[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 19 (Thursday, February 1, 2024)] [House] [Pages H381-H385] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] {time} 1145 ISSUES OF THE DAY The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Loudermilk). Mr. LOUDERMILK. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the service of someone who I believe is one of the best staff members in this institution--Mr. Tim Monahan. I first met Tim a few years ago during his tenure with the Committee on House Administration. As with me, Tim has left a lasting impression on many here in Congress. Anyone who has ever met Tim probably remembers their first impression of the Gettysburg neighbor who some refer to as a grizzly with a Philly charm. As you get to know Tim, you learn just how steadfast, generous, and kind he really is. He is the kind of person who can handle anything that is thrown his way, whether it be big feelings, awkward moments, and even the most outlandish member requests. Tim first started on the Hill at the Office of the CAO during Speaker Boehner's years where he learned the nuts and bolts of our institution. Later serving on the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, Tim deepened his institutional relationship while ensuring his work was for the greater benefit of the House. He joined ranking member Rodney Davis at the Committee on House Administration at the beginning of the 116th Congress where his natural leadership skills quickly stood out, and he was soon appointed staff director for the committee. In 2023, Tim took over the House operations for Speaker Kevin McCarthy where he remained a steady hand during several unprecedented moments, including staying on through the transitions of Speaker pro tempore McHenry and now-Speaker Mike Johnson. So much could be said about Tim's dedication to our institution and the people working here. I could talk about his vital role in reopening the House post-pandemic, his conflict resolution skills, his role in the first House filibuster, his helping Congressman Davis carry Representative Wright to safety on January 6, 2021, staffing a historic 15 rounds of votes for the Speaker of the House, his mentorship and leadership for the past 15 years, or his deep, resolute patriotism. Tim possesses an honor and respect for the halls of Congress that is admired by many. He gets to know and cares about all of those who work within its walls and works hard to ensure that our Capitol remains a functional beacon of our constitutional Republic. Tim's legacy in the House will be his strong character and his servant leadership. Everyone who knows Tim is better for it. As he prepares to leave the House, our institution is better, thanks to his service. Tim, we wish you all the best in this next chapter of your life. Hopefully your departure from the House will allow more time with your lovely wife, Marissa; your baby daughter, Marian; and your puppy, Bella. Some of the staffers you have worked with have had some parting wishes for you. We hope the soup is plentiful in the next cafeteria, the nuts are absent, and that you have more time to listen to JLo and dream of Tiger Woods' comebacks. Please, they said, if you ever try the grocery store sushi, Pringles, and kombucha combo again, please don't share. To me, Tim has been not only a great member of the House staff, but he has been a close confidante and a good friend. He has been instrumental in helping me with some of the greatest moments in my tenure as a Member of Congress, but he has also helped me through some of the most difficult times. Tim Monahan is the gold standard of this institution, and more should aspire to be like him. Tim, we will miss you. God bless you. Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am going to comment on a variety of things. Like always, I like to use this time to bring the Chair's attention to stories that I don't feel our mainstream media is doing an adequate job of covering. A couple comments before I delve into these five stories. First of all, Congressman Loudermilk gave a shout-out to one of his staffers who is leaving. This will be the final week that Kyle Amato of my office will be working for me, and I thank him publicly for the great job he does, particularly putting out the newsletters that everyone around the 6th Congressional District of Wisconsin likes. The second thing I would like to do is I really didn't care for the form of the child tax credit that has been discussed so much today, but I thank the people for putting it together for this one reason. Normally around here when we pass legislation designed to benefit the children, we leave out the children of what I will call the working middle class. In other words, if you are hardly working at all, certainly if there is not a man in the house, this institution gives more and more benefits to people of that demographic. We did something the other day, which is almost unheard of. We extended those benefits to the middle class. While there are certainly problems with the way it is laid out, if you are a married couple making 120 grand a year and have a couple kids, you are going to get the child credits just as you would if you weren't working at all. Small favors, but I would like to point that out. Now, the first issue that I don't think has been adequately addressed around here is there has been, I think, misinformation spread on the conflict between Israel and Hamas or Israel and Gaza. We are supposed to be very sensitive and say Hamas is one group and Gaza is another group; but, in fact, Hamas--at least the polls show--is wildly popular in the West Bank and also, of course, popular in Gaza; and Gaza elected Hamas. I think too many people feel it is a historical conflict, and, in a way, we heard this in a speech from a prominent American earlier today. They are kind of treated as two sides of the same coin. In fact, that is not true, and I would like to talk a little bit more about how the people in Gaza should be so lucky, so grateful--realize how lucky and grateful they are that they are living so close to Israel. There are far too many Americans in general, and congressmen in particular, who define this conflict as between two sides apparently equal or close to equal. In fact, Gaza has been treated incredibly fairly and generously by Israel. When Gaza was set up as kind of an independent--I don't know what you would call it--principality a while ago, the Israelis removed the Jewish temples from the area despite the fact that in Israel proper, there are 400 Muslim mosques. In Gaza, Israel felt, well, okay, if they don't want them, they shouldn't have to put up with temples in that area. Not only that, they physically removed Israelis who were living in Gaza. Maybe you remember this. They physically grabbed and removed them from Gaza to the rest of Israel. [[Page H382]] Apparently, the Gazans did not have to put up with Jews living in Gaza. That was bending over backward. It was almost barbaric. Then Gazans were able to work in Israel. Israel is a wildly successful Western country on the Mediterranean. As a result, I think the second biggest source of revenue for people in Gaza was working in businesses in Israel. That is their major source of income, along with foreign welfare that they didn't work for at all. It largely comes from Europe. When Gaza was set up as an independent or somewhat independent principality, they were given greenhouses so they could take over those businesses and make money. Of course, the Palestinians on their own destroyed the greenhouses because they didn't want to accept something that was tainted by previously being Jewish businesses, which is kind of offensive. I don't think the public really knows that. I think one way you can tell whether you are put upon and have things tough or whether you have things easy is other people want to be like you, or people are running away from you. Already, at the time of the barbaric acts in October, there were over 10,000 people from Thailand living in Israel and working in Israel. In other words, they came halfway around the globe from Thailand to Israel to work in Israel. At first, I was kind of stumped when they said that Thai nationals were killed by Hamas in Israel or Thai nationals were taken hostage in Israel. I thought what in the world are people from Thailand doing in Israel. Actually, they knew it was so wonderful working in Israel that they came halfway around the globe to work there. As a practical matter now, since Israel can no longer trust the Palestinians, those jobs are going to be opened up to people around the world. Not enough people know that, right; be they people from India--which is a booming country in its own right--Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Kenya, Malawi. They are coming from around the world to replace the Palestinian workers who are fortunate enough to have jobs in Israel. By the way, those Gaza citizens who worked in Israel were making far more money than your average person in the Arab world is making. They just lucked out that they were near enough to Israel, and they could grab these good jobs. Now that they kicked them away by killing so many Israelis, they are going to be replaced by other people all around the world. One thing that I think has not been publicized anywhere near enough is there are talks of 25,000 people from Ecuador who may come to Israel to work. Think about that. The Gazans think they are so put upon that they have to kill the Israelis, chop off their heads, chop off the heads of children, and, meanwhile, people in Ecuador are coming halfway around the world with possible plans of taking 25,000 Ecuadorians to live in Israel and take those jobs. That is something that every American should know. They don't know it because the American press is not covering it. They are allowing people to believe, oh, those poor Gazans. They don't realize that people from Thailand or Ecuador or the southern part of Africa would move halfway around the world--goodbye to their families--to be in heaven, to work in Israel. By the way, there is another item that ought to be pointed out with regard to how well the Arabs in Israel have it. Not long ago, there were efforts made for a two-State solution. Bad idea, but, nevertheless, they talked about doing it. At the time when they talked about it, they thought okay, in this area of land we call Israel, we are going to have some of that land be Israel and some of that land be Palestine. So people don't have to be offended, the Israelis living in what would become Palestine would move to Israel, and the Palestinians living in what would become Israel will move to Palestine. It seemed at first blush kind of a commonsense thing. You know who screamed bloody murder? The Palestinians who were going to have to move to Palestine and leave Israel because when push came to shove, they know that their children would be a lot freer, get a lot better education, and be a lot more economically well off living in Israel than they would in Palestine. Palestine would probably become another State like Gaza, kind of a crooked State in which whatever leadership they vote for takes the foreign aid and keeps it. By the way, some of you older people--I don't know how old the Chair is--remember Yasser Arafat who many, many years ago was running Gaza. Apparently his ancestors now, they got out. They are living in Paris. They don't want to live in Gaza. They are living in Paris high on the hog with all the money that Yasser Arafat managed to make off the foreign aid the West was sending to Gaza. {time} 1215 In any event, I would ask the press to report a little bit about these land swaps--even that is kind of an old story--and in a new story, point out all the people from around the world who would like to live in Israel and replace the Palestinians who kicked away the great jobs that they had in Gaza, and particularly pay attention to what is going on in Ecuador and how many people from Ecuador are going to come halfway around the world to be grateful to have the jobs that the Palestinians kicked away who were living in Gaza at this time on the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. Now, the next thing I want to talk about, and I don't think has been adequately addressed, we reported on the tax bill yesterday. I am not sure you could call it a major bill. There were good things in the bill and bad things in the bill, as you can imagine, because it was part of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. As I mentioned, the child tax credits probably have an element of welfare in them, which is bad. On the other hand, they did go to the middle class, which is one of the few things that we don't phase out and say because you are making $60,000 a year, we are going to take them away from you and punish you for working, or punish you for getting married. There was another provision in there that I really disliked, even though I voted for the bill, because overall, the positives outweighed the negatives, but it is a provision that was only in there because the press corps does not highlight it; that is, low-income housing tax credits. It is a little bit of a boring topic, but I ask the Chair to indulge me a little bit. There are a variety of ways in which the Federal Government--it is none of their business to do it, by the way--in which the Federal Government tries to provide low-income housing for people. One is by giving a low-income housing tax credit to property developers of low- income housing. We tweaked that credit for only a 2-year period and only a certain subset of that credit yesterday in the bill. The press corps ought to talk a little bit about these credits, because I don't think that they would survive the light of day, or survive appropriate attention by the mainstream media. My problem with them is in addition to my problem with all Federal mucking around in low-income housing, particularly low-income housing that is not for the elderly. For the elderly, I guess I can say positive things for it. For the disabled, I can say positive things about it. The low-income housing tax credit means that when the Federal Government gets involved, a huge beneficiary is, quite frankly, well- off property developers. So you understand what happens, when developers take advantage of low-income housing tax credits, they get a credit equal to 9 percent of the total cost for a 10-year period. Because there is a time value of money, it means that when they build low-income housing, the government pays for 70 percent. In other words, if I am a well-off property housing developer, the government gives me 70 percent of the cost of that building and I only have to put in 30 percent, at a minimum. There are, I am told, places around the country where the States and local governments give them further incentives. I think a lot of these people, by the way, make campaign contributions. I think they are politically well-connected, as you can imagine, to take advantage of such a generous credit. [[Page H383]] In any event, it is a very complicated thing. You might say what happens if the property developer does not have income tax to offset with the credit. What happens is, then they sell the credits to somebody else, frequently banks. We not only have beneficiaries of what is supposed to help with the low-income people go to an incredibly generous subsidy to property developers, but banks are able to use the credit to show the FDIC, or whoever, the banking regulators, that they are socially conscious, so they get a little bit of a benefit there as well. There are some anecdotes I have heard about this--by the way, an accounting firm puts out an explanation of the tax credit. The tax credit by itself kind of makes your eyes glaze over. People wonder where paperwork comes from. The accounting firm that puts it out devotes 1,400 pages to an explanation for a credit. Even if there are other things you like, you should know if Congress is passing a program that takes 1,400 pages to explain, you know it is a bad program. I think, by the way, it is complicated on purpose so you confuse Congressmen into voting for it. Because the government, not surprising, is paying for 70 percent of the cost of that apartment, that apartment, in general, costs 30 percent more than an apartment would if it was built in the private sector without having the government muck around. Right off the bat, there is a big problem there. I know a property developer in Wisconsin who builds normal apartments, not aimed for low-income housing, not taking advantage of the generous credit. He tells me that the people with the low-income housing credit frequently outbid him for the land, because the government is paying for 70 percent of the cost. Think about that. If you want somebody to build apartments for the middle class, they can't get the prime location in town because the low-income credit is so generous that the person with the low-income housing will always outbid them. Another thing that happens when the government pays 70 percent of the cost of something, you have a nicer apartment--because after 20 years it is no longer low-income housing--a nicer apartment than people who don't have low-income housing have. I have heard that complaint. I have heard people looking for new apartments, and they find the nicest apartments in town they are not eligible for because they are the low- income housing units. That is what happens when the government pays for 70 percent of the cost of the unit. Not to mention, there is the possibility for crookedness there, because if the government is paying 70 percent of the cost of anything, doesn't it encourage your subcontractors to jack up the prices because the government is paying for 70 percent? Of course it does. Now, this new increase in generosity in the low-income housing credit will expire in 2 years. They were able to get this thing through because naive people, first of all, thought it was the Federal Government's business to get involved at all, but nice people felt that the low-income housing tax credit benefited low-income people. They didn't realize it was a payoff to well-connected property developers. If the press corps would wake up and write articles about this program, it would not survive the next 3 or 4 years. The only reason this program, which I consider to be about the most questionable part of the Internal Revenue Code--the only reason this thing is able to survive is because the slumbering press corps does not report on it. Now, there are a lot of programs on it. I don't like to highlight one nonprofit, but the Cato Institute has a great expose about this program out there, if you want to find it on the internet. It is about 5 years old, but it is as accurate today as it was then. If you think the Internal Revenue Code is used by well-heeled people to get things in there, this is for you. I strongly encourage the press corps to pay attention to the low- income housing tax credits. Like I said, it is a waste of taxpayer money. I am the type of Congressman who tries to look out for the average guy. These are provisions stuck in the Internal Revenue Code to benefit the well-off, the politically well-connected. Just because they put kind of a nice-sounding title to it, ``low-income housing tax credit,'' you think they are looking out for the poor. They are looking out for the well-heeled property developer. That is the second thing that our slumbering press corps should pay attention to. The third thing I want to talk about is an issue we have talked about many times before, but since I last addressed the Chair, we released the figures on the number of people coming across the border. Now, I had guessed the last time I was up here that for the first time ever we would have over 300,000 people a month crossing the border. I remind people that back in the days of President Trump, that number was, depending on the month, around 10,000 or 12,000. We have gone from 10,000 or 12,000 people a month crossing our border what I will call illegally--because I think they are asking for asylum they don't deserve--from 10,000 or 12,000 to--this is just shocking; whenever I look at it, I can't believe it--370,000. We have gone up about 30 times as many people crossing into the United States as we did 3 years ago. The American public ought to be absolutely appalled. We have an administration with Joe Biden, who fumbles around and says: Well, I guess maybe we should do something about that. Maybe Congress should meet with me, and we should try to do something. The American public should know, the fact that we have gone up from 12,000 to 370,000 has nothing to do with Congress; it is the inability of the Biden administration to want to enforce the law. This is something they want by design. Instead of 12,000 people coming here illegally every month, they want 370,000. If they went back to the policies of President Trump, the stay-in-Mexico situation, we would reduce this number by 85 percent. Now, it would still be over 50,000. We still have more work to do. It would still be a disaster. Just by the signing of a piece of paper, he could knock that 370,000 figure back down to 40,000 or 50,000. Pointing out other things that are going on that the mainstream media is not doing a very good job on. In the 370,000, there were about, one more time, 12,000 unaccompanied minors. There is another thing that has gone up exponentially under this administration. The mainstream media purports to care when families are separated. I will tell you, when you have 12,000 people cross the border without their parents, that is family separation. Those kids should be turned around and sent back to their parents or contact their parents. Now, we don't do anything like that at all. If the child shows up and they have got a piece of paper on their T-shirt that says ``deliver me to Uncle Joe in Portland, Oregon,'' we buy them the plane ticket, we deliver them to Uncle Joe. We don't do DNA testing to see if it really is Uncle Joe. It is a recipe for human trafficking when people want to take advantage of young children, but the press allows it to happen. Under President Trump, they screamed about family separation when it was only a very temporary thing for a very small number of kids. Now, you have 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 kids a month, no big deal. We don't talk about it. The next thing to remember is that even once these kids are placed with sponsors, the Biden administration does not follow up to see where they are. Estimates vary, but somehow, I think somewhere between 30,000 and 80,000 kids we have lost track of. In other words, we have let 15- year-olds, 14-year-olds, and 12-year-olds in the country, and after a few months, we don't even know where they are. I would strongly encourage the press corps to report on the volume of people who came here in December. Even I, as opposed to the Biden administration as anybody, was expecting that number to come in 310,000, 320,000. Instead, it is 370,000. They blew away the old record by about 50,000, more than I ever would have dreamed. We have to remember, in addition to all the people coming into our country, changing our country, committing crimes in our country, in addition to that, we have a situation in which they are bringing drugs in the country. We have to remember that over 100,000 of our citizens are dying every year from illegal drug overdoses. I know there are some hardhearted people who say: They took the drugs [[Page H384]] themselves; we don't care. Apparently, the Biden administration is in that category, because they don't do much to stop it. You would think any normal President, just to save the 100,000 lives and prevent all of these drugs from coming into our country, would close the border on that alone. The press, again, does not report it. {time} 1215 I was old enough to remember the Vietnam war. In 12 years in the Vietnam war, 57,000 American troops died, and it was reported constantly and should have been reported constantly. That was news when our troops were dying in Vietnam, 57,000 over 12 years. Now, we have 108,000, every year, dying from illegal drug overdoses. It happens in county after county, and it is swept under the rug because the mainstream media doesn't want to embarrass the Biden administration, so we don't talk about 108,000 people a year dying. Of course, is there any effort made to close the border or any effort made to prevent it? No. No effort is made to prevent it. It is a story that every local newspaper in the country--they are easy to find--ought to be reporting, not only the number for America as a whole; they ought to be pointing out how many people died, say, in the State of Wisconsin, or whatever State their paper is sent. They should be reporting how many people are dying in the county. You will find out, I would think, for almost every county in the country, probably every county in the State, if you added up all the murders and all the car accidents together, the number of people who are dying of illegal drugs is way over that total. We put car accidents with fatalities in the paper all the time because it is a tragic thing; people like to read about it or want to be informed about it. We obviously put local murders in the paper all the time. There are 108,000 Americans dying every year with spouses, with parents, with children. Let's sweep it under the rug, says the mainstream media. I will tell you, if you put that in there, people would pay attention to those stories. The next issue that I don't think has been covered enough and I will talk about more next week, but we had one more committee hearing in my subcommittee on wokeness in the military. Our current General Brown, who was previously head of the Air Force and is now head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, prior to coming in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly said he wanted to reduce the number of officers in the military from 67 percent White men down to 43 percent White men. I walk around my district, and I ask average people. I said: Do you know the most important member of the military in the country has said his public goal is to reduce the number of White officers in the military from 67 percent to 43 percent? Almost nobody knows. The rest of the people are shocked. I told this to a Vietnam veteran who fought in Vietnam. I thought he was going to break down and cry right there when he found out what was happening to our military. They have taken the single most important agency in the United States, and they run it like it is some stupid community college, where it doesn't matter who we promote, where we don't have to pay attention to merit. Who cares? I can go to a cocktail party and brag about how many Hispanics or how many Asians or how many Native Americans are in the military. I no longer brag about how good my military is or how strong it is. I brag about how diverse it is. The press does not know what is going on here. In my committee, there were inferences that we also were playing games with who gets into our military academies--West Point, Air Force Academy, Annapolis. I nominate those people, like all Congressmen do every year, but the testimony was they are putting a thumb on the scale as to who gets into them. It is just offensive. It mirrors what is going on in other parts of the country. They pay people $190,000 a year to be diversity experts, to say: Oh, this person is registered as this, this person is registered to that. I believe, when they do it, they do it like they do in the private sector and have been doing this for 50 years. You self-identify, so we keep this fiction going that, if you are one-quarter Peruvian, that you are a protected minority and you bring a diverse view of the world. I don't know why, if somebody has a grandmother who is Peruvian and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, you have a unique view of the world and it is important to give you preferences to get a promotion in the military, but that is apparently how we are operating right now. In any event, all of the American public should be aware of that. If our military is not number one in the world, we are going to be in big trouble, baby. One of the only reasons why we are number one in the world is because we do have the strongest military in the world, and to begin to say our promotions should no longer be based on merit but should be based on looking around and finding somebody from--I don't know--South Africa or whatever is preposterous. Now, I will remind the Chair one more time that we are adding a new minority group to be given preferences right now. President Biden wants North Africans and Middle Eastern people--people, if you draw a line from Morocco all the way to Iran, he wants them considered as a special group who is in need of protection, as well. This will mean that if somebody emigrates here from, say, Egypt, and President Biden gets what he wants, they will also be considered a special case, in need of special protection, and being given preference over the native born. It is so divisive. Not only do you not have the best people necessarily getting the job, but it is so divisive because you are teaching our military--rather than you are one, we are all one unit, we are all American, you are taking the military and saying: You should walk around with a chip on your shoulder. You are a Hispanic American, you are an African American, you are a Native American, you are an Asian American, you are a Middle Eastern American, and it is just the beginning of the end. I strongly hope, when we come to the appropriations bill--and we made some progress--not as much progress as we wanted in the authorizing bill, but I hope that our team, when it comes to the appropriations bill, removes all of these horrible DPI positions. Our military, a lot of people tell us it is underfunded. I am not sure that is true, but people tell us that. To pay 190 grand a year for these people is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and it is something that should be reported in the mainstream media. My fifth story that we are going to cover today that the mainstream media is not going to pay attention to is we had a prayer breakfast earlier this morning in the Capitol. In the past, we had that prayer breakfast outside the Capitol. We would take a bus a mile away or rent something in a hotel. Today, we did it right here in the Capitol, which is fine, saved a few bucks; that was good. President Biden came over, gave a little speech, which was good. In any event, the main speaker was the Chaplain of the Senate, and the Chaplain of the Senate was very animated, gave quite a long sermon. However, it was an interesting sermon, because I believe he called for a fast of all Americans of once or twice a week. It wasn't a full fast. I mean, you could drink water. The fast would end every day at 3 o'clock. Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting that Reverend Black from the U.S. Senate, who claimed there are a lot of Senators or Members of the Senate--I think maybe he was mentioning staff, too--who fasted frequently. Of course, he quoted several Bible verses in both the Old and New Testament in which the Israelis fasted. Jesus' disciples, after he left, were going to fast. I thought it was interesting that we had such a student of the Bible, the Chaplain of the Senate, who has been here since 2003 that was calling for a fast. I think it is something interesting and ought to be in your local newspaper if you want to know what is going on around here. I mean, it was a prayer breakfast. A significant number of U.S. Senators and Congressmen attended. The President of the United States attended. Wouldn't you think they would cover it? I bet, if I look in the mainstream newspapers tomorrow--the Washington Post, the New York Times, et cetera, [[Page H385]] the Milwaukee Journal in my area--they will not cover the fact that the longtime Chaplain in the U.S. Senate called for a fast. So those are five stories that have been underreported. We will ask, if there are any members of the mainstream media that we see, whether their newspapers covered them. If the stories are even a little bit old, it doesn't mean they shouldn't be in there. To me, if you are a mainstream newspaper, a citizen who reads you every day should be informed, and every one of these five issues, I think somebody who reads the Washington Post; the Philadelphia Inquirer, if that is still around; the Milwaukee Journal, would not know these five issues. I am going to go through them again: The degree to which people all around the world are looking to replace these Palestinians as far as doing work in Israel. The horribleness, the waste of the low-income housing tax credits which would not survive the mainstream media paying attention to it. What is going on at the border, the degree to which, in December, we just blew away any previous totals of people coming across there, and the degree that we have to do something. The wokeness in the military--that is the fourth issue--the degree to which the current head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is overtly saying that he does not want the best people running the military if they happen to be White. Also, that the Chaplain of the Senate was such a Bible-believing guy that he called on the Congressmen and Senators who were there today to begin to fast, and he actually told us that a lot of the U.S. Senators are already fasting. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. ____________________