The War on the Nuclear Family

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, obviously, we are about to begin a new session, and one more time I would like to review what I think are some of the major mistakes that this body has committed over the last 50 or 60 years that we should be revisiting now, now that it is apparent the American public wants some change.

It is a goal of this body, and really even a constitutional mandate, that we treat everybody equally and that we don't prefer one group of people or ethnic group of people over another group of people, people of one lifestyle over another lifestyle.

Nevertheless, one more time I think I have to bring up that it is very apparent that we are treating people differently and that is particularly with regard to people who elect to raise children in marriage and people who, for whatever reason, sometimes their fault sometimes not their fault, elect to raise children out of marriage.

Mr. Speaker, if you look at almost every single government program, they are conditioned or based upon percent of poverty. If you are below a certain income level, then you are eligible for that program, and if you are above a certain level, then you are not eligible for benefits under that plan.

Since in a household with a man and woman both there and both parents of a child, it is overwhelmingly likely that one of them is working full-time, they will be making $40,000 or $50,000 or $60,000 or more, that couple will almost never be considered to be in poverty.

Mr. Speaker, if you have another situation in which the mother and father are in different households, if one of these people is not working or working minimally, making maybe $15,000 or $16,000 a year or less and the other person is working full-time, then that is considered to be not in poverty.

As a result, financially, there is an incentive to make a household in which the mother and father are not both there the norm.

Now, almost all of the programs that began with the so-called war on poverty in the 1960s gave grants or money to people who did not have both a man and a woman in the household. Some of these programs at the time were known as food stamps, some were healthcare, what is known as Medicaid, or different States have different words for it. In Wisconsin we call it BadgerCare.

We have low-income housing which is, again, available only to people with low income. As a matter of fact, in a lot of these low-income housing projects one of the goals they have when they hire managers is to make sure that there is not a man in the household or a father in the household because then you shouldn't be able to take advantage of the program.

There used to be cash grants called AFDC which were eliminated during the Gingrich/Clinton years, and they, again, gave cash basically to people in situations where you did not have a mother and father at home. It has since been replaced by TANF grants.

If someone does decide to work 14, 15, or 20 hours a week there are grants for daycare that are not eligible for situations in which you have both parents at home. If you want to go to college, there are grants called Pell grants available, but not available to people in which you have both the mother and father at home.

This should concern us all. It is not difficult to come up with hypotheticals. Another program which kind of discourages full-time work is called the earned income tax credit program where a family can wind up with $5,000 or $6,000 that you won't get if you are making say more than $40,000 a year or married to somebody with a normal income.

We have to revisit this problem.

These programs have changed America such that in 1965 before these programs kicked in, only about 5 percent of children born in America were born to a family without a mother and father at home. That number is now over 40 percent.

Other programs have become more popular. Something I think we ought to remember is that it is not the cost that bothers me as much as it is what it is doing to America.

At the turn of the century, we had about 17 million people on FoodShare, what people call food stamps. That number is now 42,000. In other words, we have over doubled the number of people on food assistance. America is very generous. I tour my food banks all the time. They do a fantastic job. Mr. Speaker, I love those food banks.

America does have to cover people, but in order to get on food stamps, Mr. Speaker, you need a lower income, and I think we ought to be spending more time wondering why.

Right now, unemployment is almost nonexistent, but despite the fact that we have almost nonexistent unemployment, we skyrocketed up from 17 million to 42 million people on food stamps. So it is important.

I want to dig into these programs because some of these programs give people on the programs benefits that people not on the programs would not use.

Mr. Speaker, if you talk to your clerk in the local food store they will comment, if you ask them frequently, that people on the government benefit are buying things that the people behind the counter would not think of buying.

We have to ask ourselves: Is that right?

There is a housing program called section 42 which, in my opinion, does more to benefit property tax developers than it does to benefit the people living in the housing. There is a program in which because the government pays for 70 percent of the cost of the housing, the housing built for so-called low income is frequently nicer or more lavish.

If you look at the kitchen counters and if you look at where they build the properties, they are more lavish than the average American finds.

I had a staffer a little while ago who got married, and when she and her husband were looking for housing, they were disappointed to find that the nicest housing was all low income and they would not be able to afford such nice housing.

I talked to a property developer, and he found it difficult to buy new land for new apartment projects because he always got outbid by the developers who were having 70 percent of their projects paid for by the government.

I have got two problems there. One is the general marriage penalty associated with the programs and the other is whoever put the program in there and supports the program appears to me to be more concerned about making money for property developers than even the people who need the low-income housing.

I should point out that some low-income housing is going to be a necessity. We have people on Social Security whose incomes are so low that they can't even afford an apartment. I can understand the reason for this housing. Overall, the point is that we, right now, are operating a policy in this country and have been operating the policy for 50 years that says: We don't want both mom and dad in the home with the children.

George Gilder has written a lot about this problem. Robert Rector has written a lot about this problem.

There is no question that one of the reasons we have gone from 5 percent of the children born without a mother and father at home to now over 40 percent is that the problem is the government is encouraging this.

Mr. Speaker, I want to point out, you may say, well, that is sure surprising. This is not something that we wanted.

However, there are a lot of people who actually view the American nuclear family as a problem. Karl Marx, which seems kind of strange, 170 years ago felt a goal of the hard left, the progressive left, whatever you want to call it, was to abolish the family.

There are names that maybe are forgotten, but in the sixties, we had the radical feminists like Kate Millet, who was a well-known person, talked about destroying the American family. She, for whatever philosophical reason, didn't want men in the household. So there are people who want this.

Two of the three people who founded Black Lives Matter called for ending the so-called Western prescribed nuclear family structure. There is no question that about 5 years ago around here Black Lives Matter was perceived to be a very powerful institution, and a lot of people spoke about it positively. So it is important to remember they wanted to get rid of the nuclear family.

How are we going to get back to where we used to be, where almost all children had a mother and father at home unless there would have been some catastrophe and one of the parents would have died?

I think that is something that we should be looking at unquestionably over the next 3 months.

This is a totally artificial thing. When I talk to people in other countries, such as Korea and India, it is almost unheard of all of this not having the father in the home.

Why did it happen in the Western countries and the United States? No question, I think the reason is government policy has encouraged it.

I hope that, in the next 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 months, as we look at government programs, we have as our goal not discriminating in favor of families that don't have a mother and father at home and, even more importantly, stop discriminating against and displaying hatred and inequity against families in which both mother and father are at home.

One other anecdote of a program, Pell grants, which I mention just briefly. I have been talking about this, even before I got here, for 25 years of my life, and once I talked to a young gal who must have been 23 or 24 about the marriage penalties associated with college scholarships, what she thought about this.

She said she and her husband got married before they were having children, but none of her friends were getting married because they got free college. In other words, they wanted to have the government pay for their college, and they realized that whoever puts together this Food Stamp program had, whether it was intentionally or unintentionally, put together one more program in which you were discriminated against if you were married and actually were discriminated against if your parents were married.

It is another problematic situation here, and I hope that the American public and conservatives around this Capitol and throughout the country demand a situation in which we stop discriminating against the old-fashioned nuclear family.

I think that is the most important problem facing America and the next Congress. It is a difficult issue to deal with because you don't want to be labeled mean or cruel. On the other hand, as a public policy, I think coming up on 60 years, maybe 55 years, brazenly discriminating against a nuclear family with a mother and father at home has to end.

We should stop treating the mother-and-father family at home so poorly. We should stop penalizing them by keeping the newer apartments off the market for them. It is not right that they can't afford things in the food store that maybe people with potentially lower income are.

As far as health insurance is concerned, we discriminate against middle-class America. They frequently have big, $15,000 to $20,000, deductions on their healthcare, deductions that we would not give to somebody who, under normal circumstances, does not have both parents in the home. This is another example of discrimination and another example of policy in which we try to destroy the American family.

I think the first step here is to have more and more people talk about it. I think the American people should be aware of it. The American people should not be supportive of any program that so brazenly discourages having a mother and father at home. I realize it can happen.

I will finish with this. When this was first brought to my attention, there was a great author by the name of George Gilder, who wrote books about this family situation in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, and he actually studied what was known as the ghetto at the time in Albany, New York.

He followed around a young couple, a man and a woman, after the young woman got pregnant, was going to become a mother.

George Gilder was probably born around 1940. He felt at the time that that would be cause for concern and alarm, that the young woman was pregnant. In fact, he found out that, at that time in Albany, New York, it was not considered a bad thing, but it was considered a good thing because now they would be eligible for food and eligible for medical care and finally be able to get out from under their parents. They were given their own apartment.

By the way, I find that in my district, too. When I talk to people administering the low-income housing, it is not unusual that people get into low-income housing because they are leaving their parents' house, which a lot of young people want to do, but I guess one way to get your own apartment is to have a child. I am not sure that is a good thing.

In any event, George Gilder, looking at things, found a certain subset of society that felt it was monetarily beneficial to have a child without the father legally around. As a result, we were probably shifting society away from and discriminating against the mother and father at home.

George Gilder made another observation as he studied this class of people. Traditionally, in our society, the purpose of the father has been to support the family, and George Gilder found that, frequently, fathers' income went up and responsibility level went up as he got married and had children and assumed the role of being the breadwinner and responsible for paying the mortgage, that sort of thing.

As we got away from having the father in the home, they lose that motivation or that purpose in life. As they lose that purpose in life, they are more likely to do drugs and more likely to not be as productive citizens. In other words, the dad becomes more productive after he gets married, not before he gets married.

Not only is this, I think, the current policy, a problem for children, but I think it is a big problem for men, as well. It is something that isn't talked about nearly as much as it should be, but sometimes people wonder why there is such a higher percentage of men incarcerated than women, a higher percentage of men dying of drug overdoses compared to women. I think part of it is because it has been the policy of the Federal Government to chase men out of the household.

In any event, I leave my conservative friends around the country with this desire: over the next couple of months or 3 or 4 months, we talk about the perverse incentives and the apparent hatred of the American government for households with a man and woman both available to raise the children, and we work toward an equitable government in which we at least treat the two-parent family equally in the eyes of the government, as we do families in which both parents are not available.

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