Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I will talk about a variety of issues tonight. I will start one more time. I direct this talk not only to the Chair, not only to my colleagues in the legislature, but also the press corps that normally doesn't cover this because I think I am going to touch on some stories that ought to appear in the press corps but for whatever reason they don't.

The first thing, and I have addressed it several times from this microphone, is what is our goal in Ukraine, okay?

It would seem to me a good goal would be to end the war. We have a lot of Ukrainian troops who have died; we have a lot of Russian troops who have died; we have a lot of Ukrainian civilians who have died; and it seems to me that every week or month that the war goes by, those numbers get greater and greater.

Not only that, but particularly Russia is also a country with access to horrific weapons, and every week or month that goes by, the chances that eventually some horrific weapons will have to be used goes up.

I will also point out with regard to these two countries, not that losing any young life isn't a tragedy, but it would seem to me there would be special tragedies in these countries because both countries have low birth rates and declining numbers of young people. For two countries that have been around--I believe Ukraine has been--for millennia, we would kind of like to see these countries continue to exist into the future.

Of sizable countries around the world, Ukraine has the second lowest birthrate, trailing only South Korea. There are also people who emigrate from Ukraine. In any event, I would think one of the primary goals of Ukraine is to make sure that they hang onto the young people they have left.

Russia is in a similar situation. They also have a low birthrate. I repeated this story about 7 months ago before this war began. I was at the San Diego sector of our southern border, and San Diego is only one tiny sector of a large border, and it was only talking about the week or month that I was there, but in any event, at that time, the second biggest nationality crossing our border came from Russia, which kind of surprised me.

So not only do they have a low birthrate in Russia, we have a lot of people emigrating. It would seem to me a primary goal of the governments of both Russia and Ukraine is to make sure the few young people they have left don't die in a war.

Now, I do not know what President Biden's goal here is in this war. I try to talk to some Democrat colleagues; I try to talk to people who should know President Biden. I think he himself may be a little bit mixed on the situation, but the press corps ought to be calling upon him and saying: What is your goal in this war? Is our goal to end the war and perhaps give President Putin an off-ramp; give Mr. Zelenskyy an off-ramp; find a way for both to declare some sort of victory and stop the carnage? Or is our goal to continue on for another 6 months or year or 2 years, and we don't care if another 5,000 or 10,000 or 15,000 Russian or 15,000 Ukrainian troops die; not to mention the monetary damages that take place when you have a war in your country?

I would like to know where President Biden stands on this. We collectively have not had a decent briefing for congressional Members since March 31. And given that we have been asked to give tens of millions of dollars to Ukraine--this week we were asked to affirm or accede in the policy of adding Sweden and Finland to NATO--I don't think it is too much to ask that the administration invite its key Cabinet members over here, as they did in February and March, and let us know where the Biden administration stands on this war.

I don't think we have such a great relationship right now with Russia that we can moderate a conclusion to the war, but I think perhaps Israel, perhaps Turkey, perhaps some other country should do that, and perhaps we could grease the skids a little bit.

I mean, I realize back home right now everybody is focusing on inflation, but I will tell you if something bad happens in Ukraine, people are going to be focusing on that very, very quickly.

It would be a lot better if we wrapped up this war. I know there are hard feelings that will probably last for generations, but nevertheless I think the United States had very good relations with Russia only a few months ago. It would be good if we were able to wrap up this war, and it would be good if President Biden, if it was clear that we knew that his administration was working his way toward that.

So, again, I ask the press corps to kind of lean in a little bit on President Biden, find out where he is. I ask my Democratic colleagues in particular, insofar as they have access to the administration, to point out that it would be good to end this war, good to find countries that would mediate ending this war, and insofar as people on that side of the aisle get to see President Biden, carry that message to him. Vitamin D and COVID

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Another topic that I have addressed before from this microphone but haven't talked about for a couple months, so I am going to bring up again is that of vitamin D. People know I have talked about it before, but it bothers me that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis has not really addressed this issue.

The most recent study that came out was that done by an Israeli researcher, and in that study, it indicated that if you had inadequate amounts of vitamin D, which I believe he described as 20 nanograms per milliliter, that you were 11 times more likely to die of COVID than if you had adequate amounts.

If you break it down by race--and I don't like it when we break things out by race, but I am going to do it for these purposes--it is even scarier in that studies show that 35 percent of the White population is inadequate in vitamin D, 57 percent Hispanic, and 85 percent Black, which means having an adequate amount of vitamin D in your system should be a huge priority for people of color.

I think the COVID committee ought to have a hearing solely on vitamin D. We ought to find out, given the trillions of dollars we have thrown at COVID and billions of dollars we have thrown at trying to solve this problem, why the public health establishment has not talked about vitamin D like they should. They may say we don't know whether this is a matter of causation or a matter of correlation, but if that is so, we should certainly be doing more studies on this matter, because I think it is possible that hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved if we began to promote vitamin D when it appeared to be the cure, as it appeared before the vaccines were even invented. Nevertheless, to this day, it is not discussed.

The next question that the committee ought to look at is why are we not routinely testing people who are at risk for vitamin D deficiency? I would think anytime anybody over 65 went to a doctor today, they should be tested for vitamin D. Now, some people say you can take vitamin D without getting a test, which is true, but my personal experience in telling people about vitamin D is if they take a test right now, say the low level of adequate is about 20 nanograms per milliliter, if somebody goes and takes a test and they wind up being a 12 or 8 or 7, they immediately go out and take vitamin D because they have the result of the test that says you have got big trouble coming if you don't take more vitamin D. Having the test specific to that individual is much more relevant than just a doctor saying it wouldn't be a bad idea to take vitamin D.

I do believe we would save a lot of lives if that was done. As I understand it, you can get an online vitamin D test for about $40, so it shouldn't be a cost-prohibitive thing. Given the trillions of dollars we put at it, we should even be paying for the test. But if we don't, individuals should be encouraged at getting those tests.

I do believe vitamin D is good for other things. It is good for bone health, another reason why people should be taking it. There is really no downside. Again, people back home that I know or even experts in the field begin to wonder if the reason we don't push vitamin D is because you can pay $20 for a bottle from Walgreens or CVS and there is not a lot of money to be made, and they seem to be more in favor of trying antidotes that will make money for somebody--there have been billionaires made on this disease--rather than focusing on vitamin D.

I really beg the committee to look into it a little bit more, get some experts there. Even though this pandemic seems to be on the downside, hopefully we will be ready for a different sort of pandemic in the future. So I encourage the COVID committee to spend a little time looking at vitamin D because they could have cut the number of people who died maybe in half. Crisis at the Southern Border

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, the next issue that maybe has bored the press by now, but they shouldn't stop reporting on it, is what is going on on the southern border.

We recently got the estimated number of migrants remaining in the interior who crossed the southern border for June. The good news is it is down a little bit from May and April, and it is expected to be down because June is such a hot month, fewer people cross our border.

But if you look at June of this year, about 142,000 migrants remained in the interior. Of those 142,000, 50,000 are what they call got-aways, which means the Border Patrol didn't even touch them. We didn't even have a perfunctory interview with them. They just came across the border, which should be particularly scary.

What I want to point out, though, is that almost 150,000 from this June is compared to 79,000 last June. So we have gone from 79,000, which was a crisis at the time, to 142,000. Two Junes ago, under another administration, we were around 9,000. So when we go from 9,000 people a month to 79,000 people a month to 142,000 people a month, that should be a banner headline in every newspaper around the country.

Now, I know the newspapers don't like to do anything that would make the current administration look bad, but there is a reason why people don't subscribe to newspapers anymore or don't listen to the news at night, and that is they caught onto the idea that you are not going to be well informed if you read the local newspaper or turn on the news at night.

Again, I will repeat those numbers: 9,000 people in June of 2020 migrants crossing the border. We go from 9,000 to 79,000 to 142,000. Massive increases. In addition to that, as we know, almost all these people who cross the border paid $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000 to the Mexican drug cartels. I have been at the border about eight times. Every time I am down there, the Border Patrol tells me they think the Mexican drug cartels are making more money letting people across the border than they are selling drugs.

This brings another thing which hasn't been brought up enough, our poor neighbor to the south, Mexico, is right now in very, very bad shape due to the strength of the drug cartels, and part of that is our inability to close our border. We are making the Mexican drug cartels wealthier and wealthier and wealthier with all their crime, with all their corruption. I think the United States, just as we refuse to enforce our border, we refuse to stop taking illegal drugs crossing the southern border, and as a result we are making Mexico a complete mess.

I beg my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to express some interest in the flood of people coming here. I beg our newspapers to begin to report these monthly numbers with the banner headlines that they deserve so America can know what is really going on here. Drug Overdoses in America

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Related to the border, speaking of numbers, every year we come out with new numbers of the number of people who die of drug overdoses in this country, and that is something that has been underpublicized.

When I first got this job 7 years ago, about 57,000 people died every year of drug overdoses. We are now at 107,000. Twice as many people die of drug overdoses every year as died in 12 years in Vietnam. That is another story that should be banner headlines, and every newspaper reporter in this country or cable news reporter ought to be asking politicians: What are you going to do? Why is Congress not doing something to save the 107,000 lives a year?

It is a huge national problem. And, again, I don't like to talk about race, but if you look at the last 4 years, particularly the number of Black men who die of drug overdoses is just going through the roof. I mean, normally we are always, particularly the Democratic Party, are always so eager to point out if there is a difference in statistics from one race to the other. Here there is a significant difference. They don't even talk about it. I am not sure what causes it. Normally they would attribute prejudice. I don't think that is it. I think to a certain extent it is police being less active than they have in the past, the judicial system not putting drug dealers in prison because we are all antiprison right now.

But in any event, when you have 107,000 people die every year, isn't it something we ought to be talking about, both in this Chamber and on the nightly news? Spending in Congress

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, the next issue we should be talking about more is the overall level of spending that is going on in this institution. I think it was very predicted when the first bills passed when President Biden took office--and then we had the infrastructure bill; between those two bills we are looking at, I believe, over $3 trillion--that it would lead to inflation.

But, again, the press corps, maybe because the press corps doesn't like to talk about numbers, does not like to talk about the size of the increase in spending. Now, it is a lot easier to break an economy than it is to put it back together.

Since the inflation was caused by excessive spending, I think the only way to get a handle on things is to not spend so much.

We will, this week, be voting on a variety of bills to fund the government, beginning October 1. I have not seen the press corps report what I think is enough on the size of the increase in those bills. It would seem to me we should go back to the days of sequester where routinely you were seeing these bills go up by 0 percent, 1 percent, 2 percent.

What do we have in the bills we are going to vote on this week? We have a transportation and housing bill, up 12 percent. We have an agriculture and rural development bill up 8 percent. We have an energy and water bill up 6.4 percent. Financial services up 17 percent. Interior and the environment, up 18 percent. Military construction and VA up 18 percent.

Again and again, what we are seeing here is just fiscal irresponsibility. It is just throwing more gasoline on the fire of inflation.

I think the press corps, if they were responsible, should be asking Congress whether these numbers could be closer to 1 or 2 percent, which is where we should work toward.

I think, quite frankly, Republicans during appropriations should be coming forth and saying that we would like to see these numbers at 1 or 2 percent. If we are ever going to get our economy back, we can't continue down this path of excessive spending or the amount of inflation is just going to continue to go up and up.

The final spending vote we had today was on the National Park Foundation. I love the national parks. It wasn't a huge spending bill by the standards of what we do around here, but it was a 300 percent increase. Almost everybody in this body voted for it because who wants to be against the national parks. Think about that, a 300 percent increase.

I hope the press corps wakes up a little and decides to report on the individual lines of these budgets, how much the spending is going up line by line and the overall increases in spending in each of the packages.

I will deal with one more issue here tonight that I think ought to be covered constantly but is covered nowhere near as much.

I think so many of the problems that we deal with in society, or at least the people back home feel are part of the problem, are caused by the breakdown of the family. I think America used to have very strong families in the forties, fifties, and early sixties. The breakup in the family did not just happen. It happened because we began with a welfare system in the 1960s that, quite frankly, put nonnuclear families in a position that sometimes was better off than a married couple, depending upon their situation.

In any event, we went from a situation in which the people born without a mom and dad at home rocketed up between the early sixties to about 40 percent, went down a little, and has gone back up to 40 percent since the welfare reform of the 1990s.

I find a lot of people in my age bracket think it is going to be very tough for the next generation, and when they talk about being tough on the next generation, above all, they talk about the breakdown of the family.

I have pointed out before that Black Lives Matter--an organization that people should run from but apparently has been embraced by too many people in the majority party and some people in the minority party--originally came out saying they wanted to disrupt the traditional nuclear family. I would be very concerned when an organization that claims on their website that they want to disrupt the traditional nuclear family is received positively around here.

I know some people will say that Black Lives Matter is a diffuse organization, and just because the founders say they want to disrupt the nuclear family doesn't mean every segment of Black Lives Matter wants to disrupt the nuclear family. But I would feel better if more people came down to the well and boldly said: I am in favor of strengthening the nuclear family; I don't care if I happen to have my picture taken next to Black Lives Matter. I haven't seen that happen.

You might say, what is the nature of the marriage penalty? I will tell you where to begin to look. I would look at some of my local administrators of low-income housing. I think particularly 42 housing, which is newer housing, is frequently superior to other housing. I would ask people about that in your neighborhoods, my colleagues, and see what type of incentives we have when we have new housing, new apartments going up, some of them quite lavish, better than the old apartments that other people have to rent. Is that a good or bad thing?

I would ask the clerks in grocery stores, as far as the expensive food that people are buying, if they are more being provided for by the government than provided for within the family.

I would ask tax accountants about the earned income tax credit and some of the perverse incentives that are involved in the earned income tax credit. I would also ask the tax accountants what people are doing with the earned income tax credits when they get that $6,000, $7,000, or $9,000 check once a year.

I think when we get done asking these questions, we can ask ourselves if we want to continue programs that prevent children from having both parents, particularly a dad, at home. I think there are so many problems in our society that would, to a certain extent, be improved if only we got back to what we would call old-fashioned, traditional family values.

In any event, those are some of the issues that I think the press corps ought to be covering but aren't covering and some of the issues that I think our body ought to be addressing that we are not addressing.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the wonderful staff for being here so late, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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