[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 49 (Friday, March 18, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H3846-H3848]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       GOING BEYOND THE HEADLINES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Cherfilus-McCormick). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee 
of the minority leader.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I would like to comment a little bit on 
some of the issues that have been out there this week, issues that are 
important issues but about which, for whatever reason, I don't think 
the public has been adequately informed as to what is going on.
  The first issue I would like to talk about concerns the bill 
yesterday regarding trade relations with Russia and an earlier bill 
with regard to oil exports from Russia, and that is an incredibly 
important provision in that bill that has not been discussed in the 
mainstream media, which is an amendment of something called the Global 
Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.
  Today, before that bill is signed, the U.S. President can sanction 
foreign leaders or, I guess, pretty much any foreign person, certainly 
any foreign elected official, if they violated any human rights, and 
the definition of human rights is fairly narrowly defined.
  When we think of horrible foreign leaders, we think of murder. We 
think of kidnapping. We think of holding people without trial for 
excessive periods of time. And we think if somebody is going to be 
sanctioned, they should be responsible for those human rights abuses.
  In this bill, we change the definition of human rights to be open-
ended, whatever the President thinks human rights are. Furthermore, we 
allow sanctioning of people who are indirectly responsible for 
violating human rights.
  Already, the United States weighs in when countries try to preserve 
laws that were the laws of the United States not long ago, and I will 
say this with regard to two areas, the LGBTQ agenda and abortion.
  Already, when you talk to people from Eastern Europe; the Caribbean; 
the Dominican Republic, in particular; Central and South America, 
people are mad because the United States throws around its substantial 
economic weight to fight the Christian beliefs of these countries.
  Now, if these bills were signed to become law, if the Senate does not 
amend them, the President will have a new tool in his toolbox if he 
wants to force other countries to adopt the views of abortion and the 
views of LGBTQ that are the views, quite frankly, of the leftwing of 
the Democratic Party.
  The President will be able to threaten the parliaments or, for all I 
know, lobbyists and demonstrators in foreign countries by saying: You 
can't get a visa to the United States because we don't like your stand 
on abortion. We don't like your stand on LGBTQ.
  They can take assets in the United States. And we are told this was 
something that was threatened, at least the visa thing was threatened, 
with regard to elected officials in the Dominican Republic.
  If you don't follow the U.S. party line, you are not going to get a 
visa to the United States. We are going to take your assets in the 
United States, take your bank accounts.
  John Adams said that our Constitution was made for a moral and 
religious country. This is kind of going the opposite way.
  We hold contempt with people, religious people, and say that we are 
going to weigh in with all the gifts we have been given, the financial 
gifts we have been given. We are going to weigh in as a country and say 
that we are going to use those assets to punish foreign leaders who had 
Christian beliefs that not so long ago were held by the vast majority 
of Americans.

  I hope the press reports on this latest power grab of the President. 
I hope the public wakes up and makes sure that when these bills come 
back from the Senate--and that is to say, bills with regard to trade, 
bills with regard to oil--that they do not include this great, 
increased power of the President to punish, quite frankly, Christian 
countries.
  I don't think that has been adequately addressed, and I think in most 
newspapers articles, it wasn't addressed at all.
  Now, I will address something else. I am going to talk a little bit 
about inflation. A lot has been said about inflation recently, and a 
lot of it focuses on the price of gas, but there is high inflation 
everywhere.
  I have a very large manufacturing district. I tour my manufacturers 
all the time. It is not unusual to find manufacturers whose costs for 
metals were up 400 or 500 percent well before there was an invasion of 
Ukraine.
  Every manufacturer I talk to tells me that they expect big inflation 
in the next year. Again, that was before the invasion.
  I want to draw your attention to the graph here of the M2 monetary 
supply, and you can look. We begin down around 1970, 1965, the amount 
year over year that the monetary supply goes up. It sometimes goes up 6 
or 7 percent per year.
  Those were in the bad old days of the 1970s and the inflation that 
kind of hit its peak during Jimmy Carter.
  It kind of went up and down, and we went through a lot of years in 
which inflation was relatively low historically, 1 or 2 percent.
  Then, you look in the last couple of years, and some of this was due 
to overspending on COVID. But, more recently, we also have the American 
Rescue Plan in which apparently financial literates felt the way to 
benefit the economy was to have the Federal Reserve print as much money 
as it can.
  Now, look at this graph. Look at what an aberration we are in at this 
time where the money supply is going up year over year, over 35 
percent.
  I mean, you don't need to be a Ph.D. in economics to know what is 
going to happen. The cost of everything is going to go through the 
roof, oil being one of those things that is going to go through the 
roof, and the cost of food, the cost of any manufactured goods.
  I talk to farmers in my district. The cost of fertilizer, the cost of 
any other chemicals--through the roof. They are going to have to pass 
that on.
  Before you say that this inflation had anything to do with Ukraine, 
look at what the M2 money supply was like even before Ukraine.
  This is such an aberration from anything else we have experienced in 
the United States, and it comes from people who have convinced 
themselves that you can spend unlimited on anything, and there is no 
cost to pay.
  I hope that the press in this country gets ahold of a graph like this 
and gives it to the American people so they can see where we are and 
why the cost of everything is through the roof.
  I really think the value of the dollar, not only in the last couple 
of months but over the next few years, is going to go downhill like 
nothing we have ever seen before.
  I think since we switched to the Federal Reserve system in whatever 
it was, 1916, 1917, we are now in uncharted territory.
  Some people say that we should never have paper money because 
Congress won't be able to risk destroying the value of the Nation's 
currency. Well, it hasn't happened until now, but wow.
  As amazing as it is, as horrible as these numbers are, the majority 
party talks about still trying to pass the Build Back Better bill that 
will make this go up even more rapidly.
  So, I beg the press corps to pay attention to the monetary supply and 
connect the dots as to why we have such inflation.

                              {time}  1130


                     Issues at the Southern Border

  Mr. GROTHMAN. Now, there is another issue that is going on, and I 
think to a certain extent because of Ukraine it has been pushed into 
the background, but it is still a vitally important issue, and that is 
what is going on at the border. Just because Kamala Harris has been 
appointed the Border Patrol czar, and she does absolutely

[[Page H3847]]

nothing as far as we can tell, and it doesn't mean we should stop 
talking about this huge tragedy.
  In February, we had 165,000 encounters with the Border Patrol, up 63 
percent over last year. There were about 72,000 people let into the 
country, and the figures aren't out there, but they can guess that ICE 
let in another 19,000 more. Of that amount, 9,000 were unaccompanied 
minors.
  If an unaccompanied minor shows up at the southern border, we don't 
turn them back to their parents. They usually write an address on their 
T-shirt, and we send them off to their aunt or uncle, whoever, you 
know, it could be just a friend, whatever, and that is just par for the 
course. We pay to put the little child on the airplane, we pay to ship 
them somewhere; maybe not their parents, maybe just friends or 
whatever. If you want to talk about divided families or breaking up 
families, you look at the current system where every month 9,000 kids 
who are younger than age 18 are let in this country without their 
parents.
  I had a staffer go down there because we had to work late last week, 
but I will be down there next week. And there were some other 
observations I made as far as what it is like on the border. Gangs play 
music on the Mexican side of the border as people march across. It is a 
festive atmosphere. Nobody even pretends that the United States cares 
about what is going on at their border.
  The drug gangs make $3 billion a year, we believe, transporting 
people here. The charges are between $2,000 and $20,000 to come here 
because they run that border.
  It is not in just our Vice President where we have a lack of 
leadership. The California Highway Patrol can't report illegals they 
find to ICE because of the, I would almost call it, treasonous behavior 
of one of our States. Increasingly, we are getting people coming here 
who not only do they not speak Spanish, they speak an indigenous 
language from southern Mexico or, more likely, from Central America. 
They are obviously very difficult to process, and you have to wonder 
about the wisdom of letting people in this country when nobody can 
speak their language.
  We are getting people from Iran, Iraq, and Uzbekistan, which of 
course are breeding grounds for terrorism. These people are paying up 
to $20,000 a head to come into this country. Doesn't that concern 
anybody?
  The hotels, the airlines in Mexico obviously know this is going on 
because people take airlines from, for example, Cancun to Mexicali. We 
know hotels south of the border are being used by illegal immigrants, 
but because it is becoming so common, it is built into the Mexican 
economy.
  Obviously, when we do so little to prevent this illegal immigration, 
morale from the Border Patrol is low. How would you like it if you are 
taking a job--and recently they have even been shot at--taking a 
dangerous job like that and getting as little support from the 
executive branch as you can imagine?
  Actually, I did notice in the recent appropriations bill that passed 
last week, we are putting a lot more money into monitoring the Border 
Patrol and making sure they are not mistreating people. It is not a big 
concern for us apparently when an illegal immigrant shoots at a Border 
Patrol agent, but we have to put millions of dollars more into the 
budget to make sure the Border Patrol is not breaking the law. No 
wonder the Border Patrol does not feel good about their situation right 
now.
  I will give you another example of the brazenness of the illegals 
coming here. Right now, migrants aren't afraid to call 911 and get 
escorted with a ride to where they want to go, and we just taxi them 
in. If they are kind of wandering around, let's make a 911 call, and 
they show up. Nothing wrong with them, no healthcare problem, we just 
use our local emergency services as an escort service.
  We still have a situation in which people don't have to be tested for 
COVID. Okay. But it is kind of strange that American citizens, say if 
you work for a hospital, are required to get a vaccine, and we don't 
even test you if you are trying to come in this country. What are the 
priorities here?
  People coming in from what we call special-interest countries are 
going up, be it Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, countries like this.
  So, in any event, I encourage the press, and that encourages the so-
called conservative press, or the balanced press, to report to America 
when we are having 80,000 or 90,000 people cross the border every 
month, report what type of people are coming here, report on the mass 
decrease in the number of deportations, as even people who have 
committed crimes are removed at a much lower rate than they were by 
Donald Trump. Because I do think if we look back at America 10 years 
from now and say, how did the policies of 2022 affect America, still 
the number one most damaging thing is that we ignored our border.
  I will point out one more thing about ignoring the border. Right now, 
we do have a crisis in Ukraine. Hopefully, we are not going to have a 
similar crisis in Taiwan. I have felt all along that an effect of not 
enforcing our border is to tell foreign leaders who don't like us that 
we have kind of a wimpy, ineffective, incompetent government in charge 
right now.
  Other normal countries do not let 90,000 to 100,000 people a month 
cross into their country, and leaders around the world look at that, 
and they, quite frankly, think that the current executive branch of 
this country is not a serious elected official, and they challenge 
somebody who is not a serious elected official.
  There is no doubt in my mind that if we had been enforcing that 
border and taking a tougher stance in other places around the world, we 
wouldn't be in this mess in Ukraine like we are today.


                        Issues Surrounding COVID

  Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, the next issue that I think has 
disappeared a little bit is with regard to COVID. We are now in a dip 
in new people getting COVID, but I think in the last week we are still 
around 5,000 people who died of COVID. I think the last four people I 
have known who have died of COVID really haven't had a lot else wrong 
with them, maybe nothing else wrong with them. I think there are a 
couple of things that have been underreported or not focused on.
  I have railed for almost 2 years here now on vitamin D. There was a 
study out of Israel that was released fairly recently that said that if 
you were deficient in vitamin D--and in the study they say deficient 
being 20 nanograms per milligram, which is pretty deficient--that you 
would be 11 times more likely to die of COVID.
  Now, given all the massive amount of ink--if they still use ink--and 
the massive amount of time that has been spent educating the public on 
how to avoid COVID or avoid dying from COVID, I would think a little 
bit more time would be spent by the public health establishment looking 
at the effects of vitamin D.
  You are 11 times more likely to die if you are under 20 nanograms. 
What can we do about that? First of all, it ought to be publicized. 
Secondly, it should be par for the course that, particularly if you are 
older and you go in for a checkup, that your doctor gives you a vitamin 
D test. Right now, your reimbursement levels for that test may not be 
quite up for the cost.
  We all know that the medical establishment in America today, 
particularly the hospitals, are obsessed with money. But people are 
dying out there. If you test somebody for vitamin D, and they are down 
around 15 or 17 nanograms, you can alert that person and perhaps save a 
life. There are all sorts of people walking around with insufficient 
vitamin D levels. They don't even know it. They don't know the 
importance of it.
  I will also point out that they should especially point out the value 
of vitamin D to people of color. We know people of color are more 
likely to have low levels of vitamin D, and therefore the incompetence 
or the failure of the public health establishment not to educate people 
on vitamin D has disproportionately affected people of color.
  They talk about people of color a lot in this institution, and I 
think a lot of times they talk about prejudice that is not there. But 
here you have something in which people are dying overwhelmingly, and 
for whatever reason, the public health establishment does not ring the 
alarm as far as how much darker skin increases the possibility that you 
are going to get serious COVID. So I beg the CDC and the public health 
establishment to focus a little bit more on vitamin D.

[[Page H3848]]

  I will also point out that different doctors have different opinions 
as to how you should treat somebody for COVID, and I have no problem 
finding doctors who find that drugs like ivermectin or 
hydroxychloroquine given early will save lives, and a lot of times 
those same doctors feel a drug called remdesivir is not effective.
  Now, I don't think the subcommittee that we have had here has studied 
that enough. But with remdesivir, apparently the hospitals--and this is 
largely the drug companies getting the money--you are going to get 
billed out over $3,000 a day for the treatment, and the treatment for 
ivermectin is nominal.
  I talk to doctors, smart doctors, doctors that are well published, 
who tell me that they could have saved tens of thousands, maybe over 
100,000 lives if doctors could give the off-label drugs that were 
originally prescribed for another purpose, but the doctors aren't 
allowed to by the hospitals that they work for.
  This is a potential scandal. I would think normally the press would 
be a little bit inquisitive when we say one drug is worth $3,200 a day 
and one drug is under $50 a day, and smart doctors feel the drug for 
$50 a day or under $50 a day is more effective. But for whatever reason 
we don't talk about it. If something wrong is going on around here, the 
reason they are able to get away with things going on is because the 
press doesn't highlight it.
  The reason why hospitals are not giving drugs that some doctors feel 
are more effective are directives from the NIH. And, again, I think 
drug companies have too much power in this town, but it is something 
that should be looked into by the media. It surprises me that some 
people still aren't aware of this.


                  Conflicts Between Russia and Ukraine

  Mr. GROTHMAN. The final thing that we will focus on here a little bit 
is what is going on in Ukraine. I still feel that for whatever reason, 
and I have talked about it here, we have not done enough to discuss the 
Holodomor. The Holodomor was the starvation of 4 million Ukrainians in 
the early 1930s by the Communist government.
  At the time, it was underreported in the United States because at 
that time, for reasons unknown to me--I wasn't around at the time, it 
is a mystery to me today--The New York Times is perceived to be the 
paper of record. And The New York Times, a guy by the name of Walter 
Duranty decided not to talk about the starvation. He decided to keep it 
secret. Probably because at the time the intellectuals, the type of 
people who work at the big newspapers, liked to look upon the left 
favorably, and because it was Communists who were starving people, it 
is not something they like to talk about.
  I do not know how you can intelligently talk about the relationships 
between Ukraine and Russia without talking about the 4 million--and 
that is the lowest, by the way, other people talk about 15 million--
without talking about the 4 million Ukrainians who were starved to 
death by the Communist, Marxist government that ran the Soviet Union at 
that time.
  I would again ask that our press run special features on the 
starvation that took place 90 years ago. First of all, when 4 million 
people are starved, it should be something every American school child 
knows about anyway; but secondly, when you look at the animosity of the 
Ukrainians toward the Russians, that certainly plays a big role. I have 
a sneaking suspicion the reason we don't talk about it is because it is 
one more embarrassment to the atheistic, totalitarian left that some 
powerful people in this country like to look up to. So again, I wish 
that the newspapers would cover the Holodomor, and I wish that the 
schools would cover it because no school child should be able to 
graduate from high school without knowing about this.

                              {time}  1145

  And it is also important so they can be on the lookout for big 
government atheists, wherever they are. I think you also have to know 
about what the big government atheists did to understand why we fought 
in Korea, to see why we fought in Vietnam.
  But America's school children, quite frankly, well older than school 
children, are blissfully ignorant of the Holodomor and what can happen 
if you let a bunch of atheistic big-government types take over the 
government.
  The final thing that I am going to focus on here a little bit, I have 
before thanked President Biden for giving the State of the Union speech 
and not talking about racism. But I still think one of the problems we 
have with high crime in this country--and my district borders the city 
of Milwaukee. The city of Milwaukee, for the second time last year, had 
the highest murder rate they have ever had.
  When I was a child, the city of Milwaukee was the safest of the 25 
biggest cities in the country. But we have gone downhill. And I think a 
lot of that is the police have been beat up; they are called racists, 
and they are afraid to do their job. They are afraid of having a 
complaint filed against them. We still have a bill floating around 
Congress saying it should be easier to sue police. And, as a result, we 
do get these high murder rates.
  In addition to the high murder rates, we have, together with our lax 
policy at the border, 100,000 people dying every year from drug 
overdoses. But, again, it was 45,000 7 years ago. That was high. And I 
think whether it is 45,000 or 100,000, people's eyes glaze over. If it 
was your child, if it was your sibling who died of a drug overdose, 
maybe your eyes wouldn't glaze over. But the media in this country, 
their eyes have glazed over, and we continue to let people die.
  So, in conclusion, in any event, my final ask here is that President 
Biden, who has done what he can to fan the flames of saying police are 
racist, police are racist, I think it would do a lot toward making it 
easier to hire police around the country and easier to be an effective 
policeman if he would publicly apologize to the police of this country 
for his slandering them and his compatriots slandering them, and tell 
them what a good job they are doing.
  So those are some of the issues that I hoped the press would pick up 
on.
  In conclusion, I will make one more comment with regard to Ukraine. 
This is a disaster for Ukraine. It is just a horrible thing. We all 
feel so good about how brave they are; about the fight they have put 
up.
  Eventually, that war has got to end, and I never feel, when I am 
dealing with members of this administration, or Congress, in general, 
quite frankly, that there is enough focus on ending the war.
  There are newspaper reports saying that Israel might be getting 
involved in trying to negotiate an end. But the United States is still 
the most important powerful country in the world. And I wish the 
administration would take a little bit more time negotiating, trying to 
negotiate an end to that conflict.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________