[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 110 (Thursday, June 24, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H3126-H3129]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            VIRTUE SIGNALING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, this evening, I am going to try to do 
something that is a little bit different, and parts of it are going to 
be incredibly annoying. I am going to hurt some feelings, but my theme 
is actually very simple.
  There are general solutions to so many of the things we consider 
problems, but we are going to have to deal with something, and it is a 
true problem around this place. And that is, I am going to use the word 
``virtue signaling'' and sort of folklore.
  We sometimes know what we know, but the fact of the matter is that 
technology, science, all of what we were told was wrong, yet we can't 
get it out of our heads, or, as a society, we care more about the 
symbolism than actually curing the problem. And I really do believe if 
we could embrace that thing called a calculator, math, thinking, 
science, there are some amazingly good things we could do.
  But, first, we got to step up and admit that we have been making up a 
lot of crap. And that is me being slightly on the vulgar side. But it 
is a frustration I have where often I see our speeches behind these 
microphones, and we are virtue signaling because that is often what is 
expected from our voters. At least we think that is what is expected, 
but I bet you our voters would be elated if we would actually give them 
the truth and then show them the math.
  I am going to show a couple of things to first set up my argument, 
and then walk through a couple things that I think are incredibly 
optimistic for our future as a country, but maybe even the entire 
world.
  So, first off, let's just use this. I have done versions of this 
before, but it is important as a thought experiment.
  Do you care about plastic in the ocean?
  I think everyone in America cares about plastic in the ocean. Except 
we have a small problem. We do this virtue signaling of let's ban 
plastic straws. But the fact of the matter is, the data says that 
straws that come from North America don't end up in the ocean. We do 
actually an amazingly good job grabbing our waste and putting it in the 
landfills or incinerating or taking care of it. But if you actually 
look at the real math, 90 percent of the plastic in the world's oceans 
comes from 10 rivers: 8 in Asia, 2 in Africa.
  If you actually gave a darn about plastic in the ocean, what would 
you do?
  You would actually go to those 10 rivers--8 in Asia, 2 in Africa--and 
either add value, use our technical assistance, use our foreign aid, 
and go and deal with the plastic in the ocean.
  But, instead, we give speeches here, we award, we allot cities like 
D.C. that ban plastic straws. That is pure virtue signaling. It doesn't 
actually do anything, yet we parade around like we did something.
  Instead, this body could actually have an incredible impact on 
plastic in the ocean. Go to the 10 rivers that are 90 percent of the 
plastic, and actually get our foreign aid, our technical aid, even some 
economic incentives to capture that plastic and stop sticking it into 
rivers that flow into the ocean. It is a simple example of the virtue 
signaling that actually warps real environmental policy.
  Here is one that is going to drive some people crazy.
  What would happen if I came to you and said the entire environmental 
impact of that cloth cotton bag you carry to the grocery store, you 
have to use 7,100 times to basically equal the plastic bags that are 
produced out of natural gas?
  Yet we walk around with our little plastic bags when we walk into the 
Trader Joe's and those things, you know, proudly showing, hey, I care 
about the environment. But the math--that is not the science.
  If we are going to make public policy, how does this body, and not 
only Congress, but our city councils, our county governments, our State 
legislatures, how do we stop making public policy that is virtue 
signaling, and the math is the math?
  We have this incredible report, detailed. It came out of, I think, 
Demark. It was looking at the environmental impact. It turns out those 
crappy little plastic bags that are banned in so many of our cities 
were less environmentally impactful than the cotton bags we are walking 
around with, because those cotton ones you have to use 7,100 times to 
actually have the same environmental impact.
  Another one that is going on around the country right now is let's 
ban natural gas for cook stoves and heating in homes. Except if you 
actually do the math of burning natural gas to make steam, to turn the 
turbine, to make electricity, it actually is environmentally 
substantially better to use natural gas in your home. And there are 
lots of really good studies and data on this.
  But, once again, it is sort of this urban folklore, it is virtue 
signaling to say my city council is going to ban natural gas from 
people being able to cook with. Aren't I doing something wonderful for 
the environment?

[[Page H3127]]

  But it turns out, no, you are not. We have got to stop doing this.
  So there is actually some other really interesting ones.
  So how many out there did we watch on the cable news shows after the 
function of the canceling of the Keystone pipeline?
  Now, as Republicans, we all talked about the jobs lost. On the left, 
they are talking about the environmental benefit of stopping that 
pipeline.
  Well, first, let's deal with the reality. Those hydrocarbons are 
going somewhere. They are going to be cracked somewhere, turned into 
distillates or fuels. And they are refined in southeast Asia or refined 
in Louisiana or Texas. They are going to be refined. So let's just do 
the math on the transportation.
  It turns out the Keystone pipeline has dramatically less carbon 
impact than sticking it in the rail, sticking it into the rail pipeline 
attachment, or sticking it in rail or pipeline and putting it on the 
coast and shipping it out to southeast Asia. Just the shipping part.
  If you actually cared about the actual math of the environmental 
impact of the Keystone pipeline, you would have supported the pipeline, 
but that wasn't the virtue signaling that came from the environmental 
community. And being someone who genuinely cares a lot about the actual 
math, you know, as those of us who try to do the math of what is the 
actual impacts in global warming, and what is actually the folklore, 
what is make-believe, what is real, we got to stop doing this.
  And I know we love the political wedges, saying, well, they supported 
this and we supported the union workers.
  How do you get some people around the table to use a calculator, and 
say, well, it turns out, whether you like hydrocarbons or not, the 
pipeline turns out to have a less environmental load than canceling it 
does because now we are going to stick it in railcars, now we are going 
to ship it to other parts of the world?
  And I haven't even done the math on other refineries from other parts 
of world that have dramatically less environmental standards when 
cracking carbon chains.
  So here is another one. This one actually is both hopeful, but we are 
going to have to start to think a little more creatively. So here is my 
setup. Half of the noncarbon-emitting electricity in the United 
States--actually, I think it is slightly more than half--comes from 
baseload nuclear.
  We have a massive amount of our baseload nuclear that is coming off 
line. If you actually do the math of the amount of nuclear that is 
coming off line, our renewable baseload cannot keep close to keeping 
up. So there are a lot of charts. And I have done this on the floor 
before, showing that as all this nuclear comes off line, carbon 
emissions in the United States on electrical generation is going up.
  Even though we have all this renewable, this wind, this photovoltaic, 
these things, geothermal hitting the market, it doesn't produce enough 
power to keep up with the nuclear coming off. And the argument for much 
of the nuclear is, well, think, they have to do uranium mines, think of 
this, think of that.
  Well, what if I came to you and said, baseload nuclear is absolutely 
critical to the reliability of the grid and all of those other things, 
and it is noncarbon-emitting, and we have the technology today?
  I have done a whole presentation on this in detail. Basically, we can 
extract uranium from sea water now. We do this. We have the technology.
  But it is even better than that. We have a Nobel Prize physicist who 
has been writing papers, articles, saying that, within a decade, they 
believe high-pulse lasers--and, look, I have done my best to read the 
scientific articles a couple times. Some of it is beyond even--you 
know, when you are having to read an article and have a dictionary 
close by to look up some of the technical. But his premise is we can 
use high-pulse lasers to break up and make inert spent nuclear fuels.
  So his theme is, say, in 30 minutes I could take something that would 
have lasted a million years, and in 30 minutes I can make it inert. If 
this is true, it is the virtuous cycle on nuclear energy. And you all 
know, because this place has actually helped fund it, the new compact 
nuclear reactor design that is dramatically safer, dramatically less 
intrusive, and much more efficient.
  So think of that. I can extract my uranium from rain water, the new 
nuclear reactor design, and now we have a way of instead of sticking it 
in Yucca Mountain, we can actually break up that spent nuclear fuel.
  This should be exciting. There should be people on the left and the 
right going, it is worth sticking some money into this type of 
technology. But it doesn't fit our political folklore around here of, 
well, we can't have nuclear because of this.
  But we claim we give a darn about science and technology, when we 
have some of our smartest people in our society saying, we think we 
have a solution.
  Why don't we actually invest in those solutions instead of investing 
in the things that we keep doing around here, where we are investing in 
technology that is already decades out of date?
  So part of my fixation is--the reason I bring this chart is there was 
a Member, I think, just last week that was on the floor, and she 
alluded--someone from the left--that the economic growth basically led 
to more greenhouse gases, more environmental impact. But that is not 
actually the math.
  We are still working on some of the data for 2019, but if you look at 
2018 and what we are preliminarily seeing in 2019, you know, greenhouse 
gases, the environmental impact, went down, even though GDP went up 
dramatically.

                              {time}  1815

  Why? Because what we did in the tax reform created this huge 
incentive to invest in the latest technology.
  Mr. Speaker, you can go buy that new technology, and you could 100 
percent expense it. It turned out we were able to create a moment where 
economic growth took off, jobs took off, and the working poor got 
dramatically less poor.
  It was the first couple of years in modern economic times when income 
inequality shrank, and it shrank because there was opportunity. 
People's labor became valuable. And, oh, guess what? Our environment 
got cleaner while growing the economy. We have the proof. We have the 
data.
  Isn't this the Holy Grail that both the left and the right claim they 
care about? Except the difference is it didn't require a command-and-
control economy. It just required really good technology and the 
incentive to invest in that technology, and it made a difference.
  The other argument we come to the microphone and talk about is that 
there are incredible technology disruptions on the cusp. If we could 
get our heads around them, then we could make some amazing things 
happen. If we don't get our heads around them, then it is going to 
create economic disruptions. It is going to hurt a lot of people. We 
need to understand these.
  Over the last couple of years, I have done some presentations on 
something called synthetic biology. The reality is it is incredibly 
hopeful for humanity. It also has some really scary stuff. Mark my 
words, we will know in about a decade whether I am right. I believe 
this piece of technology here will be the single most disruptive 
technology of our lifetimes.
  Here is one: What if I came to you tomorrow and said that we can take 
plants and make them from the mid-20s to 52 percent more efficient in 
their growth by tweaking?
  Now, I am not a plant biologist, but I have gone out of my way to 
read every article of the University of Illinois and those who are 
producing.
  Mr. Speaker, you remember your high school biology class? Let's see 
if I can get this right. You had a plant cell, and it really, really, 
really wants a carbon molecule to turn it into a sugar to grow. But a 
quirk of nature, it grabs an oxygen molecule. It now has to spend all 
this energy to purge that and then turn around and grab the carbon so 
it can grow.
  What happens if every time it grabs the right molecule to maximize 
its growth?
  Okay, it looks like we would now know how to tweak commodity crops 
and other crops to always grab that carbon molecule and grow.

[[Page H3128]]

  Now, I need the thought experiment. I need the people around here who 
all believe we are geniuses to think this through.
  What happens tomorrow to the value of farmland? What happens to our 
trade relationships with the world where it is our agriculture muscle 
as a country when other countries are now able to grow 40 percent more 
soybeans on the same land, same water, same fertilizer?
  Think about the value of agricultural land. What is the value of 
agricultural debt?
  This is coming. This technology is here.
  Are we preparing, thinking what it means? What type of opportunity 
does this mean? Because the world already produces more food than it 
needs. Our real problem is distribution.
  What happens if tomorrow much of the agriculture in the world could 
produce 40 percent more on the same piece of land?
  There is also a quirky piece of math to think about, and that is 
world agriculture is estimated to produce about 2.2 times more 
greenhouse gases than every car on Earth. Mr. Speaker, if you were an 
optimistic utopian, then this technology is functionally equal to 
removing every car off the face of the Earth. Yes, that is the 
positive. But you also have to be ready to deal with the disruption it 
means economically. And it is coming.
  But yet have we ever had a hearing? Have we ever had a discussion? 
Have we ever invited the scientists to think about and talk us through 
and have us start to plan economically about what it means?
  Or are we just going to do what this place does, which is to avoid 
difficult discussions until it kicks us in the head?
  Let's talk about healthcare a bit. Obviously, that is my fixation. I 
come here every week and try to talk about ways we can change.
  Before we do this, here is a simple thought experiment. Well, it is 
not a thought experiment. It is the facts. ObamaCare, the ACA, was a 
financing bill. It is who gets subsidized, who gets to pay. Our 
Republican alternative is a financing bill. It is who has to pay, who 
gets subsidized. Medicare for All is a financing bill. They don't 
actually change what the underlying cost of delivering healthcare is. 
They just shift around who gets to pay.
  This debate here has to become what we pay. What technology and what 
models are we going to adopt that change the cost of delivering 
healthcare?
  What happens if I come to you, Mr. Speaker, and say that 5 percent of 
our brothers and sisters have preexisting conditions, that they are 
suffering, and that they are also over half of the healthcare costs of 
this Nation?
  Wouldn't it be much smarter, much more caring, much more empathetic, 
and much more compassionate to fixate on that 5 percent who are 
suffering and say that we are going to do everything we can to push 
technologies, to push the caring, and to push disruption in biologics 
to cure or minimize the suffering of the 5 percent? We are living 
examples of this.
  Do you remember, Mr. Speaker, only a few years ago the cost curve we 
were all looking at in regard to hepatitis C? Do you remember, hep C, 
you carry the virus in you for sometimes decades and decades and 
decades, Mr. Speaker. Then, all of a sudden, Mr. Speaker, you need a 
liver transplant.
  We were looking at numbers that were going to essentially bankrupt 
the VA with all the liver transplant costs. Then what happened? A cure 
was delivered. It was really expensive at the beginning, but it was 
dramatically less expensive than somebody having a failed liver.

  We are living in the time of disruptions, and we should promote those 
as a Congress and help many of us who are panicked over the debt but 
also really care about eliminating suffering.
  It is one of the reasons I have an absolute fixation. If you really 
wanted to help people of color, Mr. Speaker, and my Tribal 
communities--I represent some of the populations with the highest 
diabetes in the world, some of my Native Americans--how about an 
Operation Warp Speed on diabetes?
  Remember, Mr. Speaker, in the next 30 years, in today's dollars, 
inflation-adjusted dollars, we have $121 trillion of debt coming at us. 
Sixty-seven percent of that is just Medicare.
  The single biggest thing you could actually do, Mr. Speaker, the 
single thing, the biggest thing to deal with future debt that buries 
and destroys the future for my 5-year-old daughter, believe it or not, 
is a cure for diabetes because 31 percent of the Medicare future is 
just diabetes.
  One of the most loving and compassionate things we could do as 
conservatives and liberals is say that we are going to do--call it 
whatever you want, Mr. Speaker. I want to call it operation warp speed 
because we are close to the cusp of major revolutionary treatments for 
type 1, the ability to do stem cells to the pancreas. There are some 
incredible journal articles out just in the last 6 weeks on that.
  Some of that can also be used for type 2. Type 2 is more complicated 
because it is both the autoimmune but also lifestyle and having a 
discussion of, as a people, as a society, are we going to continue to 
fund really unhealthy foods? Are we going to continue to do farm 
supports in a way where we grow only a handful of crops instead of 
being able to have a wide variety of different things?
  These are really disruptive concepts, and they would be really 
compassionate and loving for everyone if we took really, really, really 
seriously what diabetes means to this Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, if you really want to deal with the reality, don't come 
to these microphones and give a speech about how COVID affected certain 
populations much more dramatically and then, in the next breath, not 
talk about the fact that the curve is absolutely sympathetic with those 
same populations having diabetes. The math is the math.
  Mr. Speaker, if you really give a darn about people, let's solve that 
because it is the single biggest thing you and I could do to take on 
future sovereign debt.
  The other one that drives me insane, because this is the one you and 
I could have the most impact on in the shortest period of time, Mr. 
Speaker, 16 percent of U.S. healthcare costs, so about $528 billion 
every single year, is people not taking their pharmaceuticals properly.
  I forget to take my hypertension medicine, and I have a stroke. I 
don't take my statin for my cholesterol, and all of a sudden, I have to 
get a stent. Someone doesn't maintain use of technology and stay on 
their insulin properly.
  We have lots of data now. This is a really well-vetted number. 
Sixteen percent of U.S. healthcare is our not taking or taking 
improperly our pharmaceuticals.
  Well, it turns out there is a technology solution to that: the little 
pill cap that talks to you.
  How about for grandma, who has to take some pills in the morning and 
then in the evening, we have the technology that drops the pills and 
talks to her. It turns out this technology could save not $100 billion 
but a few hundred billion dollars every year.
  Mr. Speaker, you talk about wanting to have an impact on healthcare 
and make people healthier and deal with those 5 percent of our brothers 
and sisters who have chronic conditions that are 50-plus percent of our 
healthcare. There are things you could do tomorrow that would have an 
impact on society before the year is over.
  We made a proposal last year or just before the pandemic of super-
high-value pharmaceuticals. Why don't we put them in sterile blister-
pack-type containers and make them recyclable?
  I had a number of Members here, particularly one who is my friend on 
the left, who came to me and said: Oh, that is yucky.
  But I remember 10 years ago, when my mother was in hospice care, and 
one of the nurses there--she was a family friend--took me in the back. 
We were talking, and she showed me this barrel. She said: You know, 
there is probably $10,000 to $20,000 of pharmaceuticals in there that I 
am throwing away from our patients who have passed away in the last few 
weeks.
  That got me thinking: Is this rational?
  Besides the fact that the small molecules end up in your water 
supply, Mr. Speaker, the biologics, but is that rational?
  These are just little, incremental, creative things. We know we have 
technology now--the thing you can blow

[[Page H3129]]

into, Mr. Speaker, that instantly tells you that you have the flu that 
could bounce off your phone with its medical records and say that you 
are not allergic to this antiviral and instantly order that antiviral, 
and you would be healthier.
  But that process is illegal under the laws that we passed here. The 
Social Security Act says you are going to need a doctor, Mr. Speaker, 
the reimbursement from HHS, our State licensing rules.
  Are we ready to stop living in virtue signaling, stop living in 
folklore, and start looking at the actual math?
  Yes, we are going to get lobbied like crazy from groups that we are 
disrupting their business model. But wouldn't it be neat to say: This 
isn't Republican, and it is not Democrat. It is technology.
  Let's make a difference. It is doable, and it is here.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________