Destruction of the Nuclear Family

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, we just got done with a very interesting week in which this House passed a budget bill, and now we proceed actually to the more difficult process in which, sometime over the next 4 months, we plan on passing both the reconciliation bill and appropriations bills.

Between the two, we deal with all of government spending. As a result, we have an opportunity to look at programs and examine programs the way we haven't before, particularly because we have someone as President who is somewhat of a person who promises change. Clearly, his election meant that they want fundamental changes in government.

Mr. Speaker, different programs have different goals. Just so the public understands, the appropriations bills are for what we call discretionary spending. The reconciliation bills are what are referred to as mandatory spending. Between the two bills that must eventually pass or several separate appropriations bills, we will be looking at virtually all of the Federal Government.

Mr. Speaker, different programs have different goals, and obviously one of our goals has to be to reduce spending given that we have over $35 trillion in debt.

Some of these programs also have goals that are perhaps intentional and perhaps unintentional. These are the goals that I am going to address today.

By the way, this is relevant whether we are running a $1 trillion or over a $1 trillion increase in debt every year, or whether we were, in fact, in a surplus situation.

I am going to look at some programs, which, again, maybe intentionally, maybe unintentionally, penalize people who are raising children while they are married.

We had a hearing a couple of weeks ago in a subcommittee which I have been fortunate enough to chair. In that hearing, Robert Rector, who works for the Heritage Foundation, found approximately 90 programs in which eligibility depended upon having a small income.

In other words, you would lose eligibility for these programs if you either worked and, depending on the program, made more than $12,000, made more than $25,000, made more than $50,000, or had somebody else in the household making more than this amount of money.

This would include if, say, a single parent had a husband or a wife and the single parent was not working or making very little. If they married someone with an income of $30,000, $40,000, or $50,000, they would lose the benefits from that program.

We are all familiar with some of these larger programs. I think most people wouldn't be able to name all 90, but there are things like FoodShare. There is the earned income tax credit, which requires a little bit of work, but as you work your way up and get a higher income in the company where you work, you would lose that.

Low-income housing, which I think is maybe the worst program of the bunch because you are given housing if you are a young person, allowing you to get out from having to live with your parents as a benefit for having a low income.

Medicaid; TANF, a cash benefit; childcare; Pell grants; payments for children with some disabilities, all of these programs are conditioned upon not making too much money and, of our primary concern today, not marrying somebody who makes too much money.

Frequently, these programs are, in certain ways, more generous than the middle class normally receives. A perfect example would be section 42, low-income tax credits. I have known people who have looked for housing, and the housing they get is not as lavish as the housing available in low-income housing.

The programs are set up in a way that the owners of the low-income housing are encouraged to build very modern, very upscale apartments that maybe some of the average people cannot afford. As a matter of fact, a lot of the average people may still be living with their parents for a while even after they get married.

We have our Medicaid program, which is a fine program, providing healthcare for the poor. Again, there are a lot of people out there working who may have a $10,000 or $15,000 or $20,000 deductible on their medical payments, and of course the government program has, in most cases, no deductible.

We have the FoodShare. All you have to do is talk to people who work in the food stores, and they will say that frequently people on the FoodShare program can afford types of food that the people who are working at the grocery store feel they cannot afford. Not only do we have these programs which are conditioned upon not marrying somebody with an income, but they even have benefits that are sometimes superior to people who are not taking advantage of these programs.

I mentioned Robert Rector and what he said at the relevant hearing. The penalty for getting married obviously varies from person to person, but, in his example, a young person who married a father or mother of their children would be penalized by $28,000.

It is, therefore, not surprising that, if my colleagues ask around, they will find examples of people who are living together but not getting married because they want the benefits. Inevitably, they will find the percentage of people getting married when they have children falls because the generosity of the programs is such that there is a feeling of: Why would I get married at all?

These programs also cause cheating or breaking the law because, of course, they frequently don't catch it if you are getting cash off the books. All of these programs encourage working for cash. They also encourage, I think, earning money by doing things illegally because that is another thing that is not reportable.

We were in a different hearing the other day, and there was a feeling of one of our witnesses who, I think, I would have to say leans toward supporting the Democratic Party. They didn't like the fact that sometimes people are stuck in the muck and are not making as much money as other Americans.

This woman did not seem to realize that one of the reasons that people sometimes make less money is because they shouldn't try to improve their lot in their employer's company because, if they improved their lot, they would lose some of these 90 benefits.

Mr. Speaker, a question is: Is this a penalty for getting married? It has had a huge impact on society. I point out that in the 1950s, 4 percent of the children in this country were born out of wedlock. That number is now over 40 percent. America has fundamentally changed because of these programs.

The question is: Was this on purpose, or was it an inadvertent problem caused by these programs? I think most people would say that people didn't realize what they were doing. The fact that we have had the number of children born out of wedlock skyrocket from 4 percent to over 40 percent was an oversight.

One thing I think America should realize is there were always radicals out there who were trying to get rid of the American family.

Karl Marx, back in the 1800s, made it clear, I think, because he wanted the government to have the absolute power, that he felt that, to have his socialist paradise, we had to get rid of the family.

In the 1960s, the leading feminists, who were celebrated by the left at that time, made it clear that a goal of theirs was to get rid of the nuclear family.

Here is Kate Millett, who has been described as the mother of women's studies classes which dot our universities around the country: ``The complete destruction of traditional marriage and the nuclear family is the `revolutionary or utopian' goal of feminism.''

Linda Gordon, another prominent feminist: ``The nuclear family must be destroyed. . . . Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process.''

Michelle Barrett, in the book ``The Anti-Social Family,'' wrote: ``The family sucks the juice out of everything around it, leaving other institutions stunted and distorted.''

There is no shortage of radical feminists. I could quote Angela Davis, who some on the left view as a hero, as another person who was antifamily.

More recently, Black Lives Matter, during their ascendancy a few years ago, in documents written by their founders, wanted to get rid of the Western-prescribed, so-called nuclear family.

Even after that was out there on the internet, before they took it down, a significant number of people in this institution, I think, showed up at rallies, or whatever one would call them, sponsored by Black Lives Matter, a group that at least initially said they were against the traditional family.

It is entirely possible that one of the reasons we have all of these programs is because some of the powerful feminists and Marxists that influence what goes on in this body were in favor of destroying the nuclear family.

Mr. Speaker, people can say that there is nobody in this conference who would yield to these radical feminists. I remind the public that the radical feminists are for abortions at 8\1/2\ months.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues would say that nobody here would be for an abortion like that--oh, my goodness--but there are individual States that have that law right now, and that is what the radical feminists wanted.

My colleagues would say that nobody would allow transgender women in women's sports, but, again, that is what the radical feminists want. They want to blur the distinctions between men and women, and almost all Democrats in this institution follow along and vote to allow transgender women in women's sports.

There is the same thing about transgender women in women's bathrooms. My colleagues would say that nobody in Congress would be for transgender women in women's bathrooms, but, in fact, the Democratic Party is overwhelmingly for that.

Now, ask yourself, if the Democratic Party is for these things, all of which would have been considered absurd 40 years ago--8\1/2\ month abortions, transgender in sports, transgender in women's bathrooms--is it too much to conclude that one of the reasons our government's programs are designed to destroy marriage is because the power of the radical feminists and the power of the Marxists in the Democratic Party. It has to be in there for some reason. It is something that we should look out for.

I will point out one more time that I think this is the most critical debate that we are going to have over the next 4 or 5 months as we debate our appropriation bills and as we debate our reconciliation bills. This is a debate we should have regardless of whether we are in a difficult financial plight or not.

I want to emphasize that I don't care if we are running trillion- dollar surpluses around here, the idea of putting out programs, substantially generous programs whose effect is to destroy the family, is wrong.

While I certainly know many single parents who are doing a tremendous job and have done a tremendous job, when I talk to people in different fields, they say the explosion in families without a mother and father at home is causing other problems for society. When I talk to law enforcement, they feel one of the root causes of crime is the breakdown of the American family.

I am sure, like everybody around here who has been in politics for a while, you sit in these committee hearings and hear the problems of high crime and murders and such, and people have suggestions as to how to deal with them, but we don't spend enough time pointing out that one way that would certainly reduce the crime rate, maybe back down to where it was in the 1950s, is to do what we can to build up the traditional family rather than what we do now, which is trying to have as few people as possible in the family.

The second thing that I am told is that families of all backgrounds can have problems with drug abuse. Right now, we have over 100,000 people a year dying of drug abuse. It can happen everywhere, but again, when I talk to the professionals who deal with this, disproportionately, the 100,000 people who die every year are from difficult family backgrounds. This drug culture, I think, would be less strong in America if we did more to promote the traditional family rather than doing all we can to make sure the traditional family is weakened.

The third institution I will point out that is harmed by this government's policy of penalizing traditional families is education. I know my friends on the other side of the aisle like to claim they care about education. When I have talked to school superintendents, when I have talked to teachers about the additional money that has to be spent on children with certain problems, again, those kids are disproportionately from families in which you don't have both a mom and dad there.

Again, I know a lot of families like that who do a fantastic job, but I am pointing out that if you really cared about education, you would look at these programs that have caused the children who are born into a family with only one parent there to have skyrocketed from 4 percent to over 40 percent.

I ask the chairman of the relevant committees that are going to have to deal with the appropriation bills and deal with their designated spending limits on the reconciliation bill to pay particular attention to the programs that are designed to penalize the nuclear family, which is so despised by Karl Marx and some of the radicals who were around in the 1960s and 1970s.

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