[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 39 (Thursday, March 3, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H1294-H1296]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TOPICS OF INTEREST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to discuss a few topics which 
should be of interest to all Americans.
  Obviously, many Americans have been glued to their TVs this week to 
see what is happening in Ukraine and what is going on with the Russians 
and the way they are treating the Ukrainian people.
  I would like to emphasize one more time that it amazes me the 
journalists of this country and the politicians of this country can 
talk about the two countries, Russia and Ukraine, without talking about 
the Holodomor.
  I have asked children, college students, law enforcement officers, 
journalists. Amazingly, they have gone through 8 or 12 or 16 years of 
schooling and don't know what it is.
  The Holodomor took place in 1932 to 1933 when communism had in the 
last few years taken over Russia and taken over Ukraine. Of course, 
communists, above all, hate freedom. I don't know if you could describe 
Russia's communists today--maybe a little more fascist than communist. 
But at the time, there was no question it was communist, and they 
didn't like the fact that the farmers, called the kulaks, were, to a 
degree, free and independent. They were going to crack down on them by 
taking away their grain and making sure they would starve to death.
  Now, perhaps because it has not been adequately studied, we don't 
know how many people were killed by the Communist Party in Ukraine 
during the years 1932 to 1933, but if you peruse the internet, it is 
somewhere between 3 and 17 million.
  Interestingly, at the same time these people were starving, the 
person The New York Times put on the case was a guy by the name of 
Walter Duranty, who they have since admitted they recognized he had 
some significant flaws in his study, but he managed not to report the 
starvation. The readers of The New York Times at that time thought that 
things were going great in the Soviet Union and that this might well be 
the wave of the future.
  This is what happens when we have people, progressives, whatever you 
want to call them, who are blind to the inevitable, horrible things 
that happen when you let the hardcore left, or what I would call the 
atheistic totalitarian left, take over a country.

  I would hope, as we talk about Ukraine and Russia, that our media 
outlets, be it newspaper or otherwise, use this as an opportunity to 
educate the American public as to how many millions of people starved 
to death during this time.
  Every New York Times employee should have to listen to this show upon 
employment about what happened and about what the readers of The New 
York Times were not told about during these years. Every journalism 
major should spend a few classes when they begin journalism school on 
this topic. No American schoolchild should graduate eighth grade 
without hearing about the Holodomor.
  Not only is it a warning for what happens when we let the hardcore 
left take over, but I don't know how you can understand American 
history, the last 80 years, unless you know a little bit more about 
communism.
  How can American children know why we fought in Korea? How could 
American children know why we fought in Vietnam? How will American 
children know what we had a Cold War over?
  I don't understand how you can talk about Ukraine and Russia without 
hearing about the first Ukrainian experiences with communism. It is the 
reason why some people like me are so befuddled why Senator Blumenthal 
is given kind of a free pass when he shows up at a communist 
anniversary. It is why people like me find it so offensive that two of 
the cofounders of Black Lives Matter were Marxists and that 
organization is treated with respect.
  This is why I am so concerned when we have owners of high-tech quasi-
monopolies try to suppress information hostile to their progressive 
ideology. Just like in a hardcore leftist state, they would oppress the 
ability of the local people to find out views on all sorts of opinions. 
By the way, that is going on in the Soviet Union today.

                              {time}  1245

  We turn on the TV and we get all sorts of information about what is 
going on in the Ukraine. The average Russian citizen, whose children 
are dying in the Ukraine, they don't get to find out what is really 
going on. Some people call it Communist; some people call it Marxist. I 
don't think Progressive is exactly the same thing, but clearly 
Progressive is meant to be further left than Liberal.
  I would hope that by the time this Ukrainian/Russian situation wraps 
up that American journalists make sure that everybody knows about the 
Holodomor.
  Mr. Speaker, the next thing I would like to talk about in President 
Biden's annual speech, I think he got away--because of what happened in 
the Ukraine--without addressing some of the other problems that are, I 
think, unaddressed.
  I am going to talk a little bit about inflation. I am not like my 
good buddy from Arizona with huge graphs, but I want people to look at 
this little graph that is on a topic that is normally considered 
boring: the money supply.
  Here we have a graph showing the degree to which the money supply 
goes up year over year. You will notice the money supply, compared to 
historic levels, went up rather dramatically, sometimes over 6 percent 
in the 1970s. People like me are old enough to remember that that is 
when mortgages were 20 percent and inflation was so high.
  If we look at this graph, we see that recently the money supply went 
up around 7 percent, then dropped down to almost nothing in the 1990s. 
It recently has hit a year over year increase of 40 percent. I would 
hope that President Biden realizes that one of the reasons costs have 
gone so far up might have something to do with this dramatic increase 
in the money supply. This is an amazing graph.
  President Biden--understanding so much about business--has simply 
advised us the way to deal with inflation is to tell businessmen to cut 
costs. Well, I will tell you, my district has more manufacturing jobs 
than any other district in the country and it is also a big agriculture 
district.
  When I had a couple weeks off in the past, I toured a lot of 
factories around my district. One of the things I heard, in addition to 
the huge labor shortage,

[[Page H1295]]

is the huge increase in the costs of production, particularly in 
metals. Aluminum is going through the roof. Metals are up 300, 400, 500 
percent compared to a couple years ago.
  Mr. Speaker, I would ask President Biden: How do you lower costs if 
the cost of metals that are going into your product are up 300 to 400 
percent?
  I mentioned I also have a big agriculture district, a lot of dairy, 
some corn, some potatoes. What do I get from the farmers? They are 
actually very concerned also about their costs of production: feed, 
fertilizer, chemicals. Again, it is all skyrocketing. It is not a 
matter of just telling businesses to cut their costs.
  These are the reasons why inflation is so high and why our young 
people--who I worry about so much because they should be able to get on 
with their life, they should be able to build a new house, they should 
begin to be able to have children. I look at the costs that are 
necessary to live the American Dream.
  Housing. Did you ever look at how much the price of a house has gone 
up the last 18 months? Apartments. Now, I realize the cost of 
apartments varies dramatically, but in my area you used to be able to 
get an apartment for $600, $700, $800 a month. Now apartments are being 
rented for $1,500 a month.
  I don't know how the young people are going to be able to afford the 
American Dream unless politicians begin to realize that when you have 
these big spending programs and the Fed has to print dollars to pay for 
them, you are inevitably going to get inflation.
  I beg President Biden and I beg the members of the Budget Committee 
and the Appropriations Committee that as we work towards the next 
budget, we try to hold down the level of spending. It wouldn't be too 
much to ask if we had year over year no increase in spending at all.
  I beg President Biden and other members of his party not to push 
through another massive spending bill. They talk about a $3 trillion 
bill, and he still dreams of getting it through. If it is not a $3 
trillion bill or if they get a $2 trillion or $1 trillion bill, it will 
further put the price of housing beyond reach of the young people in 
the country.
  One of the reasons it is so tempting for politicians to just print 
more money is because then they can say: I don't know how this increase 
in prices got here. It is not my fault. Just tell the businessmen to 
cut costs. It is not a coincidence that we had a lot of inflation in 
the 1970s when M2 was going up significantly.
  It is not going to be a coincidence when inflation continues to go up 
year after year as the business community and the agriculture community 
tells me it will. If politicians in Washington, in their path to 
reelection, decide that it means having the Federal Reserve print more 
money, let the costs go up, and then turn around and tell the American 
public: I don't know how this happened, tell the businessmen to cut 
costs. Please address inflation like the great concern it is.
  Mr. Speaker, the next thing I would like to address that I don't feel 
was adequately addressed the other night is the way we treat police in 
the country.
  President Biden tried to address spending on police. It is true that 
particularly in big cities with strong Democrat city councils, strong 
Democrat mayors, they have not treated the police well the last few 
years. I don't think President Biden addressed what I believe is the 
big reason why police have not been as effective in holding down the 
homicide rates compared to a few years ago.
  I think the major reason is that cheap politicians are out there 
lying and telling the public that they are racist. They are saying we 
ought to sue them, they are saying that we ought to pass legislation 
here in which it will make it easy to sue them. You wind up in a 
situation where the police become passive.
  As bad as the reduction in the number of police is, I think this 
constant harping on racism and the police and let's make it easier to 
sue them makes matters even worse. I want to commend President Biden, 
he didn't talk about racism on Tuesday night, and that was a great 
improvement from his inaugural speech where it was kind of like all 
racism, white supremacy, blah, blah, blah.

  It would be nice if he would use the forum of the annual State of the 
Union address to apologize to the police of the country and educate the 
American public that the police, by and large in this Nation, are not 
racist. When you look at studies, and there are a variety of studies we 
can pull up here, a Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia 
Police Department found that White police officers were less likely 
than police officers of color to shoot unarmed Black suspects, for 
example.
  When you adjust, sadly, for violent crimes committed, again, you 
don't find this racism. In an effort to win the next election--and they 
had success in the last election--again and again politicians are 
tearing down police departments and threatening to have the police 
sued. It is not surprising when the police become very passive, knowing 
that if you arrest somebody you could get a complaint filed against 
you; knowing that if you have to handcuff somebody or tackle somebody 
that there are politicians out there that want you to be sued. It is 
not surprising if the police become passive.
  In the big, urban city closest to my heart, Milwaukee, where I was 
born and where my district is right up against, 2 years ago we hit the 
all-time record by a mile in murders. I didn't think it could get any 
higher, but they broke the record again last year.
  I know if you talk to the police--they won't say it publicly--but 
they aren't policing the way they could 10 years ago because they are 
afraid they might get in trouble, they might get complaints, they might 
get sued or whatever. They back off and a lot of people have paid for 
that backing off with their lives.
  Mr. Speaker, I strongly wish President Biden would change his tune, 
stop pushing bills that make it easy to sue police, and above all, 
change the tone of discussion about policing in this country by 
admitting how un-racist the police are in this Nation and bring out 
more respect for them and allow police to not be afraid to do their 
job.
  Mr. Speaker, the next issue that I would like to address--and I wish 
President Biden would have used his opportunity on Tuesday night to 
address--he mentioned COVID and COVID deaths go up and COVID deaths go 
down. We still have about 1,500 people a day dying of COVID. I have 
known four people, who I think were relatively healthy, who passed away 
in the last 4 months of COVID. We shouldn't forget about it.
  There are some things I have talked about COVID, and for whatever 
reason the public health establishment--and I think to a degree the 
President does control the public health establishment--have not 
addressed vitamin D.
  There were studies that came out of Israel this week that they should 
have advertisements on all over this country. Israel found that 
patients with a vitamin D deficiency--and I think a vitamin D 
deficiency was described under 30-nanograms per milliliter--were 14 
times more likely to have a severe or critical case of COVID-19 than 
those people with sufficient vitamin D in their system.
  The mortality rate for those who had insufficient vitamin D levels 
was over 25 percent compared to 2.3 percent. In other words, you were 
more than 12 times as likely to die of COVID if you didn't have 
adequate vitamin D in your system.
  I don't know why the public health establishment won't talk about 
this more. I have been talking about it for almost 2 years now. I 
realize that you can get nice bottles of vitamin D for $15 or $20 at 
Walgreens or wherever, so nobody is going a make a lot of money on it. 
And certainly, there are a lot of ways people made a lot of money with 
COVID so far.
  I do believe that if they pushed vitamin D--not everybody would 
believe the commercials and not everybody would follow through--but I 
think it is entirely possible that you would reduce the number of 
fatalities by one-half.
  I asked President Biden to weigh in with his agencies and weigh in 
with the CDD or NIH, and have them educate the public on the huge 
potential savings in lives if Americans would have an adequate amount 
of vitamin D.
  I don't like breaking out people of different ethnic backgrounds, but 
right now people of color are much more likely to be vitamin D 
deficient than people of European descent. So by not

[[Page H1296]]

trumpeting from the rooftops that vitamin D can save your lives, you 
are unquestionably disproportionately causing people of color to die of 
this horrible disease. I realize there are other things that could be 
done.

                              {time}  1300

  Mr. Speaker, I will repeat here: insufficient vitamin D levels, 25.6 
mortality rate compared to 2.3 percent with adequate levels. People 
with vitamin D deficiency are 14 times more likely to have a severe or 
critical case of COVID.
  Why does the average person not know this?
  I tell them when I run into them, but I can't talk to everybody. It 
would be nice if the public health establishment would talk a little 
bit more about that.
  One other thing, by the way, I was hoping on COVID he would do, the 
protocol of a lot of hospitals is to determine the drugs they prescribe 
by what is recommended out of the big agencies in the government. And 
there are a lot of very intelligent people who feel that we would have 
saved a lot of people if we could have used off-label drugs rather than 
the $3,000-a-day remdesivir. In other words, they felt there were 
better drugs that would probably cost one-hundredth of the amount of 
the drug that was being pushed out of CDC. It would be nice in America, 
the land of the free, if we would allow doctors in hospitals to use 
these other drugs. I think, again, Mr. Speaker, you would have 
significant savings compared to where we stand right now.
  These are some of topics that I think were not addressed and should 
have been addressed and would save lives if appropriately addressed in 
the State of the Union.
  We will mention one more because we have a little bit of time here. 
President Biden, to his credit, pointed out that a lot of people are 
dying from illegal drugs. He didn't exactly have any concrete proposals 
as to what to do. When I got this job 7 years ago, 47,000 Americans 
were dying every year from illegal drug overdoses. Fifty-seven thousand 
people died in 12 years in the Vietnam war. And they made a big deal 
about that when I was a child. Now you have 47,000 in 1 year, Mr. 
Speaker, when I got elected.
  Do you know what it is now, Mr. Speaker?
  One hundred thousand. It is as if we are having two Vietnam wars 
every year, and the politicians hardly talk about it.
  Now, I think one of the reasons President Biden wouldn't come up with 
anything concrete is that almost all the fentanyl--a drug which he 
wouldn't even mention by name which is responsible for most of these 
deaths--almost all of the fentanyl is coming across the southern 
border, and, of course, our President doesn't like to talk about the 
southern border because we have a largely open southern border in which 
90 to 100,000 people every month are coming across.
  It also may mean a little bit more of an aggressive law enforcement 
going after the people who sell the fentanyl. But, of course, we can't 
say we should have more aggressive law enforcement, and we can't say 
that more drug dealers should wind up in prison because then we would 
have more in prison.
  So rather than doing these things, why don't we just let 100,000 
people a year die?
  Some people can say drug possession and sale of drugs is a victimless 
crime. I say if you think about the parents or the spouses or the 
children or the siblings of the 100,000 people who die, I don't know 
how we cannot do more to address this problem.
  I would hope that next year in the State of the Union speech 
President Biden does a little more to address the 100,000 people who 
are dying of drug overdoses and does a little more to address the 
perhaps hundreds of thousands of people whose lives could be saved if 
we freed up doctors to prescribe whatever drugs they wanted to and if 
we would have pushed a little bit more vitamin D.
  I think we would have a much more well-informed electorate if the 
educational system and the journalist establishment did a little more 
to educate the public about the Holodomor.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________