Three Pieces of Good News, One Piece of Bad News

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, normally, or frequently, people use this microphone to give negative news, and I would like to lead off with three little positive stories that I don't think have been in the news enough, and then we will talk about a story--I don't know if it is true or not--but we are going to ask for a committee hearing.

First of all, I was at a committee about 10 days ago in which we had a hearing on Afghanistan. So many of us back home have heard stories, attended funerals of people, people frequently in the National Guard, who have died fighting in Afghanistan.

We have now gone 7 months without any combat deaths in Afghanistan. I don't think that story has been told enough. I am kind of really surprised it hasn't been told a lot during this campaign season, but it hasn't.

So let's celebrate the fact that we have gone 7 months, hard to believe, without a combat casualty in Afghanistan.

Now, the second piece of good news. I was talking to the head of the border patrol, and it was not long ago, about 15, 16 months ago, when 90,000 people a month were apprehended at the southern border and allowed in the United States, frequently given a hearing, an asylum hearing. But they were allowed in the United States, frequently lost track of, and people who we weren't appropriately vetting becoming a permanent part of our American fabric.

In the last month, in part due to three different things--a negotiation that President Trump had with Mexico, where when we apprehend people, we send them back to Mexico, pending the asylum hearing; secondly, negotiations with Central America, where people walking through Central America headed to the United States are kept in Central America; and third, a directive that if people try to come into this country because of fears of COVID-19, they are also immediately turned around and led back--we now have gone from about 90,000 people to under 2,000, as a matter of fact, he told me under 1,000 people a month being let in this country who are apprehended or talked to by the Border Patrol.

There are still people who sneak across the border who are not apprehended by the Border Patrol. But among these people who they touch, we have gone from 90,000 to under 1,000. That is good news, and I am surprised how many people, even on the floor of this institution, do not know what an improvement we have had at the border.

The third piece of good news I am going to give a tip of the hat to, when I drove in 2 weeks ago, I took an Uber from the airport. I talked to the Uber driver, who not only was driving for Uber, but he also had a job, I believe he told me, with CVS, and he was living the American Dream.

When I asked him what was great about America, he said anybody can make it in America, the land of opportunity.

Here you have an Afghan Uber driver. He wasn't of European heritage. I don't believe he was Christian. I don't believe in the family growing up he could speak English. But despite all these disadvantages, he is living the American Dream--and it wasn't rocket science--driving an Uber, working at CVS.

I hope we remember him as other Congressmen, for whatever political reason, want to tear down America and say you can't make it in America. I will tell you, if that Afghan Uber driver can make it in America and live the American Dream, anybody can live the American Dream.

But now I would like to ask for a hearing because I had some, perhaps, bad news back home. I talked to a woman who had two children. One is $30,000 in debt, one is $40,000 in debt, from taking out student loans. She told me that she felt that if she and her husband weren't married, there would have been government programs, and her children wouldn't be so in debt.

She has raised good kids. Those kids are going to pay off their loans, even if they were discriminated against because their parents were married, or not.

But it occurred to me, at a time when so much of the rhetoric in this institution is about discrimination, we ought to have a hearing on the Education and Labor Committee: Is it really true that we have government programs out here penalizing people for getting married?

I would ask, again, that my wonderful chairman of the Education and Labor Committee have a hearing on this topic. We can find out whether it is the official policy of the United States, when determining government grants helping people go through school, that we discriminate against children of married couples. And they have to delay having children, delay buying a house, as they have to pay off their student loans.

So I would like to have a hearing. I hope what my constituent told me is not true, that it is the official policy of the United States Government to discriminate against people who decide to get married. But I am afraid it might be, and that is why I would like to have a hearing.

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