one of the 540 people down there, either the drugs themselves or the ingredients for the drugs came across the southern border. Now, you might say: Can we do anything to prevent this? Can we do anything to prevent there being 17,000 up to 178,000 contacts coming across the border? Yes. Why did we not have a problem a little while ago, and what changed it? First of all, President Trump had negotiated something called the migrant protection protocol in which people were held on the Mexican side of the border pending a hearing for asylum. Because of that, less people showed up in the first place. President Biden got rid of President Trump's agreement with Mexico to hold people at the southern border. First of all, more people are let in right away, and secondly, it advertises to prospective illegal immigrants around the world that now is the time to come. Secondly, we had an asylum cooperative agreement with the Central American countries to hold people south of the Mexican border. In other words, if somebody wanted to come up from Venezuela and said, ``I need protection. I need asylum,'' they were held in Central American countries. Obviously, if they were concerned that they were being persecuted by the government, why would you have to come to the United States? It would be perfectly fine to stay in Guatemala, stay in El Salvador, wherever. That agreement was torn apart. Finally, we changed the way we are dealing with COVID. Given the big deal we make about COVID, it is kind of surprising the Biden administration is letting people in without being tested for COVID, but they are. Between these three things, we have managed to go to probably about 10,000 people who we don't want coming here a month to an unknown number, but probably 70,000 to 80,000. I am afraid what will happen is that number will continue to grow. One of the reasons it is so much greater than it was in the past is because the gangs that help people get here charge people to come here. They charge $3,000 for a Mexican to cross the border, about $5,000 for a Central American. I am told $9,000 to $10,000 for a Brazilian. Obviously, as it is easier to come here, the drug gangs will educate people in other countries and market in other countries to see if they can get here. Other comments that I learned at the border: We already, in this fiscal year, have 6,000 arrests. That is over twice the amount we had in the entire last fiscal year. And these are for very serious crimes. I also want to point out that usually you frequently only know if somebody has committed a crime or if somebody is a criminal if they committed a crime in this country. You don't know if they are coming here to escape from another country. So, we are letting an increased number of a criminal class in this country. It is estimated that 33 percent of the women who come to this country, on their way up, as they walk through Mexico, are abused. Some of these women may find they have to pay the money they are supposed to give to the gangs by being trafficked, and that is a horrible thing. I don't know where these people are in this building who purport to be concerned about human trafficking, but one way women can pay their way, for their $5,000 or $8,000 or whatever, is obvious. The current system encourages that. Another problem with it is when people cross the border, and it is a very mountainous border, whether you are in Arizona, whether you are in California, whether you are in New Mexico, you can wind up dehydrating to death. The drug gangs that show people how to get here do not take people necessarily all the way to civilization. They take them across the Mexican border, and they may say there is a town 10 miles that way or 15 miles that way. There may or may not be a town that close. The Americans do put jugs of water out for people and hope they survive. But last year, in the Tucson sector alone, they found 100 people dehydrated to death, which is another problem that you have with this hodgepodge at the border. Another problem that you find out is the children who come across the border, sometimes the children are people who are borrowed or rented or whatever from other people and are not related to the people who claim to be their parents or relatives in some fashion. Sometimes, we are able to identify that with DNA testing. Sometimes, we don't. Children come up, maybe young children, even 7- or 8-year-old children, have fastened to their clothing who they are supposed to contact when they come here. The United States, under a bad court decision--in my opinion, a bad court decision--those children, rather than, say, being sent back to their parents in Honduras, may be sent to their supposed aunt or uncle in New York. In the United States, when the children come to the border, they provide transportation to get those little kids to somewhere in the United States. The idea being that once one child comes here, eventually, the rest of the family is going to follow. All the way across the board, we have a very dangerous situation. I implore the Biden administration to do something about this, and I implore the American public to get upset about this and demand that their Congressman does something. I think the first thing we have to do is, of course, beg the Mexican Government to reinstate the migrant protection protocol, beg the Central American governments to reinstate the asylum cooperative agreements, and do what we can to immediately test for COVID the people coming across the border. The next thing we have to do, Mr. President, is address the Vice President. The Vice President was appointed over 8 weeks ago now to be the czar for the southern border. I have been at the border three times this year. You do not know what is going on at the border unless you literally sit down, talk to the Border Patrol agents, talk to law enforcement of the counties that are on the border, talk to the ranchers who have to live with people crossing their land. Clearly, Vice President Harris is not interested in finding these things out. I have made bad hires in my life. I have assigned people to jobs that maybe they couldn't do that well. I beg President Biden, who says he is a moderate, to find somebody else to be the border czar. The current situation in which we have the number of people let in this country rocketing up is just unacceptable. If Ms. Harris, or Vice President Harris, can go 8 weeks without visiting the border, it clearly shows that she is insubordinate, is not interested in doing a good job. There must be somebody else in the Biden administration who can pick up the slack and express some interest in closing our border. I should digress and point out that this does not mean we are anti- immigration. In 2019, almost 850,000 new citizens were sworn in, in this country. There are work visas, as well. There are plenty of ways to come into this country legally, but we do not need this massive sea of people coming here illegally. Again, I implore the American public. When we see the Border Patrol touch 178,000 people a month, that is unacceptable. When we talk about 30,000 getaways, that is not acceptable. The numbers are going to continue to spiral up as we have had public comments from both the President and Vice President that indicate they are not interested in enforcing our laws. Now I would like to touch briefly on another crisis that I hope the American public expresses their concern about during our 3-week recess. There have always been people trying to destroy America. And America is such a hope for people all around the world, both our example and the fact that we do have many immigrants coming here. There have been various ideologies which have been used to overthrow our government, or change our government so it is no longer in accordance with our Constitution. John Adams said our Constitution is fit for a moral and religious people and not fit for anyone else. There was a time when Marxists traditionally felt they could destabilize the American population and that way have a rebellion in the United States. Eventually, they gave up hope on traditional Marxism, or at least gave up hope for a while. The reason they gave up hope is, quite frankly, the American middle class was so prosperous. And in America you could find just by going to work, working hard, saving some money, you could buy a house bigger than what you would find in any other country. And as a result, the lure of Marxism, which took over in China--albeit with some mistakes made by the American Government--which took over in Russia, which took over in Cambodia, resulting in maybe over 100 million deaths of Marxists caused in other countries, not to mention the destruction of the churches, the destruction of the family. That failed. More recently, the left-wingers in our university system has taken it upon themselves to talk about critical race theory. Now under classic Marxism, they try to take over by educating the American public that they should be bitter and angry, and they should want to revolt so that they could own the factories or own the big houses, and have a revolution that way. The new effort is to try to create anger based on race, and they call it critical race theory. And they want to tell people that if you don't have all you have, it must be because of racism. If you don't have the nice house you want, if you don't have a big amount in your savings account, or whatever, that is the problem. Recently, I ran into a little bit of what I will call critical race theory in one of my local high schools. In the high school, a teacher educated a class, which was devoted to racism, mentioned that in the past year, 4 percent of the kids in this high school were Black, and 20 percent of the kids who were arrested were Black. The teacher told the kids, of course, or implied to the kids that this was the result of racism. There is a problem twice. First of all, you are educating people in the United States of America, which we have just covered, the whole rest of the world wants to get in here. You are educating kids that America is not worth preserving, America is not worth fighting for, America is a bad country. Secondly, you educate people that if they are arrested for drugs, for fighting, what have you, or if the police interact with you, it is not a matter of you did something wrong, it is a matter of racism. I can't think of any clearer way to make sure that people do not progress in our system than telling them that if they do something wrong, the punishment was not because they deserve the punishment, it was because of racism. But this is the mindset that is out there right now in our schools. It is the mindset that is out there in our large businesses and in our military. I think people have to educate themselves as to what critical race theory is, because clearly, the goal of critical race theory is to make people not proud or not respect the United States and, furthermore, make people bitter and angry, and tell people rather than work hard-- you work 45-50 hours a week, try to afford a house, try to have children, buy a car--it tells people if you don't have all you want, it is because of racism. And there is no way teaching our young people that is going to lead to anything other than resentment and a great deal of unhappiness. I think it is obvious that America does not have the racist problems that other countries have. And I beg people to read about countries like India, countries like Somalia, where minor ethnic differences result in deaths, huge amounts of discrimination. Here in the United States, in recent years, Asians, and before that, many other different so-called minority groups outdid financially-- finances aren't everything--but financially exceeded the native-born. We can see that America is not a racist country because I talked about, a second ago, people from all around the world are trying to get in here, and almost nobody ever wants to leave. So when it really comes to saying it is bad, no one wants to leave, but the whole rest of the world tries to come here, be it from Africa, be it from Latin America, be it from the Indian subcontinent, be it from Southeast Asia. So many wonderful people come here. My district has a lot of Hmong who are tremendously successful, despite coming from a very different background, loving America, taking full advantage of the opportunities that are there. However, if we let this pernicious ideology get in our schools and get in our businesses, it will be a success for the left-wing groups that have always wanted to destroy the special country that is America. And I encourage parents and grandparents and employees to report or publicize when they are forced to put up with this stuff in the schools or in the businesses. There is something for our wonderful American listeners to deal with over the next 3 weeks. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I stand to honor our policemen and -women on National Police Week. Few things in this job are more illuminating than doing a ride-along with local law enforcement, and I strongly suggest to those people out there who think we have to change the laws to harm the police, contact their local police or sheriff's department, do a ride-along, and find out what their job is really like. The week should be uncontroversial except for recently ambitious politicians have decided to get reelected by tearing down the police. Black Lives Matter, an organization founded by a Marxist, attacks the police for racism. I ran across a local schoolteacher educating his students that police are racists. The Democratic Party passed a bill out of this House making it easier to sue a police officer. This is one of the strange situations in which the crisis politicians talking about is actually going in the opposite direction. I picked some statistics I could find at random. In 1971, 50 years ago, New York had 93 people killed by the police. Up until 1996, it was rarely under 20 people a year. Now it is rarely over 10 people a year who are killed by the police. There are reports on a study of people who died in the 30 largest cities in the United States. There has been a 37 percent reduction in police shootings leading to deaths. Harvard economist Roland Fryer reports police are 47 percent less likely to discharge a weapon when attacked by a Black man, and Heather Mac Donald in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that if there is a bias in police shootings after crime rates are taken into account, it is against White civilians. The wholesale antipolice hysteria has dramatically increased homicides in Milwaukee and other big cities as the police become more passive. Wake up, America. Familiarize yourself with the statistics, and stand up to the politicians who are riding antipolice hatred to reelection.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, D.C. statehood is a ridiculous idea, which would have shocked our forefathers. It is a government city. It has no--or minimum manufacturing, agriculture or natural resources. With all its government jobs and universities, it is a recession-proof city and should be one of the easiest cities in the Nation to govern. Let's see how the current elected officials are doing. This is the second highest spending area in the country per pupil. How do they do? Tied for worst in fourth grade reading scores, worst in the country in eighth grade reading scores, worst in the country in fourth grade writing scores, worst in the country in eighth grade writing scores, and second worst in the country in eighth grade math. They have more homeless here than 29 States. Of the cities with at least 600,000 people, it has the sixth highest murder rate. And if it were to become a State, it would immediately become the State with the highest murder rate in the country. Right now, by comparison, only 49 percent of the parents of newborn children in the District of Columbia are married. By comparison, again, the great foreign capital, Taipei, 96 percent of the parents are married. This is a government city, and it would do a horrible job as a State.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, John Adams said our Constitution is fit for a moral and religious people, and is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. The average American watches about 30 hours a week on broadcast TV. And, of course, what starts on broadcast TV winds up on other screens as well. The Federal Communications Commission is tasked with keeping obscene and indecent content off the airwaves. While there are some especially responsible parents who raise their children with no TV in the house at all, as a practical matter, broadcast TV affects the moral norms of the Nation. I have received complaints in my office, and rightfully so, about Cardi B and the GRAMMYs. They wonder why we are paying the FCC if they feel this should be in living rooms across the Nation. I realize that Kamala Harris has used her fame to promote this performer, but I assure the FCC that millions of Americans would view her performance as inconsistent with basic decency. Wake up, FCC, and begin to do your job. The moral decline of America is partly due to your utter complacency.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I would like to address the Chair with regard to the upcoming infrastructure bill. I am going to talk about some numbers. I don't mean to bore you with numbers. When you put together a bill, you don't want to be an outlier. I am going to address two areas in which I think this bill makes this an outlier in very, very serious ways. The first one is, you have changes in the tax law. And when you look at the taxes that a business pays in this country, a corporation, you have to look at kind of a double taxation. They will tax you at a corporate rate when the business earns the money; and when the business gives the money to its shareholders, you will be taxed at a dividend rate. There is a graph here comparing all of the OECD countries around the world as to where they stand on this combined tax rate. The lowest countries, the Baltic countries, Latvia and Estonia, are 20 percent. Right now, the United States, even after the last tax cut, at 47 percent, is middle of the pack. Actually, a little bit higher. If the tax hikes are put in effect that are published right now, you are going up to 62.7 percent. In other words, of the over 20 countries here, the United States will have the highest combined dividend, plus corporate tax rate. That is an outlier and a dangerous place to be an outlier. There are a lot of things that go into a decision as to where you put a manufacturing facility, but taxes is certainly one of them. And given one of our goals should be to bring manufacturing back to the country, it is a bad place to be as the highest combined corporate tax rate, plus dividends. The next area I am going to address is the money supply. To a certain extent, because of previous bills passed during the COVID crisis, we have had a rather dramatic increase in the money supply. I would suggest you google ``M1.'' You will see that, in the last 6 months, the amount of dollars floating around has gone through the roof. Some people, including me, would say M2 would be a better measurement. But even if you look at M2, we have a 27 percent increase in the money supply over the past year. That is just screaming we are going to have a lot of inflation in the very near future. It is certainly not the only reason, but we already see the rapid increase in the cost of housing construction. We see an increase in food prices and an increase in energy prices. This is given what we have already done. Now, you are going to tell us--or some people are going to say that we are going to raise enough taxes to pay for this spending. But we are going to be raising enough taxes over the next 10 or 15 years. We know around here that when we say we are going to make a pay-for the next 10 or 15 years, a lot of times that pay-for never materializes. So I am afraid we are going to have another big increase in the money supply when we have already had a 27 percent increase in the last year, and this is going to come back and cause serious concern. I beg the majority to look at a graph of the combined tax rates, us compared to the other OECD countries, and I beg them to look at the money supply and don't make us any more of an outlier on either.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address what I think is the biggest crisis to our sovereignty since I have been here, and that is what is going on at the border. It is hard to think of something new to say, but I want to point out as we pursue an open borders policy that it greatly increases the power of the Mexican cartels. Because the Mexican cartels have a monopoly on letting people in this country, I heard a story of two people who weren't part of the cartels trying to sneak people across. Two of them were skinned alive, and a third one was partially skinned and sent back to say: This is what happens if you try to push people across without going through the cartels. I want to point out an anecdote of a father and a, perhaps, 7-year- old girl who were murdered for trying to come across without the approval of the cartels. I would like to address the 70,000 people who died from illegal drugs this year. I was recently at the Milwaukee DEA, and I was told last year 540 people in Milwaukee County died of illegal drug use, and the local agents suspected that all 540 were killed by drugs or ingredients from drugs that came across the Mexican border. Please, President Biden, do something about the crisis on the border.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I rise in honor of the great Bernell Trammell of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who owned eXpressions Journal Publications, which was located on 915 East Wright Street. Bernell Trammell was an avid reader and a very religious man who liked people. He graduated from Lincoln High School in Milwaukee. Last July 23, he was shot dead carrying a sign for Donald Trump. I would like to ask the city of Milwaukee to dial up the investigation for the murder of Bernell Trammell. I believe it is a shame in Milwaukee that when someone--one of few people--stands up and announces by a sign that he is voting for Donald Trump that he would be shot dead. He was an iconoclast, he was a very spiritual man delving in different religions, and he was all over the political spectrum as far as the people he endorsed. But while he was carrying a Donald Trump sign, he was shot down last July 23. I beg the city of Milwaukee to do something about this horrible crime.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, just prior to coming to Washington this week, I spent a couple of days down at the Mexican border to see for myself exactly what was going on down there. I visited the El Paso sector. I would like to thank the Border Patrol, ICE, the ranchers, and local law enforcement for being so helpful and informative to the nine Congressmen who were in the El Paso sector over the weekend. Our goal was to see over the last few months how things have changed, and in the last 5 months, things have changed dramatically at the border. For one thing, illegal apprehensions are way up. In March, we had 172,000 illegal apprehensions, and that doesn't include, of course, the people who snuck across without being apprehended. This time last year, in March, there were 34,000 illegal apprehensions. What could cause an increase from 34,000 to 172,000? It was painful not only to hear about the numbers but to see row after row of young children on mats just waiting for something to happen. Now, what has happened? What happened at the border to get a fivefold increase in 1 year, as well as seeing all these children in almost inhumane conditions waiting to be taken away to somebody who they hope will take care of them? First of all, this administration got rid of the migrant protection protocol. Donald Trump, I am sure in very difficult negotiations, had Mexico agree to hold people south of the border pending hearings for asylum. That was a huge benefit. Secondly, we had agreements with Central American countries so that when people came here from other Central American countries or South America, they would be held south of the Mexican border. Third, we changed things to the old-fashioned catch and release, where we touched people, but then when we are dealing with families, we let them in the United States pending a hearing on immigration. We changed title 42 to allow more people to come into this country, whether or not they have COVID. Finally, we have a President who, during the campaign, made many different statements indicating that illegal immigration was not going to be a problem during his administration, whether he was promising free medical care, supporting sanctuary cities, ending the public charge rule. And President Trump had said: Immigrants coming here, we don't want you here if you are going to wind up on welfare. It is no wonder they were wearing Biden T-shirts. We make stimulus payments to people who are here illegally. Given all these changes, is it a surprise that so many people want to come here? In addition to the fact that the changes in the laws themselves cause people to get to the Mexican border to come here, it is advertising to the world that the United States does not care about immigration laws. Now, we have to do something. We have dug ourselves a deeper hole in our relations with both El Salvador and Mexico. It is important to treat our Latin American cousins with respect. But in February, the President of El Salvador, President Bukele, was not given an audience when he showed up in this country in February. Is that the type of way we should treat our Central American allies when we want people held south of the border? The Mexican President feels that President Biden has made himself out to be the migrant President. Mexico does not like this free-for-all at our southern border in which we are strengthening the control of the drug cartels. But, again, our relationship is going south there. The migrant protection protocol, in which we are holding prospective applicants for asylum south of the border, has ended. Another thing that I think is causing this problem is the actions of the President and Vice President. Three weeks ago now, our Vice President was appointed to be in charge for the administration on what goes on at the southern border. She hasn't been there yet. This has to raise red flags all over the world. Do the Vice President and the President get along? Right now, it is not hard to find articles by talking heads. Did the Vice President want this position? Has she accepted the position with any enthusiasm? Why, for 3 weeks, in what to me is probably the second biggest crisis, maybe the biggest, at least the second biggest crisis the United States has undergone in the last 6 years, why do we have a person in charge of the crisis who has not gone down to the border? Does she consider this a serious problem or not? I would love it if she gave a speech, a wholehearted speech, saying that she does believe we have a problem on the border, and she is going to do something. I am going to divert a little bit from my discussion on what is going on at the border. I want the Biden administration to also give a little thought to how this looks to other countries around the world. I don't like the United States to have enemies--and I don't consider these countries necessarily enemies--but there are times when, clearly, we are being challenged by Russia, China, Iran, and other countries around the world. How does the United States look to other countries when we can't even secure our southern border, when it looks like we are not even trying to secure our southern border? I want the Biden administration to think that the complete inaction at the southern border, allowing tens of thousands of people to cross every month, sends a message around the world that this administration is not yet fully engaged. The Vice President has said she wants to deal with root causes. If root causes mean people making less money than in the United States, I mean, we are going to have open borders forever. We have something great here in the United States, and if we feel that some people would rather live here, or they are not materially as well off as in the United States, I will tell you, if we are not going to secure the border until that is solved, we are not going to solve this problem until we have over a billion new people in this country. We noticed other things on the border. We noticed the stopping of building the wall. It is not until you are down there that you see all the planks that are supposed to be put together on the wall just sitting there in the sun. Somebody presumably paid for these things. I don't know why, since we had all the pieces for a wall down there, that we didn't at least try to build it for another month or 6 weeks so that the material down there could at least have been used. I want to point out, by the way, with regard to the wall, because some people think it cost money, compared to the alternative, not only people coming in this country using the services we provide, but we were told at the southern border that when you have the old-fashioned barbed wire, you maybe should have two or three Border Patrol agents per mile. But when you have the wall, you need one agent for every 2 miles. There is a tremendous savings in the number of people you need in Border Patrol at the border if you had the wall. The idea of stopping it mid-construction, where you have all these metal beams spread out just lying in the southern sun, is very frustrating. Another thing to point out is that we met with ranchers down there. How difficult it must be for ranchers to see members of drug cartels walking across their land. Wouldn't that just scare you to death? A horrible thing. We look at the human toll of people sneaking into this country because they are escorted into the country by the drug cartels. A lot of people don't realize this. Another reason so many people are pushed across the border, and another organization that will educate people around the world that you ought to come to the United States, is the Mexican drug cartels. Why do they do that? They do that because they are charging 3,000 bucks a head for every Mexican person who comes across the border. They are charging $5,000 a head for every Central American. They are charging $8,000 to $10,000 a head for every Brazilian. As long as the drug cartels are making money at the border, is it any surprise that we have such a surge here, as they attract people or encourage people to come to the United States? I want to make another point about these poor children at the border. What goes on right now is that the children come to the border. If they are unaccompanied, we hold them, looking for somewhere to put them in the United States. It is very heart-rending to see all these kids without anybody there. But right now, under the current protocols, if you have a child who has parents in Honduras, but you give them a piece of paper saying that he has an aunt and uncle in New York, rather than send that child back to his parents, they send them to the aunt and uncle in New York, who are here illegally. Does that make any sense? That is what is going on. One thing that really irritates the Border Patrol down there is they know that if American parents were to send a 5-year-old child, let's say, and drop him off at the Milwaukee airport and hope he shows up in the airport in Miami the next day, Child Protective Services would be there saying: What is wrong with the parents? Here at the southern border, we are co-conspirators on these dangerous trips for the children, some of which wind up dying, and many of them wind up being sexually assaulted, which is just a horrible thing. Another thing that we found out at the border is that the amount of hardcore illegal drugs is rocketing up. I know some people may say that is an old story. The week before I went to the border, I happened to visit with the DEA in Milwaukee. Last year alone, in Milwaukee County, 540 people died of illegal drug overdoses. When I talked to the people at the DEA in Milwaukee, they felt it was entirely possible that all 540 people were poisoned to death with drugs either brought across the southern border or ingredients for drugs brought across the southern border. Madam Speaker, look at the skyrocketing number of people who are dying of hardcore drugs. Why is that? We should have anticipated it. The powerful Mexican drug cartels are going to make money. There was a time, maybe 10 years ago, when marijuana coming across the southern border was common. But now as more American States legalize marijuana-- Washington, Colorado, and what have you--there is so much marijuana being produced in the United States that there is no money to be made by importing marijuana from Mexico. I heard an anecdote of marijuana being brought here from Mexico, and it was being carted around the Southern United States, looking for somebody to take it. Nobody would take it because you can have higher quality marijuana growing legally here in the United States. So what are the Mexican drug cartels going to do? They are going to import in this country more heroin, more meth, and especially more fentanyl. That is what we are seeing at the border. So rather than being a time to cut back and saying that we don't care as much about the border, now is the time with the increasing number of fentanyl deaths--540 in Milwaukee County alone last year from fentanyl and the other drugs, which is a shocking number--now is the time to dial up enforcement at the border. But instead, it seems, we are going the opposite way. I don't know what is going on that you want to let more fentanyl in the country, Madam Speaker. I know there are some people who say that it is a victimless crime or what have you, but you tell that to the families of the 540 people who died last year in Milwaukee County. That is another result of this lax, devil-may-care attitude, as far as what is going on down there. So the question is: What to do? Maybe Mexico will not go back to the old agreement, but I think the President should beg Mexico to go back to the migrant protection protocol where one more time we are allowed to hold people on the Mexican side of the border pending hearings as to whether they are eligible for asylum. Secondly, we have to hire more Border Patrol. I want to go back and explain something. I talked about the 170,000 people in March who are touched by the Border Patrol. That doesn't include people whom they don't catch. The more the Border Patrol has to deal with the children on the southern border, the less time they have to guard the border. So there is clearly a significant increase in people crossing the border because they know the Border Patrol is no longer there. They are dealing with paperwork for the children that they have to process, and that has to be the priority. If you are going to go down this path, President Biden, and not care about the southern border or not reinstate the migrant protection protocol with Mexico, at least hire more Border Patrol agents so we can process the people you are letting in this country; and don't leave these huge swaths of the southern border wide open. Because of that, people I have talked to guess--this is a guess--that whereas, last year, maybe 10,000 people a month were crossing the southern border without the Border Patrol touching them, now it is more like 30,000 people a month. What a disaster. We should amend the Flores agreement, which is what is requiring us to take so many of these children and ship them around the United States. We should be able to send them back to their native country. We should try to undo the damage we have done with the way we have treated the El Salvadorean President and see if he can, one more time, assist us in preventing people from all around the world coming up from south of Mexico. Since the metal beams used to put together a wall are just sitting there in the hot sun, we should at least, at a minimum--it would be great to build a whole wall--use up the raw materials for the wall that are sitting down there. Actually, it is more than a wall; it is a whole wall system. Just don't have those metal beams just sitting there in the desert forever. Above all, President Biden and Vice President Harris, show you care. Show you care. Let the world know that the United States does not have an open border for anybody to come across the border, be they criminal, especially people coming across with that fentanyl. Show that you care. Hold a press conference. It would be nice if Vice President Harris would show that she accepted her new job with some enthusiasm. Again, the talking heads I read right now imply that maybe she didn't even want the job. So, please, President Biden, show you care before we have 200,000 people a month coming in the country. Show you care a little about the fentanyl crisis, as we are approaching 90,000 people a year dying in this country of illegal drugs, most of which come across the southern border. Show you care about those little children sitting in row after row of mattresses on our southern border. Show you care about the drug cartels and the way they are corrupting the Mexican Government and beginning to corrupt the United States. Say you want to stop the system in which they are able to make so much money sneaking people in this country. Show you care about the poor ranchers on the southern border, who have been there for generations and now have to be scared to death to go out late at night and can't let their children ride their horses on their land for fear of what will happen to them. If you won't do it, we have to call upon the public and other Members of Congress to let the Biden administration know that the current situation is completely untenable. You have to step up to the plate and do something. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

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

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, we are now being sent home for 3 weeks, I don't know whether it is coincidence or not that we are being sent home when we have such a problem at our border, and we just got done voting on a few immigration bills. All of us Congressmen should have a to-do list over the next 3 weeks. I want to give the press corps a to-do list. Right now, our Border Patrol is under a gag order in which they cannot educate the press or Congressmen as to what is really going on. This, at a time when you have almost three times as many people trying to get across the border than at this time last year, and we have huge numbers of unaccompanied minors down there. The press should be outraged at this gag order. I have been at the border four times so far over the last couple years, and it is always very illuminating what the Border Patrol can say to us. Now, like we are in some totalitarian state, they are not allowed to speak to us. I don't care whether you care about the government benefits, the unaccompanied minors, the drug trafficking, the human trafficking, the money the drug cartels are making on illegal immigration, we should want to know and we can't know unless the Border Patrol tells us. Please wake up, sleeping press corps.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, we take up this bill at a time when almost three times as many people are crossing the border as were this time last year. Under President Obama, it was a bad day if we had 1,000 contacts at the border. Now, we are having 3,000 contacts a day. These bills are being introduced, advertising that people who come here legally are suckers, and we are going to give preference to people who didn't come here legally. I would further like to ask that we delay the vote until the Biden administration removes the muzzling of the Border Patrol. We do not really know what is going on at the border, when this most opaque of administrations tells the Border Patrol that they cannot tell the press or Congressmen what is going on. James Madison must be spinning in his grave. He gave the press freedom, and they refuse to use it.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, we have already talked tonight about the numbers which come from the crisis at the southern border. During the Obama administration, Mr. Speaker, if you had 1,000 contacts a day with people trying to sneak in this country, that was a lot. We are now at around 3,000 a day. February of this year compared to February of last year is up 173 percent. That is shocking. It didn't have to be. What incompetence did it take to get such a massive swing of people coming across our border? President Trump had something called the migrant protection protocol. When people tried to sneak in here and claim asylum, they were sent back and held by the Mexican Government pending a hearing. This was a great victory for President Trump. Maybe just because he is President Trump, it means you don't like him, Mr. Speaker, and you had to get rid of him like the protection protocol. So, we are back to the old days. Rather than being held south of the border, waiting to see if you can come here, you are escorted into the United States, turned over to some nonprofit organization, and told to disappear somewhere in the United States to show up for a hearing which you don't show up for. And that is, more than any other reason, why we have this problem. Another thing they have changed is that President Trump had worked on a deal with Central American countries so that people trying to come up here from South America and other Central American countries were held south of the Mexican border. One more good policy, but let's throw it overboard and see what happens. By doing this, not only do we let more people in the country, but we enrich and empower the drug cartels. The drug cartels are charging about $3,000 for every Mexican they let in here, about $5,000 for every Central American, $8,000 to $9,000 for every Brazilian, and up to $20,000 for every Asian. When you are making that kind of money, Mr. Speaker, you know very well the drug cartels will recruit as many people as they can to come into this country. Of course, nowadays, it is unlike years ago when they used to find marijuana. Now when people come across the border, it is fentanyl, meth, and heroin. So, in addition to the huge amount of humanity moving across the border, we have that many more drugs to kill the people of our country. I am sure the American people already remember we are losing about 80,000 people every year to illegal drug use, so much of which comes across the southern border. As has been mentioned by other speakers, there is an increase in sexual assaults as people try to come across the border and are escorted by the drug cartels. I want to point out that the drug cartels control that southern border. If you try to come here without their approval, Mr. Speaker, you are in big trouble. I will give you an anecdote from the last time I was down there. Three people tried to escort other people over the border. Two of them were skinned alive and died. The other was partly skinned alive and told to go back south to Mexico and tell everyone what happens if you try to come across the border without going through the drug cartels. Just as another indication of the huge problem we have at the border, last year, which was an unusually hot year, they found, in the Tucson sector alone, 100 bodies of people who dehydrated trying to come here. Under President Trump, Mr. Speaker, you know how good it can be. They went from a point where they were letting 100,000 people across the border, which was about 2 years ago, back down to, around December, about 10,000 people crossing the border. They did that with the migrant protection protocol, with dealing with Central America, and by being concerned about COVID. So, what to do now? I am sometimes asked how the United States got in this mess, and I am talking about a wide variety of issues. Where would the Founding Fathers say they screwed up? Until this, I always felt that if I look at the three branches of government and say between the legislative, executive, and judiciary, our Founding Fathers would have never believed the judiciary could have such complete lack of respect for the Constitution. But now, I have to answer something else. The press sometimes considers themselves the fourth estate. There are rumors right now that the Department of Homeland Security has put a gag order on the Border Patrol agents who always have so many interesting stories down there. If I think of our Founding Fathers now who wanted a free press, as disappointed as they would be in our President, as disappointed as they would be in our Congress, and as super disappointed as our Founding Fathers would be in our judicial branch, I think the area they would be most disappointed is in the fourth estate. The bootlicking sycophants of the fourth estate are just horrible. These toadies are ruining the country. Wake up. Insist on being able to talk to the Border Patrol. Get down to the Border Patrol and find out exactly what is going on. Mr. Speaker, my final plea tonight is for the press corps to wake up, get to the southern border, and report what is really going on down there.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak one more time about the current issue at the border. We have gone from a situation in which 1 year ago at this time there were 36,000 confrontations at the border to last February 100,000 encounters at the border. In addition to a three-fold increase, there has been a corresponding increase in unaccompanied children at the border. How did this happen? There are several policies that should be reinstituted immediately. First of all, prior to President Trump being sworn in, we had a policy in which the Mexican Government was keeping people on their side of the border pending an asylum hearing. We have now undone that policy, which does three things: First of all, new people arriving at the border are escorted into the United States and sent somewhere inland. Secondly, people who have been waiting on the Mexican side of the border are coming across. And thirdly, you are sending the message around the world that the United States is not enforcing their immigration laws the way they are intended to be enforced. The word gets out, be it in Central America, be it in Mexico, be it in Asia, be it in Brazil, the United States is inviting people in. And with that situation comes the three-fold increase. Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama said at one time that 1,000 encounters a day at the southern border was a bad number. We now have three times what was considered a bad number under Barack Obama. The next thing we are doing is, we are getting rid of the agreements we had in Central America. President Trump maybe tweeted too much, but he engaged in negotiations with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras so that people stayed down there, rather than coming through Mexico to the United States. He did it, to a certain extent, with the carrot and stick of foreign aid which the United States had sent to those countries. That policy has also changed. And with the change in that policy people are streaming up through Central America. Again, from year to year there has been a 61 percent increase in unaccompanied children. People purport to say that they care about children being separated from their parents. Well, when you have more and more unaccompanied children showing up at the border, what do you think that means? These children inevitably are going to wind up separated from their parents, keeping families apart. I should point out, by the way, another thing that I am told bothers Central American countries. In this country in an effort to sometimes keep a child with both parents, if the parents don't get along that well, courts make an effort to keep both parents in the same region. I am told that the Central American countries do not like the fact that the United States sometimes will take children with even one parent, leaving the other parent behind. I think it would be better if we improved our relationship with those countries by trying to keep children with both parents. Other things that have been done is, sadly, we stopped the border wall construction. When I was down at the border we learned, with regard to the border wall, it takes four or five agents to man 2 miles of the old wall, which was sometimes little more than minor fencing. Now, with the new wall we need one Border Patrol agent for 2 miles, so there is a substantial savings there, as well. The catch and release policies are back, and with it a crisis is coming. America has to apply more pressure or tell the Biden administration, please, there is a reason why we have tripled the number of people, the number of encounters our Border Patrol is having today compared to this time last year. It is the policies that have been implemented in the first month and a half of the Biden administration. Please, President Biden, go back to the old policies in which people are held on the southern border and people can get a good hearing on their asylum claims, rather than creating a system in which, as a practical matter, people come here illegally and wind up just blending into the background. It is unfair to the people who are trying to access our country legally that people are coming here illegally and skipping ahead of them. Inevitably, as we take people without vetting them, we are getting a given number of people taking advantage of our benefits, and we are getting a number of people who are sneaking illegal drugs across the southern border. So, again, we have sent letters to President Biden, and I please ask him to respond to these letters and let the American public know: What is your plan to stop 100,000 people a month coming across the border before that 100,000 becomes 200,000 or 300,000? And it will become 200,000 or 300,000 because people around the world are watching the President, and if the President continues to make it clear he does not intend to enforce the border, people from all around the world will be coming here. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, jeez, we could talk for 2 hours. First thing, one of the things that hasn't been mentioned here is the increase in the income tax credit for single people has a marriage penalty in it. I bring it up because I know the strength that Black Lives Matter had in this last election. I know it is a group that doesn't like the old-fashioned family. I am disturbed that we have another program here in which we are increasing the marriage penalty. Second thing, we have loan forgiveness on farms based on ethnicity. Some people are going to get forgiveness; some people aren't. I think that is incredibly divisive. I think we started out with a divisive inaugural speech right off the bat, and to go down this route is only going to create divisiveness in America. The third thing, to have a bill with this high spending, with the Federal Reserve printing up this amount of money, is inevitably going to result in inflation. I feel so sorry for young people today. As the cost of housing goes through the roof, I don't know how they are going to be able to afford a house. But we also have increase in food costs and increase in energy costs. I don't want to call it the Joe Biden inflation, but I am afraid that is where we are heading. Fourth thing, in the rush to judgment, giving checks to people who are incarcerated. I have talked to my correctional officers about this. I don't know how they are supposed to feel, in which they have to work every day and the people who they are taking care of are going to be getting checks out of this. Finally, I have had two municipalities in my district, from which I have been contacted, in which the amount of money they are getting is over 10 times what they feel would make them whole. I think we are being very reckless about the degree to which we are spending money here.