Glenn Grothman

Mr. GROTHMAN

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

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, as we leave the Capitol for the weekend, I want to leave the body here with a little bit of thought. I am going to quote from a book called ``The Tragedy of American Compassion,'' by Marvin Olasky. It is now a 30-year-old book. It is an interesting book in that it deals with what we have today called welfare. At the time that was all privatized. I am going to quote from the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism of the City of New York on what they felt was the cause of pauperism at the time and what had to be done to end it. It listed 10 causes of pauperism. People in the 1820s were brighter than the people today. They listed ignorance, idleness, intemperance, which I take to mean drunkenness, want of economy, imprudent and hasty marriages--you don't hear that one anymore, but they thought it was one of the top 10--lotteries, pawnbrokers, brothels, gambling houses, and the most interesting one, the vice of charities that gave away money too freely. When we return next week, let's remember the wisdom from the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism and not give away charity too easily.

Mr. GROTHMAN

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

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, it is nice to be back in Congress after a little break being home. We look at the news back home, and in Milwaukee we had another tragedy. For the fourth time this year, a city of Milwaukee police officer was shot. This time, sadly, it was fatal. When Officer Kendall Corder was killed, we suffered another savage murder in Milwaukee. When I was a child, Milwaukee was the safest of the 25 biggest cities in this country. We have gone a long way from that. I hope this House addresses the root causes of why we have so much more crime in our major cities than we did 25 years ago. Also while I was at home, I ran into somebody who is in a low-income housing unit that receives the low-income housing tax credits. This person was being asked to confirm that they did not get any raise in the last year. This is a horrible program. It is an embarrassment. The Republicans extended it in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and I hope we immediately do something to stop this program, which discourages people from working and improving their lives.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, there are good days and bad days in this building. Today, we have a little bit of a happy day and sad day in the Grothman office. John Nagle, part of my policy shop, is leaving today. He is a great guy. He is the pride of Poway, California. While it is our loss, it is going to be the gain of the Pacific Legal Foundation. I will say one more time, I thank John for all the help he has given me. He is welcome to come back to our office again and again when he is on the Hill.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. I was not notified of the vote. Had I been present, I would have voted NAY on Roll Call No. 178.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, over the last couple of weekends, I have attended two events of the Hmong Americans who populate Wisconsin. Wisconsin has the third highest Hmong population in the country. I always love to talk about the Hmong because they came here not knowing a word of English, or many of them did not know a word of English. Nevertheless, they have largely succeeded. I like to have conversations with somebody maybe in their sixties or seventies, and I ask them how many children they have. Then, I ask them how many grandchildren they have, how many brothers and sisters they have, and how many nieces and nephews they have. The Hmong came here with big families, like recent immigrants frequently do, so they might be here with 40 or 50 children or grandchildren plus nieces and nephews. Then, I ask them how they are doing. How many of all of these children did not graduate from high school? None. How many of these 40 grandchildren or nieces or nephews had any problems with the law? None. How many of the young gals got pregnant out of wedlock? None. They all seem to be succeeding, despite the fact that they came here with all of these supposed disadvantages. I would like to, one more time, salute the Hmong, who prove that anybody who comes here and works hard can succeed.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I spent the weekend back in Wisconsin, and what does a weekend in Wisconsin in June mean? It means National Dairy Month. I was at breakfast on the farm in Manitowoc County. I will tell you that June has been National Dairy Month since 1937. When I think of June, I think of cream cheese. I think of cottage cheese. I think of yogurt. I think of raw milk. I think of pasteurized milk. I think of Colby cheese, cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese, and provolone cheese. I think of the fact that, whenever you tour your factories in Wisconsin, they say they don't have workers like they used to have workers because they used to have workers who were raised on a dairy farm, and there is nobody who knows the value of hard work more than somebody on a dairy farm. I will tell you that, more recently, other groups have weighed in since 1937 and said June is their month. It is not their month. June is the dairy industry's month, and I hope everybody spends next weekend going home to buy themselves a brick of cheese.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I stand today to defend President Trump in one of his initial requests for next year's budget. One of the goals of the Biden administration, of course, could destroy the country by having unfettered immigration, but also to divide America by groups. Part of that was when he passed one of his big bills, and he put in there an American Hispanic museum. This is consistent with the Democratic policy of trying to divide America. Our motto put in place in 1782 was E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many, One. The Democrats are trying to teach people they should always walk around hanging on to where their ancestors came from. President Trump is right not to fund a national Hispanic museum. The wonderful accomplishments of the Hispanic Americans can be placed in other museums, including the National Museum of American History, without having every group having their own separate museum.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, in a vital meeting--quick gavel. Had I been present, I would have voted NAY on Roll Call No. 152.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, first of all, due to when I was pushed back to start this, my speech will go a little less than 10 minutes, if anybody is planning around it. Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk a little bit about the big bill that we just passed and some provisions that should be monitored as we work our way not only through the big reconciliation bill but through the appropriations bills, as well. First of all, I think it is important that the public and the press corps pay attention to what becomes of the low-income housing tax credits in this bill. Currently, the low-income tax credits were brought to my attention when I attended part of a seminar in which the speaker was bragging about how much money developers could make off of these low-income housing tax credits. The credits give a developer 10 percent of their value of their project over a 9-year period. There is a time value of money. Even taking into account the time value of money, it means the government pays for 70 percent of the cost of a project. If we felt there was a shortage of anything else in this society, we would never say the answer is to give a business 70 percent of the cost of their product so that they would produce more. In a related comment on the low-income tax credit, once you say the government is going to pay for 70 percent of these housing projects, it results in overspending on the part of the developer. These projects in California have sometimes cost $800,000 or almost $900,000 per unit. That is not the norm, but think of it. The government pays somebody 70 percent of the cost of a building. Is it surprising that these people don't put marble countertops in? Is it even surprising that it costs $800,000 or $900,000 per unit? How in the world under any circumstances in a budget in which the government is borrowing 26 percent of the amount of Federal spending could we, under any circumstances, allow this program to continue? Nevertheless, it not only continues, but the House of Representatives for some reason decided to increase the amount of money in these credits. I also think it encourages a little bit of questionable behavior there because, of course, there is always going to be more demand for these credits because so much money can be made off them. Because there is so much demand, I think sometimes, on a State level, when they dole out these credits, the credits go to a politically favored class. It obviously encourages developers to curry favor with politicians who may directly or indirectly determine who gets these projects. I hope our sleeping press corps pays attention as to what becomes of this program as it works its way through the process. Right now, we are spending about $12.5 billion a year on low-income housing tax credits. I want to point out that low income is in the title, but well over half the people who live in these buildings are not meeting sub- to low-income qualifications. Even if one is technically low-income, they could have unlimited assets, as well. In any event, I really think, in all of my years in public life, the most questionable program I have ever come across is the low-income housing tax credit. The press corps likes to run down politicians. Here is something they ought to be run down for, so I hope they pay a little more attention. The next thing I would like to point out is what the Republicans do with the SALT deduction. There are a variety of changes in the tax code that we could make that would affect people's behavior. Because tax rates are so high, any change in the tax code affects people's behavior. Some people feel we ought to make reductions to encourage more research and development. Other people feel that we ought to--I feel we ought to increase the personal exemption to give a special benefit to people who have more children. Some people feel we should have an across-the-board cut and not influence one behavior or another. There is a small group of people in this building who apparently feel the number one problem we have is that State and local taxes are not high enough, and they want to bring back a deduction for State and local taxes. Right now, we have a low deduction in there, so they are aiming things at not the poor or middle class. They are really aiming things at the well-off people and encouraging governments, like California and especially New York, to raise their taxes. Recently, on the radio, I was listening to a guy who, I believe, is running for Governor there. He wants to raise the income tax in New York to 11 percent. It is not surprising, then, that I am sure people, like this person, who want to dramatically increase the income taxes in New York would want those taxes to be tax deductible. Why a Republican would want to do that, I am not sure. I think it is something we ought to talk a little bit more about. The next area that is going to be working its way that is affected indirectly by the great big, beautiful bill but will be more directly impacted by the appropriations bills that follow is what happens with the Department of Defense. Right now, we have close to 900,000 employees who are not uniformed in the Department of Defense. I think one of the great things DOGE did is expose how hard or not hard some of those employees are working. We will see what happens with the overall defense budget and whether Congress is willing to take the step forward and say that maybe we don't need 900,000 employees in the Department of Defense who are not uniformed. The other thing in the Department of Defense we can look at is what Pete Hegseth, who I think is going to be a great Secretary of Defense, has pointed out. He feels, in today's world, aircraft carriers are maybe not entirely obsolete but are not as valuable as they were 30 years ago. That should be obvious from what happened over the weekend when Ukraine used drones to wipe out some aircraft thousands of miles away in the Soviet Union, showing that the nature of warfare is changing rapidly. Our defense budget should change rapidly with it. Mr. Hegseth has said we are going to use less combat troops. We certainly need a lot less noncombat troops. He has implied that he feels aircraft carriers are becoming a little bit obsolete. Right now, we have 11 aircraft carriers. We have three more under construction to replace the current aircraft carriers. I think we have to protect our electric grid. I think we have to protect ourselves against hypersonic missiles. I think Israel is doing a good job at that. We have to prepare for the next war, not prepare to refight World War II. I think it is important for our press corps to publicize people who talk about the new type of munitions and the new type of armaments we are going to need in a new war. Given that we are so entirely broke and that 26 percent of our budget is borrowed, we have to make sure now more than ever that our defense dollars are spent wisely and not on things that, to a certain extent, are a little bit outdated. I hope the press covers whether we still need 11 aircraft carriers and asks Pete Hegseth if he still believes that they are overrated because, in today's world, with hypersonic missiles and drones, as the Russians found out, big stationary things, even temporary stationary things, are sitting ducks. Looking at the clock here, I think I should probably not deal with my other issues, so I will stop speaking. I believe we have somebody else ready to go. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I feel I must address one of the key issues that we are going to be dealing with in the next 2 days, and that is: What type of new tax cuts are we going to put into the Internal Revenue Code? Some people think that if I had my choice, I would bring back the personal exemption and put $1,000, or $2,000, or $3,000 per child on that return because there is no time in life in which you need money more than when you are just starting out with children and have a big mortgage. We should look out for the average guy at a time when they are most desperate. Some people would say my second pick would be to reduce the marginal tax rate on the most technical manufactured goods because we want those goods to be made here in America, and it would be great to have those manufactured in America. Some people, however, think the most important thing is to encourage States to increase their taxes and have higher property taxes from the local units of government and higher income taxes for the State government. They want to increase the exemption for those to encourage State governments and local governments to spend more money. No, we should be helping out the young people with children just starting out.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I think it is important that the Chair and the public know that there are always debates going on in this building that will determine how the big, beautiful bill is sent to President Trump. One of those debates involves the State and local tax deduction. Another of the debates, which hasn't been as highlighted, involves President Trump's proposal to reduce the marginal rate on manufacturing to 15 percent. President Trump is, rightly, obsessed with America being the world leader in manufacturing. Another one of the debates is what we should do to encourage Americans to have more children, and President Trump has proposed a $5,000 credit for people having children. I think that might not be quite right. I personally prefer a new $5,000 exemption. Nevertheless, there is no time in life when people are more financially strapped than when they have young children. I am strongly opposed to the so-called SALT Caucus of people who desperately want to have a greater deduction for State and local taxes. These people are, as a practical matter, looking to encourage their Governors, their school boards, and their county boards to raise local taxes. Last weekend, when I was home, a conservative county executive in my district begged me not to increase the deduction for property taxes. He is a conservative and does not want to have the liberals on his county board make the case that it would be great if all of our property taxes and income taxes were tax deductible so we could raise taxes. I am sure right now, particularly in the more liberal States--places like California with Governor Newsom, places like New York--the Governors and State legislators are waiting to see if they can increase the deduction for State income taxes and for local property taxes, so they can spend more money. We have to realize that if the SALT Caucus succeeds, there will be less money available here to lower the income tax on manufacturing, as President Trump tries to bring back American manufacturing jobs from China, Korea, and Mexico. We will not have the money available to do eventually what I would like to do, and that is have a $5,000 personal exemption to help out young couples who are just starting out, so they have more income at a time in their lives when they need it more than anybody else. I strongly encourage our negotiators to turn back the people who want a big State and local tax deduction, even though Wisconsin is a mildly high tax State. Madam Speaker, I think encouraging any more taxes anywhere in the country hurts us all as it slowly takes away the freedoms of people in America and makes America more of a country that you would not want to move to start new manufacturing. That is one of the things that is going on in this building. The next topic to take up--and I am kind of disappointed we didn't deal with it like we should have in our proposed big, beautiful bill, but I know President Trump's team is concerned about this. It is the degree to which so many of our welfare programs are designed to discourage people from getting married. We know that people who get married and have children--well, all types of families have successful children. I personally know many people who, on their own, both men and women, have done a very good job of raising children we would be proud of. In the long run, it is not fair to the next generation to discourage people from getting married and having children. Right now, there are many Federal programs. They used to be called food stamps, low-income housing, Medicaid, which is healthcare for the poor, and Pell grants. All of these programs are designed to penalize young couples who get married. Madam Speaker, if you are a single parent, then you may be eligible for all of these programs. If you are married, then you may be eligible for none of the programs. I think the most generous of the group is low-income housing, or Section 8 vouchers, whatever. In any event, it is not unusual to look up a hypothetical in which if a woman marries say the father of her children, she will lose $25,000 to $30,000 a year. This is why since the Great Society in the 1960s we have gone from a situation in which in the fifties, 4 percent of the children in this country were born out of wedlock. Now we are in a position in which we have over 40 percent of the children in the country who are born out of wedlock. It did not happen by accident. It happened because the Great Society programs in the 1960s were designed to encourage this sort of behavior. Madam Speaker, you may say, who wants to discourage people who are married from having children? In fact, Karl Marx, of course, was very opposed to the traditional family. We have known since I have been here. Black Lives Matter made it clear that they were opposed to what they referred to as ``the Western-prescribed nuclear family.'' Of course, even after Black Lives Matter came out for that, it did not prevent many of our Members, particularly on the Democrat side of the aisle, from standing with Black Lives Matter, a group opposed to the nuclear family. We know that many of the feminists in the sixties, I think Kate Millett, who was described as the mother of women's studies classes, which are all over our universities, were outright opposed to the nuclear family. It is disappointing they are not doing more in this budget to address that problem, to stop encouraging young people not to be married. We all by now have run into young couples who may even want to be married, but they won't get married because they lose $20,000 or $25,000 a year. Indeed, in this program, we are expanding the Pell Grant program. It is a program that was one of these things that has a marriage penalty associated with it. We are expanding the low-income housing tax credits. While some of those credits do not come with a marriage penalty, particularly when coupled up with State programs that do have a marriage penalty, it is another program we are expanding and it is going in the wrong direction. In any event, I encourage President Trump to do what is already going on behind the scenes, and that is to work towards, perhaps in our next reconciliation bill, a program to stop the hatred of the traditional family that is the marker of the Democratic Party today. Again, I emphasize we have to look at every one of these programs: the earned income tax program, the Pell Grant program, the low-income housing program, and the Section 8 program. In general, all of the housing authorities have this hostility. If America is ever going to truly become a great society again, then we have to work our way back up to where we were in the sixties and the fifties where we had 4 percent or 5 percent of the children born out of wedlock. By the way, Madam Speaker, if you read historic experts on this topic, and I am talking about people like George Gilder, who is a very bright guy, a lot of times the person who is penalized the most when you set up a society without couples having children is, in fact, the man in the society who has no purpose in life. As an Indian immigrant in my district told me: In America they have the woman marry the government. Of course, I think society is better off if we have the woman marry the father of the children, not the government, like so many members of this conference want to do. The next thing I want to look at, which we are going to be doing in the next few days, is we have a proposed reconciliation bill in front of us. I was under the impression that this bill would be an opportunity to decrease the amount of government programs, decrease the degree to which we have government programs controlling or directing Americans' lives. One of those programs that I really don't like the more I talk to experts on the topic is something called low-income tax credits. These low-income tax credits are given to property developers that are equal to 10 percent of the value of what they spend on new apartments for 9 years in a row. Now, there is a time value of money, but even given the time value of money, it means that the government is paying for 70 percent of some people's projects. There are some requirements as to whom they rent these to, but the requirements are not stringent. Some people point out that they can almost take people at random in the street, and that would be enough to fill their housing units. It really doesn't do a lot to help the so- called low-income people. It does help, however, because the government is giving so much money, it does encourage developers to spend far more than they would otherwise on their projects. Why not make Cadillac projects if the government is going to spend or pay for 70 percent of those projects? Furthermore, as we spend more on the projects, it is going to turn around and result in greater depreciation expense for the wealthiest banks in the country who frequently wind up buying the credits. For something that should be a relatively simple transaction, once the States gets ahold of it, Madam Speaker, you can wind up with regulations of hundreds of pages that have to be negotiated when you begin running the projects, which obviously means a lot more money for the lawyers and much more difficulty for the politicians to understand exactly what is going on. You would think, Madam Speaker, that of all the government programs this would be the easiest to get rid of because we are supposed to be broke. In fact, under our big, beautiful bill, and I know President Trump wants the most beautiful bill he can get on his desk, in this bill we are, in fact, expanding the number of tax credits, which is to say expanding the amount of money that the property developers on these projects are going to make. We are increasing the amount of tax credits, and I am told a very high number will be going to the biggest five banks in the United States, tax credits the banks get. Furthermore, because there are only so many new rental housing units we need, it expands, or they wind up crowding out the what I call legitimate developers and the legitimate users of low-income housing tax credits. I would hope, as we put together, hopefully, the final version of the big, beautiful bill sometime in the next couple of weeks, we look at this. It is not something that costs nothing. It is currently costing us even under current law about $13.8 billion a year in tax credits which are going to these well-connected developers. I think one thing that will also tell us that they are well-connected is it is up to States to distribute which property developers get the credits. What do you think is going to happen? It is going to be the same people who know the same bureaucrats, who are connected to the same politicians, who are going to get these credits again and again and again. Again, on the face of it, the idea that in the future in this country the people who build the apartments are going to be determined by State bureaucracies is just an invitation for trouble. The fact that we are paying 70 percent, therefore, results in a situation given--some areas in California, in particular--we may be paying more than $95,000 a unit. Does that make any sense at all if our goal is to create lots of new housing units for the so-called poor or working poor? No. You would never do that, Madam Speaker, except for that is the way the property developers make more money. In any event, I encourage our leadership team as they are looking for more money to seal the deal on this project, I don't think they have their 217 or 216 votes yet to grab that $13.5 billion. Another thing I will point out, these credits have been around since the late 1980s, and people might wonder where they came from. I think they probably came from developers who found a way to snooker the poor U.S. Congressmen in the late eighties. At the time Congress felt something had to be done because we had just gotten done with the apparently increasing the depreciation schedules on new residential real estate. So in the early eighties, Madam Speaker, you could depreciate an apartment building in 15 years. When they changed it to 27\1/2\ years, it greatly reduced the number of new apartments that people were building and, therefore, it was easier to sell to Congress that one way to get more apartments online is to have these ridiculously overgenerous credits. I don't know if I am going to have much of an impact. One of my goals is I would like to have the credits renamed. Instead of the low-income housing tax credits, name them the big banks, big law firms, and especially well-connected developer tax credits, because I think that would more accurately describe the people who benefit from these credits. In any event, these are some of the issues that I think are going to be debated in the next few days. I hope the press does a good job of covering what low-income housing tax credits really are. I hope the press does a good job of setting before the American public, and particularly the Republican volunteers who did so much to get us here, laying out the differences between the tax cuts based on how high the property or sales taxes are, how high the local property taxes or State sales and income taxes are. We will see how our base feels about who we should reward or what type of behavior we should encourage through the tax code. Should we encourage people to have more children? Should we encourage people to work harder? Should we encourage businesses to make more manufacturing jobs? Or should we encourage local governments to raise taxes? Finally, in the future as we determine how we are going to build new apartments, should we encourage the builders of the apartments to go through the government accepting lavish tax credits? Or should we do it the way we always have in America, and that is let the free market win out? The idea that we cannot build apartment buildings is, on its face, preposterous. I know everywhere right now, be it single family or multifamily, the costs are way too high. I would hope that the Speaker would maybe put together a committee or a subcommittee to see what we can do to lower those costs. I am told it is possible to lower the costs, and the answer is not paying developers 70 percent of the cost of their project.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to remove the gentleman from New York (Mr. Goldman) as a cosponsor of H.R. 1415.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, today in a committee hearing, in which there were probably very few people in the room, the Republican majority voted to expand the low-income housing tax credit. First of all, the low-income housing tax credit doesn't really benefit a lot of low-income people, but in any event, the way it works, we give 70 percent of the cost of a developer's project to him in tax credits. That seems a strange way to solve the housing crisis in this country for a Democrat. It is even stranger for a Republican. In any event, I think people should look at this. We are spending $13.5 billion every year on this credit and, like I said, you can get it on all sorts of think tanks. The primary beneficiary is the developer. Probably the number two beneficiary is the biggest banks in the country. It is something that ought to be reviewed.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I was in a meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted AYE on Roll Call No. 122.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, we are heading into what many people hope is the finishing stretch of our legislature, putting through what Donald Trump calls the big, beautiful bill. There are a lot of issues yet to be decided, and I would like to address some of those issues today. The first issue I have talked about once already, but it seems to be a major holdup, the rumors are, in negotiation. There are clearly going to be some tax cuts in this budget. Our goal will be to continue with tax cuts that were put in place in 2017 but add some others. As we hear rumors of what tax cuts will be added, we have to remember that taxes in the United States are so high that every tax provision affects our behavior. Some people want taxes, and I am one of them, to be lower on manufacturers because manufacturers have to compete with other countries. A good way to make sure we have good manufacturing jobs, as well as to make sure we get more research on manufacturing in this country, is to aim our tax cuts at manufacturers. Some of them specifically aim at research and development. They feel the most important thing in manufacturing is research and development. Others are made to encourage savings. In the past year, we have passed tax cuts to encourage people to put more money in their IRAs or 401(k)s. We have a problem in this country that not enough people are having children, and that is not only a problem for the country; it is a problem for individuals who, I think--I am told, many of which regret when they are 35 or 40, not having children when they were younger. People want to use the tax code to incentivize people to have more children. There are a variety of ways you can do that. President Trump floated a balloon just to give people a large check. I think that is a big mistake because we do not want to have people having children just to get a large check. If you want to make it easier to raise children, maybe raising the personal exemption to $5,000 would be a good way to favor parents. One thing that concerns me. Unlike people who want to encourage more manufacturing, encourage more work, encourage more overtime, encourage more children, there are people who want to change the tax code to encourage local governments and State governments to raise taxes. There is a provision called the SALT provision in which they want to make tax deductible State and local taxes. They are already, to a degree, tax deductible, but there are people who want to help the wealthier people deduct their State and local income taxes as well. I have talked to both my State legislators, and last weekend I talked to a county executive, and they both gave me the same story. They are both conservative people. They said they were shocked that there were Republicans who want to increase the tax deduction for State and local taxes because what does that incentivize? It doesn't incentivize more children. It doesn't incentivize more research and development. It doesn't incentivize more manufacturing. What it does is it incentivizes State and local governments to raise taxes and spend more money. I had to explain to my State legislators these were Republicans who wanted it. They found it hard to believe. It sounds like a tax provision that you would be more likely to hear Democrat legislators want. In any event, I think we have to follow the negotiations that are going on, and we have to see whether within the Republican Party we wind up with a product to encourage more work, encourage families, or whether we wind up with a bill designed to encourage State governments to raise the income tax or sales tax, or encourage local governments to raise their property tax. I am going to be very disappointed. It would certainly be a defeat for, I guess what I will call, traditional Republicans, such as myself, but that is one of the negotiations going on behind closed doors. There is another provision that they are going to use the IRS code in--which concerns me a little because there are rumors that this may be out there as well. Quite frankly, I have a suggestion how we could cut taxes and put ourselves in a stronger position. Right now there is a provision in the tax code called low-income housing tax credits, and what it means is that if a developer wants to build a new development, they would get a credit equal to 10 percent of the cost of the building over 9 years, which, right off the bat, sounds like the government is paying for 90 percent of the value of the building. That is not quite right because there is a time value to money, and if you are getting a building that you paid $10 million for, if you get a credit worth $1 million 10 years out, you have got to wait for that credit, and there is a time value to money. Nevertheless, even taking into account the time value of money, a potential developer has the government, through tax credits, pay for 70 percent of the cost of a building. Now, this is not open-ended. Usually these credits go to politically well-connected developers picked by State agencies or State organizations. I think, personally, of all the tax cuts particularly, people complain about tax cuts for the rich. Of all the provisions in the Internal Revenue Code, I can think of no provision more questionable than having the Internal Revenue Service reduce somebody's taxes so that you get 70 percent of the value of your project paid for. Now, people do not earn enough income to use, say, in the case of $100 million, a building, they don't have enough credits to offset $70 million in taxes. So they have to sell the credits to somebody else. This means getting lawyers and experts from LIHTC involved so that these credits can be transferred. A significant number of these credits go to some of the largest banks in the country. And, of course, the largest banks in the country, I am sure, would love to have Congress change the provisions so that they were able to use still more tax credits. Why at a time when we can do so many other good things would we do that? I don't know, but they have been very active in this building, and they are looking to get more tax credits. The next thing to remember about this is there are some units, but not all units, which have restrictions on the amount of rent that can be charged. Quite frankly, there is no guarantee that any of these rents will be below market rate. In fact, some of the people who live in these projects will be able to use vouchers, what we call Section 8 vouchers. So the government, first of all, sets aside money for somebody to get free rent, and then the vouchers are given to a property developer or a syndicate that is going to wind up owning the building, and they wind up with a voucher as well. It is kind of hard to believe it is developed that way, but it has developed that way. I had always wondered before hearing about these things why sometimes low-income housing developments look nicer or more elaborate than regular old apartments. Part of that is they are newer, and, of course, newer buildings are usually nicer. A lot of it is we are paying these developers 70 percent of the cost of their building. And just like if you at home were building a new house and the government said we will give you 70 percent of the cost of that new house, if a developer is building something new and the government says we will pay for 70 percent of the cost of your apartment building, of course the building becomes more lavish, which, of course, makes the property developer wealthy as well. And you can begin to see, as we work our way through here, that the developer is the big beneficiary here. Then what happens is the building is sold to a syndicate of a variety of wealthy people who get the tax benefits of depreciation for about 15 years, and then eventually it is returned to the original developer. So there are many people making money here. Certainly the banks are making money. Above all, the developers are making money. The lawyers are making money, as they have to constantly draft documents between the banks and the syndicate and the developer. And, like I said, the syndicate itself, which is made up of a variety of wealthy individuals or wealthy limited partnerships, is able to get money here as well. When I think of all the things we can--well, I digress. Again, the developer who gets this is determined by a State agency. It is naive to think anything other than these developers are politically well-connected people. I do not know why, if we think it is the Federal Government's business to provide housing to people--which, of course, it is not--we would set up a system in which a private developer gets such a large chunk of money that the Federal Government is laying out. Right now, as a matter of fact, the money is so great, even though new projects are spread out or the tax credits are spread over nine years, we are spending over $13 billion a year on this method of so- called creating workforce housing or low-income housing. I will also point out that there are some people who would say this is necessary because nobody builds any housing anymore. Well, I am from Wisconsin, which is not what you normally consider a booming State. It is not like Florida. It is not like Texas. As I go around my district, everywhere I look there is new housing. There is single family housing and new apartments. For a variety of reasons, it is grotesquely expensive. We can deal with that by working our way towards more of a balanced budget, so interest rates are not so high. As the cost of energy goes down, it will lower the cost of anything and lower inflation on other goods as well. Anybody who remotely believes in the free market believes there will always be a market for new housing. There are apparently some places around the country where it is hard to build new housing, but that, in general, is because there are State governments and local governments which are hostile to business in general and hostile to developers in particular. People then don't want to do more building in this city or that city. In any event, as we work our way through the process, I hope the negotiators who are meeting in unknown rooms in this building, if they need to balance the budget, think about getting rid of the low-income housing tax credits and use the $13 billion a year that is primarily benefiting some well-connected and wealthy property developers and use it somewhere else. I think that is one of the things that we have to look at carefully. There was another topic I wanted to take up. I have been talking to some people who wonder why we have demonstrations in this country hostile to Israel, and even more bizarre, demonstrations favorable to Hamas and people who live in the Gaza Strip. It has been my belief--and I give this conversation privately to people, but I should make my case more public--that when people take bizarre positions, in other words, when they see Hamas invade Israel and kill over a million people with pride, not even embarrassingly and hiding it, but taking pictures of it, and their sympathy goes towards the people killing the thousand people, including young children, one has to wonder if something psychological is going on here. My belief is that anybody who is hostile to Israel in this conflict and is demonstrating in favor of Hamas has some sort of psychological problem. I will refer to this psychological problem as--we will name it after the young girl who was obsessed with global warming in Sweden. We will call it Thunberg syndrome. You all remember the little girl whose father said she was depressed and unhappy, but then she read about global warming and decided to obsess over it. She, all of a sudden, became happy because she could run around and had a purpose in life. Prior to that time, like a lot of wealthy people in the West, she really didn't have a good purpose, but it gave her a purpose. Like I said, she could run around, she would give speeches and feel she was saving the world. Of course, eventually, Greta Thunberg also wound up siding with the Palestinians, who had killed the Israelis, against the Israelis. I think it was for the same reason. She wanted to adopt a cause to feel she had a purpose in life. When one particularly has kind of a spoiled life, the people you want to help are people who are kind of opposed to the successful society we have here in the West, be it America, be it Europe. There is a certain hierarchy of needs that everybody has, right? We need food, we want safety. Once you take care of food and safety, you also need a purpose in life. There are sadly many, many people in America and Western Europe who don't have that purpose. I think this is particularly a problem for people who may not have a family to devote time to. They may not have children to devote time to. They may be financially well enough off. You very rarely see Thunberg syndrome on somebody who has three jobs. They are busy with their life. They are going from job to job and working all the time. You would rarely see Thunberg syndrome in, say, somebody with four kids, because four kids is very time-consuming. You have to earn money to take care of the kids, spend time with the kids. That is a purpose in life. I think, as we have more and more young, single people not having children in the West, you have more and more people looking for a purpose in life. For whatever psychological reason, they want that purpose to be hostile to the West in general. If they are in the United States, they frequently want that purpose to be anti-American. Of course, when Greta Thunberg wants to get involved in foreign affairs, it is not surprising that she picks global warming because then her enemy is the West and the factories and the cars. It is interesting that when people have Thunberg syndrome, they do not get mad at things done by what used to be called Third World countries, right? People who have Thunberg syndrome, well, they may object to a new, clean power plant in the United States. They never worry about the plethora of new coal plants going up in Red China or going up in India, and that is because those aren't Western countries. There, miraculously, they don't care. When it comes to the attacks on the Jews in Israel put out there by the Palestinians, they will purport to care about the Palestinians who lose their life when the Israeli Army inevitably had to go back into Gaza, but they don't care about Muslims who are dying in other wars. They don't care that many, many Muslims are dying in Syria. That is because those people are being killed by other Syrians, and it doesn't fit the narrative of, I want to hate the West. They don't care about a civil war going on in Ethiopia, they don't care about the conflicts currently going on in Iraq. They don't care at all about all the suffering of the Muslims in Western China, the Uyghurs. Why doesn't the left or why don't these demonstrators care about all the Uyghurs being killed or persecuted in the western part of China? It doesn't solve their psychological need to hate the West. I think more research should be done on Thunberg syndrome to see how we can prevent it from growing because inevitably the United States and the West will fall if a significant number of their populous winds up for some psychological reason adopting causes that are hostile to the West. That is what is going on right now, be it in global warming, be it in the Palestinian situation, be it the bizarre opinions that President Biden had about the United States being such a racist community. I mean, here you have a country, the wealthiest people are Indian Americans, the second wealthiest are Filipino Americans. People come here from Cuba and do fantastically well. Another cause adopted by these people with Thunberg syndrome, despite the fact that anybody could open their eyes and see the wild success of people from all around the world coming to the United States, these people have decided to adopt an ideology in which they have to fight this imaginary racism in the United States with people like Joe Biden or other opportunistic politicians egging them on. I strongly encourage this body, or if not this body, some universities to look at people who have these bizarre opinions that will inevitably destroy this country. They hate wealth production, they certainly hate energy production even when it is new energy that is fantastically clean, so much cleaner than it was when I was a child. They hate it when Western countries wind up in armed conflict with horrific opponents like Hamas, but for psychological reasons they side with Hamas. Those are some of the issues that I think we ought to be paying attention to over the weekend. I think I have used up enough of my time. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

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

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I was attending a vital meeting. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 119.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, we are on the final couple of weeks, the home stretch, with regard to our big, beautiful bill. There are going to be a lot of debates as to what we should do. Some people actually want to expand programs which, in our current crisis, is unbelievable for a Republican to do. However, I am going to address which tax cuts we have. Different tax cuts do different things. We have tax credits to encourage manufacturing. We have tax credits to encourage more work. We have tax credits to encourage more research. We have tax cuts to encourage more children. However, there are some people who want tax cuts to encourage State and local governments to spend more money and raise taxes. When I was home over the weekend, I talked to one of my county executives. He said: Glenn, don't let it happen. He is a conservative county executive, and he is trying to hold down the spending on the county level, and here the people in Washington are talking about encouraging more State and local taxes. Please, Mr. Speaker, stand up and fight. Do not encourage our State and local governments to raise taxes.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I am honored to be able to speak here and that Congresswoman Miller has yielded me time to talk about Faith Month here. When our country was founded, John Adams said that our country was made for a moral and religious people and totally unfit for every other kind. We, therefore, must be especially concerned--and I realize there are many good people who do not go to church--that church attendance has fallen so overwhelmingly in the last 40 years, particularly in the last 20 years. I believe it has fallen 25 percent in a very short period of time. I think we should be very concerned that the number of people who say that they don't believe in God of any sort has, from the statistics that I have seen in the Gallup poll, gone up by about 9 to 1 over the last 40 years. Our country will be protected if we turn to God and ask for forgiveness. We will be given the wisdom and the good fortune to make our country the Bible-believing country that it has been through most of our history. We will get back to the moral country that we all envision the United States to be. However, if we continue to go down the path of rejecting God and just thinking that all the wonderful blessings that we have are going to show up automatically, we will be in deep trouble. I, like the other speakers tonight, ask the American people to ask for forgiveness and ask for God's wisdom and ask us to make the appropriate decisions that America again become the moral and religious country that John Adams wanted us to be.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, we had an interesting 2 weeks out of this building, and sadly my home State of Wisconsin made the news again, in an effort to remove not just any person here illegally but somebody who had broken the law, an abuser, somebody who under normal circumstances would not be viewed favorably. We had a judge in Wisconsin stop the hearing. Oh, let's not worry about putting this guy in jail. Let's let him sneak out the back door so he is not removed from this country. This was after about a month ago, our Governor, Tony Evers, nice guy, came out with a directive implying that State employees ought not be that gung ho when it came to removing State employees from this country if they were here illegally. We have two examples in Wisconsin alone in which elected officials aren't on the page of addressing the immigration laws. I think it is important that we all be articulate enough to explain to people back home why these immigration laws are necessary and be articulate enough to explain we are not being mean to immigrants. I do not hear enough people talk about the fact that in the prior 3 years--it goes up and down by year--but if you take a rolling average, in the last 3 years, we have over 800,000 people every year sworn in as new citizens legally in this country. How often do you hear about that? There are 850,000 people who did it right. It is not impossible to make your way here. By the way, that is historically a very high number. If you go back to the fifties and sixties, frequently that number was only a little over 100,000. The number of people being sworn in as new citizens is already eight times what they were in the sixties and fifties. Nobody should apologize or say that we are being mean or not letting people in here. When we let in people who came here illegally, what we are doing is kicking anybody who did it the right way in the face. We know we have a housing crisis in this country. When you begin to flood this country with another 10 million people, as happened during the Biden administration, given the law of supply and demand, we know it is driving up rents, making it more difficult all the time for the average American to attain the American Dream. I also point out that we have significant numbers of visas which allow people to come here, as well. We have about 900,000 temporary workers or trainees at any time. We have well over 5 million people here on visas for temporary visitors for business and pleasure. As far as college students are concerned, we allow another over 400,000 people into this country on student visas. It is incredibly easy to get into this country. Rather, it is not always easy, but millions of people come into this country legally and are able to do so. We do not have to have sympathy for people who came here illegally. I think it is important that we educate the American public on that because we are soon going to have to start the next phase where we not only get rid of the criminal element that came in here, but we have to get rid of the 10 million people who may not have broken a horrible law but broke the law just by coming here. It is a complete kick in the teeth to anybody who wants to come here legally to allow the 10 million people who Joe Biden let in during the last 4 years stay here. There is one more thing I will address as we begin to work on Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill. I remind people in this Chamber that we have a system of benefits right now whereby, if you are a single parent and you marry the father of your children or mother of your children, you can easily lose over $25,000 a year. In other words, the U.S. Government spends $25,000 a year bribing single parents not to get married. I thought we were supposed to treat people equally in this country, but we don't treat people equally. We have an overwhelming bias in favor of keeping parents from being married. I hope Members in this Chamber remember that as we put together Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill. We should not pass that bill unless we do something first about the massive marriage hatred that we have.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, during a committee hearing I attended yesterday, immigration was a topic that was brought up and it seemed apparent to me that the party on the other side of the aisle didn't understand why we have immigration laws. First of all, it is a complete insult to the over 800,000 people who are sworn in as new citizens in this country annually. Secondly, we have to make sure the next generation of Americans here think like Americans and fit in our culture, which means they are law-abiding. Just in general, the idea of having a million people breaking the law to come here, saying they need asylum when they don't, means they are not going to fit in with our culture. Finally, I will share a word from Mark Reihl, back from my State legislative days, of the carpenters union. Again and again, he would come into my office saying that his guys, his union carpenters, were being undercut by people coming here illegally, and he demanded that we crack down on that. Illegal immigration drives down wages of Americans who are already here. We heard that yesterday as the Democrats were claiming that if you kicked out the illegals the cost of things will go up, as they will.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I will point out one more time the perverse incentives of our welfare state. I will just mention one type right now: Section 42, low-income housing. Section 42 low-income housing is very generous to property developers, who wind up only having to pay for 30 percent of the cost of their housing. Worse, because it is new housing, I had a staffer looking for a new apartment building with her new husband, and they found out the best apartments in town were the low-income housing. In order to be eligible for low-income housing, you almost certainly can't be married. In order to be eligible, you can't be working very hard. I think this body ought to get out of the business of encouraging people not to work hard, and they especially ought to get out of the business of discriminating against people who are married with children. I sure hope that this body, when we finally deal with the reconciliation bill, gets rid of these perverse antimarriage incentives.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. After returning from our districts, Mr. Speaker, it is time to bring to the Chair's attention a variety of issues which we have come across over the weekend and issues that the minority party has brought up. The first issue I bring up is that regarding DEI. DEI or Affirmative Action has been a big part of America's landscape over the last 60 years, and it is not something that is going to go away overnight. President Trump can do what he can to wipe out this odious philosophy, but nevertheless it is important for us to educate the young people in this country as to why it is so odious. It is based on the premise that what you accomplish in this country or what you should be given in this country is based on your ancestry or your gender. It was based on the idea I think largely thought up by a guy by the name of Herbert Marcuse in the early 1970s that we can destroy America by dividing it by ethnic group or dividing it by gender. He was a genuine Communist sort of person. Prior to this time, people who wanted to destroy this country thought they could divide it by income, and they thought they could make everybody very mad and jealous of very successful people and tear down America by doing that. They tried in the 1960s. There were bombings, and there were anti- Vietnam protests, but they failed to bring down America because Americans themselves are hardworking, and they realized the middle- class lifestyle in America would be like a wildly wealthy lifestyle everywhere else in the world. They failed. They thought: Let's educate our so-called minority people that America is a horrible country and that you are being held down because you are not a White male. President Biden made it clear that he was somewhat hostile to White males. The first thing we can do to prove that it is not true and every child ought to know it so they aren't corrupted by these DEI professionals that our colleges and universities are spitting out or this horrible ideology our young people are educated into is--as I was reminded again going back to my district, I met with a group of Ahmadiyya Muslims from Pakistan. Here is a group that didn't come from Europe. They aren't Christian, but nevertheless, they have a mosque in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in my district, and they are obviously succeeding very well. They have strong families. They have a good work ethic. If America were Eurocentric, as they say, they would not be so successful. I have also seen the same thing with Hmong in my district. I have a substantial Hmong population from Laos. These people came to America and didn't even know English when they were children. Nevertheless, they have come here, and now they all own houses. Their children are doing well. Their families are strong. Again, this is despite the fact that they are not of European descent. Indeed, if you look at statistics that are put out there by the Census Bureau, if you look at different ethnic groups from around the globe, you find easily the most successful group is people who came here from India, another group that didn't even necessarily know English when they got here. Indian Americans make far more income than the average American. Indeed, they make almost twice the income as the average European American. Other groups that do tremendously well are the Taiwanese, the Filipinos, the Cubans, people who come here from the West Indies. They are all doing far better than the native born, despite the fact that they are not of European heritage. If anybody knows anybody who has been corrupted by this wicked ideology that implies, in America, you can't succeed unless you are a White European, look at the facts. Look how people come here and succeed again and again. I would hope you would realize by looking at these facts that you should throw the DEI ideology being taught to our college kids, and in some cases taught to our high school and middle school kids, in the garbage. Remember a communist by the name of Herbert Marcuse, who thought up this stuff in the seventies and eighties. Remember, the reason they adopted the DEI ideology is because they wanted to destroy America. They wanted to set people from one continent against another continent. Remember the statistics of how well people do here and make sure that our next generation is not polluted by this because we have way too many people floating around this country who got a certificate in DEI or a major in DEI, and they are up to no good. Another thing I want to mention here is with regard to immigration. President Trump is trying to enforce the law. I think one of the difficult problems he has dealt with is we just got done with a President who did all he could to ignore our immigration laws. As a result, we took in about 10 million people here in the last 4 years, and that is not something that we should have done. What can we tell the people who feel we are being unnecessarily cruel? Every year in this country, about 850,000 people are naturalized. They are sworn in to become American citizens. I like to show up at these ceremonies. They have them in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I try to show up at one or two a year. It is kind of thrilling to watch people from all over the globe--a lot of them have good jobs; a lot of them already have their own businesses--as they are sworn in as American citizens. When you take it in 3-year increments--there is always one year or other years as an outlier. If you look at it in 3-year increments, that 850,000 over the last 3 years is the most that we have taken in, as far as I can tell, in this country's history. When I was growing up, the number of naturalized people every year was about 200,000. We are now over four times that amount. Nevertheless, there are people who are going to go out there to try to divide us who say that we are not letting people come here from abroad, that we are being cruel. Mr. Speaker, 850,000 people. That is something to remember. That is before you get all the people coming here on work visas, all the people coming here on tourist visas, and all the people coming here on student visas. One just has to look around and realize that the idea that we are being cruel to people who came here across our southern border is ridiculous. Many people are coming here. Obviously, if we are going to enforce the law, we have to remove the people who came here by pretending they needed asylum and didn't. Then, there are going to be millions of people, and the same people who encouraged them to come here, knowing full well they were breaking the law or having to lie about needing asylum to come here, the people who caused the mess are going to say it is horrible to remove these people. Our President Trump is going to have to step up to the plate and undo the damage done by the last administration, and he is going to remove many, many of these people. One has to remember, the reason he is removing them is because the prior administration, with a lot of encouragement from people on the other side of the aisle, were bringing people here who were coming here on false pretenses. The next issue we have to look at is one that I do hope is included in Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill. This is, I think, the biggest crisis facing America today. John Adams said our country is built for a moral, God-fearing country. In a free country, families have to be strong and self-reliant. Beginning in the 1960s, in this country, we had a massive increase in subsidies, which ignored a family with a mother and father at home. In the 1950s, about 4 percent of the children born in this country were born without a mother and a father at home. Within the next 30 years, after Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, that 4 percent increased to over 40 percent. Many other problems came with it. Why did that happen? It happened because, right now, we have approximately 90 programs that you are not eligible for if you are not in poverty. In other words, for a mother or a father at home making $40,000, $50,000 a year, they would not get these programs. These programs are familiar to all of us: earned income tax credit; what I think is the most damaging, the low-income housing programs; the healthcare programs; the food stamp programs; the Pell grants. There is program after program you get, but you would lose these programs if you had both parents in a home. Nobody takes advantage of all 90 programs, but I think it is probably not unusual to have people take advantage of 6 or 7 programs. Then, it would not be unusual for people who have a mother and father at home to be penalized over $20,000 a year if they get married. We have to look at these programs, and frequently, these programs materially put a married couple at a disadvantage. We have all heard stories of Food Share. If you talk to people at the local convenience store, talk to people at the local grocery store, people are taking advantage of these programs. They may be able to buy food items that the person who is working behind the counter can't afford. We know when it comes to housing that there is section 42 tax credit housing, which is a screwed up program for many reasons. It is aimed at lower income people. The developers are incentivized to make these projects as nice as possible. I had a staffer who got married in Wisconsin. They said, ``Glenn, my husband and I are looking for a place to live after we get married, and the nicest places are all low-income housing.'' That doesn't seem to make any sense, unless you look at it again as certain people are out there trying to destroy the nuclear family and trying to discourage people from entering into that sort of relationship. The same thing is true of healthcare. We need healthcare for everyone, but the same thing is true of healthcare. You don't have the big deductibles that you have when people get their healthcare from working in the private sector. You might have a $10,000 or $15,000 deductible. You don't get a deductible like that if you are on the government plan. The same thing is true with Pell grants. A woman came up to me and said, ``My husband and I got married. We don't have enough money to help our daughter go through college, so she had to take out a lot of student loans. My sibling is not working, and her daughter got free grants from the government, grants she wouldn't have gotten if she was married.'' Again, is that a good thing? I am not sure it is. Again and again, in program after program, we discourage the nuclear family. That is why we have gone from a 4 percent rate of kids born without a mother and father at home to 40 percent. It was like it was by design, like somebody wanted to destroy the nuclear family. It is important to remember that we may individually not know these people, but there have always been people who wanted to destroy the nuclear family and feel that is the key to bringing down America. Certainly, the Marxists wanted to destroy the nuclear family. Until they took it off their website, a more recent group, Black Lives Matter, was overtly antifamily. The feminist extremists in the sixties--Kate Millett being the prominent one; you can call her the mother of women's studies--were very anti-nuclear family. These anti-nuclear family people got the upper hand, and that is why we have gone from about 4 percent to over 40 percent. I hope, as the people in this body put together their great big, beautiful bill, that we remember that a lot of the programs in our current budget are programs designed to destroy the nuclear family. I have two other quick comments. One is with regard to transgender and local schools. A lot of people have talked about men in women's sports, and I don't even think that is the biggest scandal. I think the biggest scandal is that we are educating our young people to adopt a transgender lifestyle. In Europe, when they backed off on pushing this lifestyle, the lifestyle not exclusively but largely disappeared. In other words, we have made it cool by what they do in Hollywood promoting this lifestyle. Sadly, the schools are promoting this lifestyle. I will mention, again, my own anecdotes. When I was campaigning last year, I ran into a couple of grandmothers whose grandchildren were going down this transgender route, and it broke their hearts. They wondered why this had to happen because it wasn't something they saw when they were children. It happened because our education system and our popular culture promote this lifestyle. It is a good thing if President Trump tries to get this stuff out of our institutes of public instruction. I think it is really too bad if people feel it is cool to adopt this lifestyle. It is something for us to remember, and hopefully, we will be having hearings on this topic as we delve into whether people would adopt this lifestyle in the first place if there weren't so many powerful special interests that encouraged people to adopt this lifestyle. Mr. Speaker, my final point, when we come to our big, beautiful bill, a lot of it is going to have to do with taxes. I stand with President Trump on some of his items here that he has brought up in the past and some of them are the reasons why I like him. President Trump is not afraid to stand up to the special interests that seem to be so persuasive in this Chamber. First of all, even though a lot of the money is already out the door, President Trump came up against the CHIPS bill. The CHIPS bill was a public-private partnership, I guess we should call it. Whenever you hear about a public-private partnership, I think you have to hold onto your wallet, because that means a private-sector group wants some government money. The CHIPS bill is to encourage more semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. I think we have to encourage more semiconductor manufacturing, but it costs about $280 billion. That is about $700 for every man, woman, and child in the country. Does anybody really believe that the Federal Government should be grabbing $700 from everybody just to promote one industry? I think we could promote that industry with a much smaller amount if we deal with some exemptions from manufacturing I am going to talk about in a second. That would be another way to bring more semiconductor manufacturing into this country. I strongly believe, along with President Trump, that a subsidy of $700 per person in this country for the semiconductor industry is unnecessary. The next thing I will bring up is the carried interest treatment for hedge fund managers. Under the carried interest loophole, you might call it, people whose primary income is derived from being entitled to some of the money they make for their investors is taxed at capital gains rates rather than regular rates. In other words, people who are investing other people's money and making, frequently, millions of dollars a year are taxed at a much lower rate than people who are welders, people who are nurses, or people who make their money any other way. President Trump came out against the carried interest loophole when he ran for President in 2016. He wasn't able to get rid of it at that time. This time, I hope that our Committee on Ways and Means, together with President Trump, stops taxing these wildly wealthy people at a lower tax rate than what the average guy or woman is making in this country. That is another good thing to do. The final tax provision that I point out is President Trump has floated the idea of having a lower tax rate for manufacturing than other industries. I applaud him for that. To be a great country, you have to make things. You are not a wealthy country because you have a lot of law firms. You are not a wealthy country because you have a lot of advertising agencies. You are a wealthy country because you make things. Our manufacturers, unlike some of these other industries, have to compete against companies abroad. Mr. Speaker, when these big multinational corporations have to decide if they are going to set up shop in Germany or Korea or Brazil or India or wherever, we want it to be favorable taxwise to set up shop in the United States. Therefore, I do believe that, when the final tax rates are laid out by the Committee on Ways and Means, I would like to see lower rates for manufacturers who, after all, are responsible for producing the wealth in this country. It is something I have pursued in my own personal career. We have got a nice low tax rate for Wisconsin manufacturers, but we would like to see a lower rate for manufacturers in the United States than these other countries. If we are going to be a great country, not only do we need stronger families and to stop penalizing these families, but we have to stop educating our poor, young people that we are a racist country. To be a great country, we need a strong manufacturing base. We want it to be preferable to manufacture stuff in the United States than in Europe or Asia or South America. The way to do that is a lower tax rate for manufactured items. I thank the chair for paying rapt attention to all the comments I have made here tonight. I hope my colleagues, as they put together the big, beautiful bill, take them to heart, stop penalizing the nuclear family, start treating manufacturing especially the way it should be, and crack down on special tax provisions that benefit the very wealthy. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.