In remarks on the House floor before the Congressional recess, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) spoke about DEI policies.
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00:00Mr. Grothman is recognized for 60 minutes as a designee of the majority party. You're recognized.
00:06Thank you. Well, after returning from our district, it's time to bring to the chair's attention
00:14a variety of issues which we've come across over the weekend and issues that the minority party
00:20has brought up. The first issue I want to bring up is that regarding DEI. DEI, or affirmative
00:30action, has been a big part of America's landscape over the last 60 years, and it's not something
00:38that's going to go away overnight. President Trump can do what he can to wipe out this odious
00:45philosophy, but nevertheless, it's important for us to educate the young people in this
00:52country as to why it is so odious. It is based on the premise that what you accomplish in
01:02this country or what you should be given in this country is based on your ancestry or your
01:10gender. It's based on the idea, or was I think largely thought up by a guy by the name of
01:19Herbert Marcus in the early 70s, that we can destroy America by dividing it by ethnic group
01:27or dividing it by gender. Prior to this time, and he was a genuine communist sort of person,
01:35but prior to this time, people who wanted to destroy this country thought they could divide
01:40it by income, and they thought they could make everybody very mad and jealous of very successful
01:48interests, very successful people, and tear down America by doing that. They tried in the
01:5560s, there was bombings, there were anti-Vietnam protests, but they failed to bring down America,
02:04because Americans themselves are hardworking, and they realized a middle class lifestyle in
02:09America would be like a wildly wealthy lifestyle everywhere else in the world. So they failed.
02:17So they felt, well, let's educate our so-called minority people that America is a horrible country,
02:26and you're being held down because you're not a white male.
02:31President Trump, President Biden made it clear that he was somewhat hostile to white males.
02:37Well, the first thing we can do to prove that it's not true, and every child ought to know
02:42it so they aren't corrupted by these DEI professionals that our colleges and universities are spitting
02:49out in this horrible ideology our young people are educated into, is you, as I was reminded again,
02:56going back to my district, I met with a group of Ahmadiyya Muslims from Pakistan. Now here's a group that
03:06didn't come from Europe, they aren't Christian, but nevertheless they succeed, they have a mosque in
03:13Oshkosh, Wisconsin in my district, and they are obviously succeeding very well. They have strong families,
03:21they have a good work ethic, and if America were Eurocentric, as they say, they would not be succeeding
03:29so successfully. I've also seen the same thing with Hmong in my district. I have a substantial Hmong population
03:37from Laos. These people came to America and didn't even know English when they were children. But nevertheless,
03:45they come here, they all own houses, their children are doing well, their families are strong, again,
03:52despite the fact that they are not of European descent. Indeed, if you look at statistics that are put out
04:01there by the Census Bureau, if we look at different ethnic groups from around the globe, we find the easily,
04:09the most successful group is people who came here from India. Another group that didn't even necessarily
04:15know English when we got here, Indian Americans make far more than the average Americans. Indeed,
04:21they make almost twice as much as the average European American. Other groups that just do
04:27tremendously well, the Taiwanese, the Filipinos, the Cubans, people who come here from the East Indies,
04:38from the West Indies, all doing far better than the native born despite the fact that they are not of
04:47European heritage. So, if anybody knows anybody who has been corrupted by this wicked ideology that implies
04:58that America, you can't succeed unless you're a white European, look at the facts. Look how people come here
05:05and succeed again and again and again and again. And I would hope you would realize by looking at these
05:13facts that you should throw the DEI ideology which is being taught to our college kids, in some cases
05:22taught to our high school and middle school kids, throw it in the garbage. And remember, a communist guy the
05:29name of Herbert Murkus who thought up this stuff in the 70s and 80s, remember the reason they adopted the
05:37DEI ideology is because they wanted to destroy America. They wanted to set people from one continent against
05:44another continent. Remember the statistics of how well people do here and make sure that our next generation
05:52is not polluted is not polluted by this because we have way too many people floating around this country
05:57that have got a certificate in DEI or a major in DEI and they are up to no good.
06:07Another thing to mention here is with regard to immigration. President Trump is trying to enforce
06:16the law. I think one of the difficult problems he was dealt with is we just got done with a president
06:24that did all he could to ignore our immigration laws and as the result we took about 10 million people
06:32here in the last four years that are not something that we should have. Now what can we tell the people
06:41who feel we're being unnecessarily cruel? Every year in this country about 850,000 people are naturalized.
06:52They are sworn in to become American citizens. I like to show up at these ceremonies. They have them
06:57in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I try to show up at one or two a year and it's kind of thrilling to watch people
07:04from all over the globe. A lot of them already have good jobs. A lot of them already have their own
07:09businesses as they're sworn in as American citizens. When you took it in three-year increments, they're
07:14always one year or another year as an outlier, but when you look in three-year increments that 850,000
07:20over the last three years is the most people that we have taken in as far as I can tell in this country's
07:27history. When I was growing up the number of naturalized people every year was about 200,000.
07:32We're now over four times that amount. Nevertheless, there are people who are going to go out there to
07:40try to divide us who say that we're not letting people come here from abroad, that we're being cruel.
07:46850,000 people. Something to remember. And that's before you get all the people coming here on work
07:53visas. You get all the people coming here on tourist visas. You get all the people coming here on student
08:00visas. One just has to look around and realize that the idea that we are being cruel to people
08:08who came here across our southern border is ridiculous. Many people are coming here. Obviously,
08:20if we are going to enforce the law, we have to remove the people who came here by pretending they needed
08:26asylum and didn't. And that is going to be millions of people and the same people that encouraged them
08:31to come here knowing full well they were breaking the law or having to lie about needing asylum to come
08:38here. The people who caused the mess are going to say it's horrible to remove these people. But our
08:43President Trump is going to have to step up the plate, undo the damage done by the last administration,
08:50and he is going to remove many, many of these people. And one has to remember the reason he's removing them
08:58is because the prior administration, with a lot of encouragement from people on the other side of the
09:03aisle, were bringing people here who were coming here on false pretenses.
09:11The next issue we have to look at is one that I do hope is included in Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill,
09:24and what I think is the biggest crisis facing America today. In a free country, and John Adams said,
09:36our country is built for a moral, God-fearing country. In a free country, families have to be strong,
09:48and families have to be self-reliant. Beginning in the 1960s in this country, we had a massive increase
09:58increase in subsidies which ignored a family with a mother and father at home. In the 1950s, about 4% of
10:09the children born in this country were born without a mother and father at home. Within the next 30 years,
10:18after Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, that 4% increased to over 40%. And with it, many other problems
10:27came with it. Why did that happen? It happened because right now we have approximately 90 programs
10:36that you are not eligible for if you are not in poverty. In other words, if you have a mother or a
10:42father at home making $40,000, $50,000 a year, you would not get these programs. These programs are familiar
10:51to all of us. Earned income tax credit, what I think is the most damaging, the low-income housing programs,
10:58the health care programs, the food stamp programs, the Pell grants. Program after program you get,
11:09but you would lose if you had both parents in a home. It is not surprising, and nobody takes advantage of
11:17all 90 programs. But I think it is probably not unusual to have people take advantage of six or seven
11:22programs. And then it would not be unusual in which people who have a mother and father at home
11:30are penalized over $20,000 a year if they get married. We have to look at these programs,
11:39and frequently these programs materially put the married couple at a disadvantage. We all heard of
11:49stories of food share. If you talk to people at the local convenience store, talk to people at the local
11:56grocery store, that people who are taking advantage of these programs may be able to buy
12:03food items that the person who is working behind the counter can't afford. We know when it comes to
12:11housing that there are section 42 tax credit housing, which is a screwed up program for many reasons,
12:18but it is aimed at lower income people. The developers are incentivized to make these projects as nice as
12:27possible, such that when I had a staffer who got married in Wisconsin, they said, Glenn, me and my
12:35husband are looking for a place to live after they got married, and the nicest places are all low-income
12:42housing. Well, that doesn't seem to make any sense, unless you look at it again as certain people are out
12:50there trying to destroy the nuclear family and trying to discourage people from entering into that sort of
13:00relationship. Same thing is true of, and we need health care for everyone, but same thing is true of
13:08health care, in which you don't have the big deductibles that you have when people get their health care
13:14from working in the private sector. You might have a $10,000 or $15,000 deductible. You don't get a
13:20deductible like that if you're on the government. So same thing is true with Pell Grants. A woman came up to
13:27me and said, you know, me and my husband got married. We don't have enough money to help our daughter go
13:32through college, so she had to take out a lot of student loans. My sibling is not working, and her daughter
13:45got free grants from the government, grants she wouldn't have got if she was married. Again,
13:50is that a good thing? I'm not sure it is, but again and again, program after program, we discourage the
13:56nuclear family, and that's why we've gone from a 4% rate of kids born without a mother and father at
14:04home to 40%. It's like it was by design. It's like somebody wanted to destroy the nuclear family. It's
14:11important to remember, though we may individually not know these people, but there have always been
14:17people who wanted to destroy the nuclear family and feel that that's the key to bringing down America.
14:23Okay? Certainly the Marxists wanted to destroy the nuclear family until they took it off their
14:29website. A more recent group, Black Lives Matter, was overtly anti-family. The feminist extremists in the
14:37studies, Kate Millett being the prominent one, you could call her the mother of women's studies,
14:44were very anti-nuclear family. And these anti-nuclear family people got the upper hand,
14:51and that's why we have gone from about 4% to over 40%. So I hope, as the people in this body put together
14:59their great beautiful bill, that we remember that a lot of the programs in our current budget
15:06are programs designed to destroy the nuclear family. Two other quick comments.
15:16One with regard to transgender in local schools. A lot of people have talked about men and women's
15:22sports. And I don't even think that's the biggest scandal. I think the biggest scandal is that we
15:30are educating our young people to adapt a transgender lifestyle. In Europe, when they backed off on
15:37pushing this lifestyle, the lifestyle not exclusively, but largely disappeared. In other words, we have
15:44made it cool by what they do in Hollywood, promoting this lifestyle, sadly in the schools promoting this
15:52lifestyle. I'll mention again my own anecdotes. When I was campaigning last year, running to a couple
16:00grandmothers whose children were going down this transgender route, broke their heart. And they
16:07wondered why this had to happen, because it wasn't something I saw when I was a child. It happened
16:11because our education system and our popular culture promote this lifestyle. And it's a good thing
16:20if President Trump tries to get this stuff out of our institutes of public instruction.
16:27You know, I think it's really too bad if people feel it's cool to adapt this lifestyle.
16:34So it's something for us to remember, and hopefully we'll be having hearings on this topic
16:38as we delve into whether people would adapt this lifestyle in the first place if there weren't so
16:45many powerful special interests that encourage people to adapt this lifestyle.
16:51Now my final, when we come to our big beautiful bill, a lot of it is going to have to do with taxes.
16:58And I want to stand with President Trump on some of his items here that he's brought up in the past and
17:05some of the reasons I like him. President Trump is not afraid to stand up to the special interests
17:11that seem to be so persuasive in this chamber. First of all, even though a lot of the money is
17:16already out the door, President Trump came up against the CHIPS bill. The CHIPS bill was a public-private
17:23partnership, I guess you should call it. And whenever you hear about a public-private partnership,
17:27I think you've got to hold on to your wallet because that means a private sector group wants some
17:36government money. The CHIPS bill to encourage more semiconductor manufacturing in the United States,
17:45and I think we do have to encourage more semiconductor manufacturing, but it cost about $280 billion.
17:53That's about $700 for every man, woman, and child in the country. Does anybody really believe
17:59that the federal government should be grabbed $700 from everybody just to promote one industry? I think
18:05we could promote that industry with a much smaller amount. If we deal with some exemptions for
18:11manufacturing I'm going to talk about in a second, that would be another way to bring more semiconductor
18:18manufacturing in this country. But I strongly believe with President Trump that a $700 per person
18:25in this country subsidy of the semiconductor industry is unnecessary. The next thing I'll bring
18:32up is the carried interest treatment for hedge fund managers. Under the carried interest loophole,
18:44you might call it, people whose primary income is derived from being entitled to some of the money they
18:56make their investors is taxed at capital gains rates rather than regular rates. In other words, people
19:03who are investing other people's money and making frequently millions of dollars a year are taxed at
19:14a much lower rate than people who are welders, people who are nurses, people who make their money any other
19:21way. President Trump came out against the carried interest loophole when he ran for president in 2016. He
19:28wasn't able to get rid of it at that time. But I hope this time that our Ways and Means Committee together
19:35with President Trump stops taxing these wildly wealthy people at a lower tax rate than what the average guy or
19:46woman is making in this country is making in this country. Another good thing to do. The final tax provision
19:54that I'll point out is President Trump has floated the idea of having a lower tax rate for manufacturing
20:02than other industries. I applaud him for that. To be a great country, you have to make things. You're not a wealthy
20:09country because you have a lot of law firms. You're not a wealthy country because you have a lot of advertising agencies.
20:16You're a wealthy country because you make things. And our manufacturers, unlike some of these other industries,
20:23have to compete against companies abroad. So when these big multinational corporations have to decide,
20:33am I going to set up shop in Germany or Korea or Brazil or India or wherever,
20:42we want it to be favorable to set up shop tax wise in the United States. And I therefore do believe that
20:51when the final tax rates are laid out by the Ways and Means Committee, I would like to see lower rates
20:58for manufacturers who, after all, are responsible for producing the wealth in this country.
21:06It's something I pursued in my own personal career. We got a nice low tax rate for Wisconsin
21:11manufacturers. But we'd like to see a lower rate for manufacturers in the United States and
21:17these other countries. And if we are going to be a great country, not only do we need stronger families
21:23and stop penalizing these countries, not only do we have to stop educating our poor young people that
21:33are a racist country. But to be a great country, we need a strong manufacturing base. We want it to be
21:39preferable to manufacture stuff in the United States than in Europe or Asia or South America.
21:48And the way to do that is a lower tax rate for manufactured items.
21:54So I'd like to thank the chair for paying rapt attention to all of the
22:03comments I have made here tonight. And I hope my colleagues, as they put together the big,
22:09beautiful bill, take them to heart. Stop penalizing the nuclear family. Start treating manufacturing,
22:19especially the way it should be. Crack down on special tax provisions that benefit the very wealthy.
22:28Thank you very much.