Glenn Grothman

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Well, Madam Speaker, one more time I will make my weekly statement with regard to Vitamin D. The COVID epidemic is on the downslide but, in the most recent week, we still had 1,600 Americans die. I call America's attention, and the subcommittee dealing with COVID, to the fantastic benefits of Vitamin D. Israeli studies show people who have inadequate Vitamin D levels, under 20 nanograms per milliliter, are 11 times more likely to die of the COVID. And we have known about this for 2 years now. I beg the public health establishment to spend a little bit of time talking about Vitamin D. I beg the public health establishment to check for Vitamin D levels when people come in. I have found people with levels as low as 16 or 4. By taking Vitamin D supplements, it may save their life. I point out to the medical establishment that when I talk to the American people back home and they wonder why this isn't being talked about, they believe it is because there is no money to be made in giving a supplement that can cost 12 or 13 bucks at Walgreens. And it is a sad state of affairs when the American public believes that is the reason they haven't been educated on this lifesaving supplement.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, the good news is the COVID pandemic is kind of under control. Nevertheless, we still have about 250 people a day who die of COVID and over 1 million people have died in this country. I think one of the failures of the public health establishment and the medical establishment is the failure to educate the public about the benefits of vitamin D. Researchers found that if you have inadequate vitamin D levels, defined as under 200 nanograms per milliliter, you are 11 times as likely to die of the disease. Can you imagine how many lives would have been saved if we tested for vitamin D and everybody had adequate vitamin D in their blood? The public health establishment failed us by not educating the public enough on vitamin D, and it is time we stepped it up, even though it looks like we are near the end of the pandemic. And the medical establishment ought to always test for vitamin D with people who are at risk for this disease, particularly people with darker skin, and particularly people who are a little heavy. It is very important to test for vitamin D. I know the medical establishment feels that they might not get reimbursed quite enough from the insurance companies, but I will tell you, people in the medical establishment, and I am talking about the administrators, in particular, who are making these judgments, ought to put profit aside for a second and make sure that we get these tests on people, because if they come under 20 nanograms, they are greatly at risk for dying.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, it was a big day a couple of days ago because the new immigration figures came out for the month of April, and it is something that ought to be banner headlines in all the newspapers. I will report them. In April, 185,000 illegal immigrants entered the United States. Sometimes people talk about the number of contacts we have; some of the people turned around. Madam Speaker, 185,000, that is up from 152,000 in March. It is 185,000 this April; 66,000 last April; and two Aprils ago, under a different administration, it was under 6,000. Let me repeat: In April 2020, 5,700 people entered the country, and we didn't know exactly who they were; last April, 66,000; now, 185,000. In there, we have 8,600 unaccompanied children. People want to worry about families being broken up, that they will send them somewhere in the United States. But 8,600 children entered the country unaccompanied. In any event, if we have any newspaper people listening, they ought to report this as the banner headline tomorrow.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I will make some comments on the reauthorization bill. This is one of these big bills that is 268 pages. I don't have time to go through all of the problems with the bill, but I am just going to touch on some highlights, or low lights. In this area of high inflation, with a bill like this, the first thing I look at is the cost. The cost of this bill--right now, we are spending about $9.9 billion on this topic. Over the next 6 years, they expect it to increase to $16.2 billion. You are looking at a 63 percent increase in spending on this area at a time where we really don't have any money to increase anything. So I want the American public to understand there is a big spending increase here. Secondly, I will talk about a very important population to me, though a population that is not talked about enough, and that is the fact that we are continuing to allow a provision in law which I think is damaging to people born with different abilities. Right now, they are not able to work at work centers, which is one of these places that sometimes pays under minimum wage, until they are at least 24 years old. We would never tell anybody of other abilities that you are not allowed to work until you are age 24. But by making it--I won't say impossible, but very difficult to work at a work center until age 24, I think you stunt the people's growth. I was really hoping we would use this opportunity to allow people with different abilities to begin to work at 18 or 19 years old. Anybody who tours these work centers cannot help but be touched by how proud these folks are to work there. I wish they could work there at age 18 instead of 24. The next thing I will point out is a clear feature of this bill is to dramatically expand Job Corps; in other words, government jobs that are a steppingstone, I guess, if you can't find another job. There has never been a time, I think, in American history in which they are looking for more people to work. So as I go around my district, be it the service industry, agriculture, light manufacturing, they are begging for employees. What is Congress going to do? They are going to go in there and say, no, we are not going to let you work at the local restaurant; we are going to have you work for Job Corps. I think that is a mistake. The fourth thing I will point out is this obsession with racial biases and gender identity. There is a bill right now that the majority party has that is called the LGBT Data Inclusion Act, in which they expect everybody, I guess, to tell their employer what their sexual preferences are. I have been doing this job in politics for a long time. I have never had a discussion about sexual preferences with any of my employees. I would feel embarrassed to ask them. But this bill clearly implies a world in which when you apply for a job, let's talk about our sexual identity. The fifth thing I point out is we have a big problem in this country at our southern border. In this bill, in committee, we tried to have E- Verify to apply to all of these jobs; in other words, to make sure that if we are going to have such a program, at least it is American citizens who take advantage of the program. That amendment was shot down in committee. What does that tell me? It tells me that one more time, along with free medical care, along with Pell grants, the majority party wants to help out people who are coming here who shouldn't be here. E-Verify really should have been part of the bill. I don't think the American public wants another government program designed, at least in part, to benefit people who are here illegally. Those are some of the greatest hits of the bill.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, we just got back from our home districts, and we all heard different things, but I am sure I talked to dozens, maybe over 100, people over the weekend. The number one topic of concern is inflation. In particular, I ran across someone whose house sold for probably 50 percent more than I would have thought that house would sell for a year-and-a-half ago. I am sure it was good for the person who sold the house, but I feel so sorry for young people today. Now, why is the cost of housing up so much? The same reason the cost of gas is up and the same reason the cost of food is up. It is because we have a greatly increased money supply. I encourage all Americans to get on your computers, look at M2 and M1, measure of the monetary supply. That is not something that has anything whatsoever to do with the war in Ukraine. It is simply overspending on the part of this Congress. The American Rescue Plan Act, the first big spending act of the new administration, is one of the most fiscally irresponsible things I have ever seen. But I encourage all Americans, when you talk to your Congressman, tell them: ``Government is big enough. Please don't spend any more.''

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Madam Speaker, there are certainly many concerns over this bill. The one that I would like to highlight today is that they are greatly increasing the expansion of eligibility for the bill. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean the bill is going to make things more expensive, but you know very well if we are going to bring a whole lot of new areas into the bill, if we don't increase the spending, the areas that are currently part of the community services block grant are going to go down. I don't believe the majority party is going to let anybody go down, which means this bill anticipates a significant increase in spending on this program. This is one of many programs that I would argue, under the Constitution, really even should not be a Federal concern. It should be a local concern. To double the eligibility to 200 percent and make that permanent is resulting at a time when our spending is just completely out of control, setting up a situation in which there will be dramatic spending on another government program.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, as we break for the weekend, I remind the other Members of this body that when we come back, there is no greater crisis this country faces than the crisis at the border. I leave Members with just a few numbers that we want to turn around quickly: first of all, the number of people coming here who are not appropriately vetted who are sometimes referred to as illegal aliens; two Marches ago there were 11,000; one March ago 63,000; and the most recent March Border Patrol puts at 150,000. Think of that: in 2 years from 11,000, 63,000, 153,000 per month. And the Cabinet Secretary in charge of this says that he inherited a mess. He inherited great laws including the Migrant Protection Protocol, and now we have a true mess. The second number: 110 deaths in the past year in this country from fentanyl, a horrific drug, almost all of which comes across the southern border. By comparison, 57,000 Americans died in the Vietnam war. Twice as many people die every year in this country from illegal drug overdoses as died in 12 years in the Vietnam war. I sincerely hope this body will deal with the southern border and make it a priority when we come back.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, a lot has been said in the last 48 hours on this floor with regard to the Ukraine-Russian conflict; however, I think there are some things that should be added that maybe can be talked about a little bit more as we try to find the end here. And I hope the Biden administration does not give up at all on trying to negotiate some sort of peace. First of all, I am going to address Russia. Russia has a very low birthrate now of 1.5. In addition to that, people right now are leaving Russia. I was on the San Diego border about 8 months ago, and at that time just in that region--one of 10 regions along the Mexican border-- the second biggest nationality to cross was Russian. It was recently reported that in the 6-month period ending January, 8,600 Russians entered this country. I would bet because of the war Russian immigration has only increased. With regard to Ukraine, its birthrate is even lower. Of approximately 180 countries of size in the world, Ukraine has the second-lowest birthrate to South Korea at 1.1 percent. It has recently been reported the United States will accept up to 100,000 Ukrainians in our country. While it is certainly the intent that they return, we all know that many of them don't.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, yesterday, upon returning to my office, I heard testimony from Secretary Mayorkas from Homeland Security saying that he inherited a mess at the border and that he is doing the best he can. The American public ought to know what the numbers are. Two Marches ago, between got-aways who weren't vetted by the Border Patrol and people who were vetted by the Border Patrol, about 11,000 people a month were coming here. A year ago in March, it was around 60,000. We are right now at 153,000. When you inherit a March with 11,000 and 2 years later you are at 153,000, you have not been doing the best you can. This is threatening the end of America. It signals that America is very weak. I have felt all along the policies at the southern border are one of the reasons we have to deal with Ukraine right now, because no normal leader would allow this many people to cross the border. In any event, I urge my colleagues, anybody who has the ear of Secretary Mayorkas or the President, to point out that when you go from 11,000 to 153,000 people a month in 2 years crossing the border, you have failed and something has to be done.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Well, Mr. Speaker, while we were on break for the last 2 weeks, I spent some time at the southern border in three sectors, the San Diego sector, the El Centro sector, and the Yuma sector. And I think it is important that we try to educate the Chair of what is going down there. I will start off by just talking about raw numbers that were recently released. And so our listeners understand, when you talk about the border, there are two groups: There are people who want to find the Border Patrol and check in and get a future date for a hearing as they ask for asylum; and there are people who sneak across, which we refer to as gotaways. For certain reasons that I will soon address, the number of gotaways recently went up dramatically. And the number of gotaways is always an estimate because we don't catch them, we don't interview them. They are people who got away into the interior of the United States. But we believe right now, or the Border Patrol believes, that in March, there were 62,000 gotaways; people who were not interviewed; people who we don't know who they are, who snuck in the country. We also believe in March there were 90,000 people let in the country by the Border Patrol, usually asking for an asylum claim. When we combine these two numbers--and by the way, there are other people who are turned around, and that is why you sometimes hear people say there were 220,000 contacts in March, which is true, but not all of those people were let in the country. We do believe 152,000 people were let in the country. At least in the last 3 years, and as far as I know, forever, that is the highest number of people who have been let in the United States in 1 month. By way of comparison, a year ago, in March, we were at 63,000. So we went up from 63,000 to 153,000. And if you go before March 2021, March 2020, coincidentally, a different President, we were at 11,000. So we have gone from 11,000 in March of 2020, to 63,000, to 152,000. That is a crisis by any standard. Now, you might say, why are there so many more gotaways? Because when so many people are turning themselves in at the border--and by the way, there are about 10,000 unaccompanied minors who were let in this March as well, and it takes the Border Patrol a longer period of time to process the minors. When there are so many people that have to be processed, the Border Patrol spends all their time doing paperwork and not guarding the border. There was a time when the Border Patrol reported to work and they guarded the border. Now, we were told in the sectors that I was at that 70 percent of the Border Patrol, when they show up at work, start doing paperwork. By the time their shift is over, 90 percent of the Border Patrol is doing paperwork, which is one of the reasons why so many more people are sneaking across the border. By the way, if you wanted to take illegal drugs into the country, how would do you it? Would you turn yourself into the Border Patrol or would you try to sneak across? Which is why, right now, we believe, there are many more illegal drugs, including fentanyl, coming into the country now than there were in the past. There are less drugs being confiscated, way less drugs being confiscated, and for the same reason. If the Border Patrol is not guarding the border, more people sneak across with the drugs and less people are caught. So, in any event, that by itself is enough that should just alarm the people of this body, as well as the American public is saying, what is going on, from 11,000 2 years ago to 63,000 a year ago, to 153,000 today. We also want to talk, like I did, about the number of drugs. When I got this job, which seems just like yesterday, but it was 7 years ago, there were about 47,000 Americans who died every year of illegal drugs, and that was a big number. All of us politicians were supposed to say something and have a plan because what are we going to do? 47,000 Americans dying every year of illegal drugs. And we passed more money, and we passed things out for treatment. And 7 years later, we have gone from 47,000--by way of comparison, 57,000 Americans died in the Vietnam war--we are now at 110,000, 110,000 people. For people my age, that is twice as many as the number of people, combat troops, that died Vietnam in a 12-year period. That was 57,000; protests in the street. We have got to stop this. 57,000 Americans have died. Now, every year, 110,000 Americans are dying of illegal drug overdoses. What should we be doing? We could use more technology, so when people do come in and try to sneak in drugs, where the Border Patrol is monitoring things, they are more likely to catch the drugs. I personally love the dogs. The dogs do a tremendous job at the border when people try to sneak across the San Diego sector and put fentanyl or drugs in a truck or a car, those are things that should be unquestionably in the budget. And if we would do that sort of thing, maybe it would put a little bit of brakes on the illegal drugs. Another thing we learned down at the border is the increasing variety of countries that are coming here. You have to ask yourselves why that is. Two Monday nights ago, I was at the border and we saw two groups of people in a relatively short period of time come into Yuma; groups of 70 or 80 people. Where are they from? I think the average American thinks Cuba, Guatemala. No, from Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, Bangladesh, India, Uzbekistan. Okay, from all around the globe. Now, you might say why are people coming here from all around the globe? Well, first of all, why would anybody not like to be an American? But secondly, because the Mexican drug cartels, I am told, and have been told by every Border Patrol agent in every sector over the last year and a half, the Mexican drug cartels are right now making more money smuggling people across the border than drugs across the border. That is because, depending upon where you are coming from, $8,000, $9,000, $15,000--I am told, from Asia, $20,000--to get somebody in here. When you are making that kind of money, it is not surprising that they would be educating the whole world that now is the time to come into the United States. They have pointed out to me that these are not necessarily poor, desperate people, by the standards of their home countries. In fact, some of them appear to the Border Patrol to be relatively well-off. They do not look poorly fed. The Border Patrol estimates 90 to 95 percent of them have a cell phone. There was a time in the not-too- distant past that that meant you were well-off. I am not good at judging clothes, but we are told that the shoes or the purses or whatever, the Border Patrol can tell, are a sign that these are not necessarily poor people. They are just people who realize they are better off in the United States than in their home country. There are a lot of Cubans coming across. A lot of these Cubans, even though they are saying they want asylum from Cuba, they have thrown away their identification from Chile or Colombia or wherever. They had fled Cuba to Chile, and now the word is out: Now is the time to come to the United States. They aren't fleeing oppression in Chile. They are just coming to the United States because it is better off. Why wouldn't they? But we have to realize that if we are going to continue with the current policy, an unlimited number of people would come here. Look around the globe. China, Indonesia, Brazil, large countries, almost everybody would be better off in America, which is why tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands from some of these countries, are going to continue to flow here unless we begin to put the brakes on the current policies. One other thing of interest we found. When these got-aways sneak across the southern border in Arizona, they will pay young people, kids, over $1,000 to come up and get them at the border and drive them to Phoenix, which is kind of interesting, isn't it? Another thing for people back home to remember, if they think the current hodgepodge system is humanitarian, is the day we were in the San Diego sector, where you have a wall that goes, I am guessing, maybe a hundred yards into the Pacific Ocean, they found two people on the American side had drowned trying to get around there. I guess the ocean is a lot more difficult to get around than people think. They look out a hundred yards, and they figure that they can swim out there, that they can get around. They can't get around, or they get in a boat that is not as seaworthy as they think it is. So, many people drown in the ocean trying to come here. The Mexican Government tells us that more people wind up washing up on the Mexican shore than on the American shore because their boats sink before they even get around to the American side. Of course, it is not just in the ocean that you see people die coming here. In the Arizona sector, it is not unusual to have people dehydrate to death in the summer sun. Americans, good-natured as we are, sometimes put out gallons of water in the desert, hoping that people who are dehydrating to death find the gallons of water. But frequently, they don't. As you get further down the border, in the past, when I have been on the Rio Grande border, it is, again, not unusual to have people drown in the Rio Grande. It looks like a shallow river, and they don't realize the undertow and that sort of thing, and they wind up dying. Women who try to come across, particularly women who try to be with groups that are got-aways and sneak across, the sheriff of one of the counties--and this is another number I find hard to believe, but it is the sheriff. He tells me, one of the sheriffs in Arizona, that he believes 80 percent of the women who are part of these groups that try to be got-aways and sneak across without checking at the Border Patrol, 80 percent are raped. Isn't that kind of a horrible thing? But the word is out around the world: Now is the time to come across. And that is what happens. In any event, I encourage the American public and encourage people of all parties here, and especially the Biden administration, to get them going a little, to realize, right now, it is 150,000 people a month. If they change the policy in June like they are talking, the Border Patrol believes that you are going to be working your way up to, like, 400,000, 500,000 a month, which, again, I find hard to believe, but you have to figure the Border Patrol are the experts on this sort of thing. It shouldn't be that difficult to find a good system, and no other country would stand for this. I made the point about a year ago, and it may be tardy now, but I do think to allow unlimited people to come here makes the American Government and the current administration look weak. I think as far as what happened to Ukraine and what may happen someday in Taiwan, when they look at the United States and say we have a President who is allowing 150,000 people a month to come here and doing nothing about it, I just think it screams America is no longer the leader in the world. In any event, I hope steps are taken. Hire more Border Patrol, hire more dogs, complete the wall, which would be a big step in the right direction as well, and go back to the policy of allowing people to be held on the Mexican side of the border prior to coming across here because people are not going to pay the Mexican drug cartels $10,000 or $15,000 to sit on the Mexican side of the border and hope that the hearing goes their way. Again, to emphasize the number, 2 years ago, 11,000 a month; now, 152,000 a month. People shrug their shoulders and say: What could we do? Well, we could adopt the policies we had when we were at 11,000 a month. That would be a good start. In any event, this is what we learned on the border 2 weeks ago. Earlier today, we addressed the Ukraine situation, and I am continually disappointed in the media in this country for not addressing the Ukrainian famine of 90 years ago. I don't know how you can report on this war between Ukraine and Russia and not talk about, depending on who is doing the counting, the 5 to 10 million Ukrainians who were starved to death by the Communist governments in 1932. Even, at the time, the American press was shameless. We were in a situation in which a reporter for The New York Times, Walter Duranty, hid this great starvation from the American public and the Western world. As a result, without the West being able to weigh in or the world being able to weigh in, about 5 to 15 million people, I am guessing more like 5 or 6 million, starved to death. When we talk about why the Ukrainians are fighting so hard, how can you talk about that without talking about the history between the then- Communist Government of Russia and also the communists, quite frankly, who ran Ukraine at the time and the civilians who wound up starving to death? You read first-person accounts of all the people dying. You realize how, 90 years later, that must still be something that everybody learns about in that country. Like I said, one of the great disappointments is the mainstream media has not talked about it. Why don't they talk about it? Is it because they didn't talk about it in 1932 because their reporters were so left of left, they apparently didn't want to embarrass the Soviet Union with what was going on? Is it because our reporters today are so left of left and so in love with leftwing governments that they don't want to embarrass them by pointing out the mass murder that they were responsible for 90 years ago? In any event, I encourage all Americans to Google the Ukrainian famine and read some first-person accounts of what was going on down there. I encourage any members of the media who sometimes, I think, spend time on nonissues to educate the American public a little bit on what was going on between Russia and Ukraine 90 years ago this year. Now, the final issue which we have to talk about, and I think is the most important issue of America under normal circumstances when our country is not being overrun at the southern border and when we are not facing world war in Ukraine, and that is the continuous policy, encouraged more by the Biden administration in their Build Back Better bill, another thing he is doing, to have a means-tested welfare program that discourages work and encourages the breakdown of the family. Understand the qualifications, and there are over 80 means-tested programs, some of them more well-known. One is food stamps; TANF, which is a cash grant; public housing; earned income tax credit; Pell grants. All of these programs are based on whether or not you are considered to be in poverty. If you have a married couple in which both are working or one has a somewhat middle-class job, you will not be considered in poverty, and you are not eligible for these programs. But if you have a single parent who is not working or working a little bit, the government considers you in poverty. Once you are in poverty, food stamps, TANF, public housing, which is a big one--I think they underestimate the draw that public housing has, and I can talk about that in a second. The earned income tax credit can easily be a check of $6,000, $7,000, or $8,000 coming in every tax season. Pell grants, the opportunity for almost free college, something else that the average person doesn't get, but if you adopt that lifestyle, you get it. It is not surprising that we have had, going back 70 years, such a shift in the way we raise children in this country, a shift from almost uniformly a mom and dad at home to a much higher percentage all the time without a dad. I realize there are a few people out there who don't want a dad at home. I will mention one more time Black Lives Matter. On their website, when they were riding high about a year and a half ago, they were against the traditional nuclear family. Of course, the Marxists, Karl Marx himself, did not like the traditional family. People sometimes think this has been a coincidence in which we have had a breakdown of the traditional family. In part, we have to remember that there are people who outright don't like the family. In any event, I encourage this body, before they pass any more significant legislation, and I encourage the Republicans, if they ever get back in the majority again, to look at these programs and see, in a country in which we try to treat everybody equally, why we have these programs that, in essence, take money from the traditional family and send it to the nonnuclear family. I have been approached by women a few times in my district wondering why their children have to take out big student loans and go 30 or 40 grand in debt, or maybe they had a sister without a husband in the house, and they get free college. I really can't understand why we are so prejudiced against the nuclear family. But that is what we are in America today, and there is a lot of talk about equity or equality. We should talk about the degree to which we discriminate against nuclear families in this society and see what we can do about trying to put people more on an equitable basis. That would be a good thing for the Republican Party to work on if they ever do get the majority back, and I hope they do. I think they will. In any event, I would also hope our conservative think tanks, our conservative groups, do more to publicize the prejudice that is going on in this society against the nuclear family. Mr. Speaker, I believe some fine Congressmen behind me are anxious to speak. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I don't like to consider myself an overly partisan Congressman, so I will lead off my speech by quoting two Democrats kind of as a background for the rest of this speech. In Politico--so you know it is true--an unnamed Democrat quotes Barack Obama as saying don't underestimate Joe's ability to blank things up. Former Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the last four decades. I want my Democrat friends to think about that. Now, I am not an expert on foreign policy, but it seems the goal in the Ukrainian-Russian war should be to end hostilities. On the internet, you can find numbers from 2,000 to 20,000 civilians that have died so far. Of course, it appears as though tens of thousands of military personnel have passed away as well. Every day, the number of Ukrainian and military deaths continues to go up. I will point out that Ukraine has the second-lowest birth rate of the 100 largest countries in the world, and Russia also has a low birth rate. When I happened to be in San Diego about a year ago, in that sector at that time--just that sector and that time--the second most common nationality to enter the United States was Russian. In other words, both Russia and Ukraine should be desperate to hold onto the young people that they have. We have helped Ukraine, and fortunately Ukraine has staved off this inexcusable aggression. Every day that there are good reports from Ukraine, we should be glad for the successes that Ukraine has had. However, obviously, a goal should be to end this war, and we should be working towards the end of the war to save the lives and to save the economic devastation that we will leave behind in Ukraine. President Biden and Defense Secretary Austin should stop and think whether their statements are more or less likely to bring Russia to the negotiating table. I encourage my Democrat friends to give a little bit of guidance to this administration as to how to end this war.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I would like to report on what I did during my time off. I spent time at the Mexican border, both in San Diego and Yuma, and received a further shock, if that is possible, on what I think is the most important story facing America today. Indeed, every reporter or every major news organization ought to have somebody making daily reports on the border. Two weeks ago tonight, in Yuma, I saw two groups--about 80 people-- crossing the border. So you understand, those people were from Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Cuba, Bangladesh, India, and Uzbekistan. In other words, the whole world is coming here. Because of the huge amount of paperwork, the average Border Patrol agent reports to work, and unlike immediately guarding the border, like they should, 70 percent of them are doing paperwork. At the end of their shift, 90 percent are doing paperwork. For that reason, it is not surprising the confiscation of drugs is going down--not because there are less drugs coming into our country and killing 100,000 people a year. The reason so few drugs are being confiscated is we have a shortage of Border Patrol agents and they have got to spend all their time doing paperwork. Madam Speaker, I beg the rest of my colleagues to go to the border and learn about this.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good) for the purpose of a colloquy.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Fleischmann).

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I would now like to address several issues today and maybe give it a little bit of a different spin or a little bit of different observations than people are getting from some of the other congressmen. I was glad today to vote to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and, hopefully, reduce the number of oil imports we are getting from that country. Every day, you cannot help but be touched by the reports from Ukraine and what is happening to the civilians there. Nevertheless, I am a little bit concerned about the public statements coming out of Washington. I believe we should all be working to end this war and wind up with a free Ukraine. Nevertheless, to end this war, we will eventually have to get to the bargaining table, and I am afraid that statements being made by both sides will make it more difficult to reach an end result. The sooner the war ends, the more lives of Ukrainian troops will be saved, the more lives of Ukrainian civilians will be saved, and, quite frankly, the more lives of Russian troops will be saved. To negotiate a final deal, both sides must realize and respect that deal, and both sides must feel that they came out of the negotiation with something. I sure hope we are not in the current position we are right now 3 or 4 months from now. I would encourage all of my colleagues, and also the President of the United States, when they make public statements, to ask themselves: Are we getting closer to ending this war by my statements, or are we not getting closer to ending this war? I suppose politicians always think about politics. But I sometimes think statements are made for political effect rather than reaching the serious goal of ending this conflict. I would also like to follow up on what is going on on the border and the danger that we may soon end title 42. I think for the future of the United States, the most important thing going on--what is going on in Ukraine is important. The most important thing is what goes on at the border. We all know that around the time President Biden took office, about 20,000 people a month, and sometimes well under 20,000 people a month, were crossing the border, for a variety of reasons. The major one is, I think the current administration isn't really thrilled about enforcing our laws. We have gone from having under 20,000 to 80,000 or 100,000 people a month cross our southern border, people who are not vetted, people who we, in many cases, would not want here under any circumstances. There is a danger that in May, that 80,000 to 100,000 figure is going to jump to 400,000 or 500,000 people a month. People are not being vetted, and people are coming from all around the globe. I will be there next week. When you get down there and you talk to the Border Patrol, you will find people not only coming from Mexico but more people from Central America, people from the Caribbean, people from South America, people from sub-Saharan Africa, people from eastern Europe, people from countries that are currently hostile to us are being waved through after they get a minimal amount of paperwork. We do not need to increase that to 300,000 or 400,000 or 500,000 people a month. The last time I was down there, I noticed that there were a lot of photo IDs of people from Central America and South America being thrown away before they checked in. What does that tell you? It means people don't want us to know about their past. They are running away from their past as they enter our country. I remember the statement of John Adams: ``Our Constitution is only fit for a moral and religious people.'' We have to make sure we are getting a moral group of people crossing our southern border, not to mention we have to make sure we are getting people who respect our laws. We, right now, swear in over 800,000 people from around the world every year. That is fine. They are appropriately vetted. I encourage all citizens to watch as people come here legally and are sworn in. Our economy cannot accept another 400,000, and we know a given number of these people, perhaps, have a criminal background and are not going to help our country. Not to mention, no country as successful as ours, can accept an unlimited number of people. We are not prepared for them. They have not been adequately trained in the way of the American ideals, the importance of our Constitution, why we have our Constitution. Furthermore, having been down there, the more people you let in, the more it strengthens the Mexican drug gangs, and those gangs make $3,000 or $5,000 or $9,000 or $20,000 per person who comes across here. We are strengthening their power. We are making them wealthy. Why would we want to expand the current fiasco south of the border? Last time I was down there, the Border Patrol told me about fights between Mexican and Chinese gangs on our side of the border. How do these people from these gangs get here? They cross the border illegally. Is it helpful for the United States to have open warfare between Chinese and Mexican gangs? That is what we are getting more and more. Our poor, underappreciated Border Patrol, more shots directly at them. And what does the administration do? Rather than strengthen the border, we propose legislation giving them free college, college that American citizens have to go $30,000 or $40,000 or $50,000 in debt to get. Rather than hire more Border Patrol to enforce the border, we hire more people to investigate the Border Patrol. I am not sure what psychological problem we have going on here. It is the same psychological problem that looks at, say, a city like Milwaukee that is approaching 200 homicides a year, and saying we have to investigate the police, or we have to make it easier to sue the police. That same mindset at the southern border says we have 100,000 people here who shouldn't come here every month? I know what we will do, we will hire more people to investigate the Border Patrol and make sure they are not doing anything wrong. They think the Border Patrol are the bad people. Another problem, and I don't know whether this has occurred to President Biden's advisers, I don't know whether you wanted a war in Ukraine, but I don't believe that war would have started if we wouldn't have had an open borders policy. What do you think countries like Iran or China, or Russia make of us having an open border and not enforcing our border laws? Normal countries don't do that. They think it is because we have such a weak President who will never do anything. It invites trouble. I have felt for a year-and-a-half or 2 years that the open borders policy was inviting mischief; and that is what we have now, mischief that I don't believe would have happened had we tried to enforce our border laws. Please, Mr. President, keep title 42. Fire the Vice President from her position as border czar. That is another problem we have. As mentioned, next week I will go and tour part of the border in San Diego and Yuma. I have been in many other parts in the past. But I go down there to learn more directly from the Border Patrol. As is common from all agencies, you learn a lot more from the people doing the work than the bureaucrats at the top, and I look forward to coming back and reporting whatever grim statistics I gather from talking about the Border Patrol and their suggestions to save our country. I hope all Americans listening and paying attention are contacting their Representatives and Senators about what is going on on the border. I personally believe one of the reasons that President Biden is threatening to remove title 42 is because the news is dominated with what is going on in Ukraine, and now is the time you could get away with really opening the floodgates. But if we are going to save our country, we have to enforce the borders like we would in any normal country. By the way, an excuse for removing title 42 is saying that they feel that COVID is no longer a threat. If you look, over 500 people a day on most days are dying of COVID. It is still a problem. Right now, or at least the last time I was down there, they didn't even feel they had the legal ability to test people as to whether or not they had COVID. As long as that situation is out there, I beg you to keep title 42 in place. It is bad enough having 80,000 to 100,000 people crossing here every month who we have not vetted. The next crisis that I would like to address today is an ongoing crisis. It has been a problem in this country for 50 years, but I think things keep getting worse. And that is the decline in which Black Lives Matter would refer to as the Western traditional family. Again and again, bills are introduced around here to provide benefits, and the traditional nuclear family is left out of those benefits; be it an increase in the earned income tax credit or flooding more money into low-income housing, increases in food share, increases in Pell grants, increases in childcare. All of these programs an average married couple are not eligible for because in the traditional family, usually at least one parent and sometimes two are working. In order to be eligible for these programs, you have to put yourself in a position in which you are considered in poverty, and if you are in poverty, you are eligible for governmental assistance. I had a woman in my district who had two children who were both $30,000, $40,000 in debt from going to college complain why did her sister's kids get free college while her own kids are stuck paying off their debt? She was proud of her children; she was proud they were current on their student loans, but it didn't seem right to her that her niece, who was raised in a nontraditional family, or what Black Lives Matter would consider a traditional family, her niece got free college paid for by the government, whereas her kids had to work to pay off the student loans. I hope in the future, as we dole more money out of this place, we stop discriminating against and showing hatred for the traditional family. I will point out, that I think over time more and more Americans are catching on to the idea that materially they can get benefits that they wouldn't get if they didn't get married. I will point out some statistics on SNAP benefits. Between 1996 and 2016, a 20-year gap--and these are both years in which the economy is doing well, so I am comparing apples to apples--the number of people on SNAP jumped up from about 25,000 to 44,000. Taking those two years, about a 50 to 60 percent increase in the number of people on SNAP. Now, we have to make sure people can eat. I realize all people can go through a tough time in their lives, where there are some people who may have mental problems or such, that makes it very difficult to hold a job, but when you have a 50 to 60 percent increase in 20 years on the number of people who have arranged their life that they are eligible for SNAP, people better wake up because we are destroying the traditional family in America. I hope in the future the majority party, as they put together more budgets, or if the Republicans ever get the majority, when they get the majority, that they would begin to look at this problem. It is not a new problem that gets press like a surge at the border will get press or a disaster in Kyiv will get press, but it is an ongoing problem as we eat away at the traditional nuclear family of this country, and it is being eaten away by the programs that are passed by this Congress. I hope if the Republicans take control, even though it is not a sexy issue because it is an ongoing issue, I hope they do something about this hatred or discrimination against the traditional family. Now, I will make one more point, I make it as much as I can, before I leave this podium today. One more time I am going to talk about vitamin D. In part I am going to talk about it because there was an expert in vitamin D who I ran into last night from Maryland who, again, brought up that he felt he had a cocktail which was about 100 percent successful in curing people from COVID if they get it. If any of the Speaker's office is paying attention, I would be happy to give them the name of this individual. Maybe it is something that should be given to the Speaker. But the new cocktail, in part, is based on substantial amounts of vitamin D. A week and a half ago I talked to Dr. Dror of Israel who commented on the importance of being vitamin D sufficient. In his Israeli study, with a small number of people, he found that people who were vitamin D deficient were 11 times as likely to die of COVID if they were hospitalized as people who were not vitamin D deficient. He was using a very low threshold, 20 nanograms per milliliter. Eleven times more likely to die if you were vitamin D deficient. I don't know what is wrong with our Department of Health and Human Services on this. I talked to Secretary Becerra. It is something that the American public should have been educated on 18 months ago. I personally have known nine people who have died of COVID. I always wonder how many of those would still be alive today if they had done half as much to push vitamin D as they did with all the other advertising, pushing masks, pushing social distancing, what have you. But with 500 people dying a day, it is still something that should be publicized. I have written a letter to Secretary Becerra; and 14 times less likely to wind up with serious COVID once hospitalized. Among people hospitalized, of the people who didn't have enough vitamin D-- under 20 nanograms--25 percent died. If they had over 20 nanograms, 2.3 percent died who wound up hospitalized in Israel. Kind of dramatic numbers. News you can use. Those are some of the comments or issues of the day that I think the press should be paying attention to. I thank the indulgence of staff for giving us the hour. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy).

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, our country is obviously in bad shape, and I think our forefathers, if they saw the way we operated today, would be quite stunned and wonder where in their Constitution they let us down to wind up where we are today. I think of the three branches of government. The judiciary is the one which right now has let down the Framers the most. Our forefathers realized that a country with elections usually eventually fails because the majority can either want, or be manipulated into wanting, more stuff, or ordering other people around to order them to be obeyed the way they would like other people to be behaved. The Bill of Rights is almost exclusively about restricting the role of government in American life. Obviously, the Supreme Court has largely abandoned that function. Things got bad in the 1930s and 1940s, and again in the 1960s. Today, one wonders what the Court will ever say no to. Where will Judge Jackson fit as we try to defend our Constitution? We look at her inability to say what a woman is and her inability to talk about judicial philosophy, and we know where she will stand. She stands with woke America. I hate that word, but that is what it is. It is somebody who has no respect for tradition. If you have no respect for tradition or common sense, you certainly don't have that near reverence, which should be a requirement for any Supreme Court Justice. Furthermore, President Biden got himself in a position in which he said he is going to have to promote a Black woman to that position. The very idea that you think decisions on a court should vary with the background of the person who is on that court shows you don't have that respect for the Constitution. All Americans should have an originalist view of the Constitution and consider it the great, almost God-given, document that it is. In any event, when you don't have that respect for the Constitution, you know you are not going to respect the Second Amendment. You are not going to respect the 10th Amendment; it is a disaster we have ignored it. You are going to continue to stretch the Commerce Clause all out of whack. You are going to look at every individual as a member of a group, never as an individual in their own right. Right now, about 2 percent of the lawyers in the country are Black women. So, what Joe Biden did is he took 98 percent of the possible resumes for this very important job and threw them in the garbage. I wonder if President Biden does that anywhere else in his life? Does he throw away 98 percent of the resumes or potential resumes when he is looking for a new dentist, a new plumber, a new clergyman, throw out 98 percent willy-nilly? That is what he has done in picking a new Supreme Court Justice who could well be on the Court for the next 40 years. Our forefathers felt that by giving us this Constitution--they pointed out that this Constitution is fit for moral and religious people and not fit for anyone else. Will Judge Jackson respect that? I don't know. When they finished the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin said: We are giving you a republic, if you can keep it. We are, right now, being tested whether we are the moral and religious people that can keep the republic that the forefathers felt they described in the Constitution. It looks to me, from everything you hear about her, that Judge Jackson is not going to have that reverence to keep that Constitution, to keep that republic. We will, therefore, with judges like that, wind up collapsing.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to call up H.R. 471, the PAUSE Act, to protect all Americans from Biden's border crisis.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to educate my colleagues and the public one more time as to what sort of disaster we are soon to have on the southern border. Recently, we have had frequently 90,000 to 100,000 people cross the border every month. People of whom we know little. People are skipping to the head of the line over people who want to come here legally, people that come from countries that are hostile to us. But as bad as it is to have 80,000 to 100,000 people come across, the Biden administration is claiming that within the next month and a half they will remove title 42, opening up the border to perhaps another 200,000 or 300,000 or 400,000 people a month above what we are already getting here. I personally think they are doing this because the Ukraine war is going on, and they think they can really land a death blow to the future of this country by opening up the border to people all over the world. I call upon American citizens and my colleagues to not forget about what is going on at the border. I call upon the press to treat this story with the gravity it should be given and to report on all the people who are going to come here in the second half of May. We cannot have 400,000 people a month coming across the border.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, America has to realize we are on the precipice of making one of the most significant precedential determinations in recent memory, and that is the removal of Title 42 affecting American immigration law. Already we are allowing--depending on the month--between 80,000 and 100,000 people to cross our border who are not appropriately vetted. However, due to a title put in effect by President Trump, we are keeping another perhaps 400,000 people a month--we are told 18,000 a day--south of the border out of concern that they will bring the virus in this country. If this title is removed, we will go--according to current estimates--to 18,000 people a day: a half a million people a month coming in this country. That is an intolerable amount. They are people we cannot support. They are people who have not been appropriately vetted. And, obviously, there will be a massive increase in illegal drugs crossing our southern border. I beg the American public to wake up and do what you can to make it clear to everybody in this body that we do not need a massive increase over the already intolerable 80,000 to 90,000 people who are coming here every month unvetted.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I hereby remove my name as cosponsor of H.R. 3807.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I have to make a plane, so I won't be here for the whole 30 minutes. It will be probably more like 15 minutes. Before addressing the issues I wanted to talk about today, I want to one more time talk a little bit about vitamin D, because earlier today I talked to Dr. Amiez Dror from Israel about a study that he conducted. The study is absolutely amazing. In Israel about 45 percent of the population is vitamin D deficient, and that is really deficient. By deficient, they mean less than 20 nanograms per milliliter. About 75 percent of the Israeli population has vitamin D less than 30 milligrams per nanoliter. In any event, it wasn't a huge study, but he looked to see how people who had adequate levels of vitamin D performed once they came into the medical system compared to people who were under that 20 nanograms. He found people who were vitamin D deficient, which is almost half the Israeli population, were 14 times more likely to have severe or critical COVID than the people who were above 20 nanograms per milliliter. As far as people who died, 25 percent of the people who were hospitalized and were vitamin D deficient died compared to only 2.3 percent of those who had adequate vitamin D. Think about that. You are 11 times more likely to die, Madam Speaker, if you are vitamin D deficient. When he looked at adequate prelevel hospitalization for vitamin D, it was a better predictor of how you would turn out than having COPD, having diabetes, or having congestive heart failure. Unbelievable what a great predictor it was. Nevertheless, continued our kind of asleep public health establishment has still not talked about this like they could have. We recently went over 1 million deaths in the United States attributed to COVID, but we can't talk about the fact that--and he is not the only doctor who feels that way--you could have cut that number in half or maybe well time more than half, if out of the chute well before we had such things as vaccines, we knew about vitamin D being good for people back in April or May of 2020. If they had spent some of these advertising dollars they spent on other things en masse or whatever, they could have, I believe, saved half the lives. I right now personally know nine people who have died of COVID, and I can't help but think how many of these people or which of those people would have survived if they had publicized the importance of taking vitamin D. Now, of course, I also asked the doctor how much vitamin D you should take. He felt for people in good shape it would be 2,000 to 3,000 international units. If you are overweight, because the fat cells absorb the vitamin D, you should take more, maybe 4,000 or more international units. He points out that even if you are in the sun, one of the things that creates so many people in Israel to be vitamin D deficient is--as the United States--so many people take sunscreen. It is important to protect yourself from skin cancer, but you have to remember, if you are one of these people who put sunscreen all over yourself, even in a sunny climate, you are not going to get adequate vitamin D levels. He is a very important doctor. He has a Ph.D. in genetics. He is also a medical doctor. He also has degrees in molecular biology. So you are talking about a real sharp guy here. If we had an on-the-ball press corps paying attention today, they should give him a call in Israel. He loves to talk to people about this, and you could get something that is very important in your local newspapers. If anybody connected to the public health establishment is hearing this speech, they should give my office a call. We will give them the contact information. It would have been better if this sort of stuff were out there 2 years ago, but the COVID infection rate goes up and down. We are on a downswing right now, though we are not as low as we were last July. Vitamin D helps prevent other diseases as well. I realize a lot of the medical establishment in the United States does not like to focus on things in which people don't make a lot of money. But for people who want to save lives, there is still time to get the story of vitamin D out there. I certainly think every major and minor newspaper in the United States should be covering it. He happened to mention that he got something in the New York Post, but it should be in more than just the New York Post. Right now, we have our President, who I watched a little bit yesterday, focusing on Transgender Day, saying how important it is we talk about transgenders to first and second graders. I can't believe that is where we are as a country. That is what President Biden felt was important to talk about. I am going to talk about some other issues, some suggestions that President Biden might want to adapt to something he could talk about a little bit more. I continue to believe the border is the biggest crisis America faces today. In February, we let about 72,000 people, including got-aways, into the country. ICE also releases people into the interior. Right now, the administration does not release those numbers, so we will say 70,000 on the low side. That was this past February. Two years ago, well under 20,000 were being let in, in February. We are in a situation right now where about four times as many people per month are coming into the country. I will point out, we are not always getting the best. The last time I was down there, I walked down a path that the people coming here illegally walked down. It was littered with photo IDs being thrown away from Chile, Brazil, Colombia, wherever. But we are about to have the situation become much, much worse. We are about to get rid of what we refer to as title 42. That means that people who are coming here will no longer be held up because of the COVID threat. There is a concern that the number of people coming here will be about 18,000 a day being let in, or 500,000 a month. I think we have the biggest crisis in this country, allowing 70,000 people who are unvetted come into this country. We are about to go from 70,000 to half a million a month, and our President is focusing on: Are we doing enough to educate second graders about transgenders? I would hope the press corps would drill him on these questions again and again: Who is going to pay for these people? How is it fair for the people who are trying to come into this country appropriately? What are you going to do about people who are coming here who perhaps are breaking the law? I haven't touched on the fact that while we are focusing right now on people coming into the country, we are now having a fraction as many people being deported as we were before. That is another problem that we have to address. In any event, I hope the press zeros in, when they have a chance to talk to President Biden, on what he is going to do since his own administration is estimating 18,000 people a day are going to come here. Other things he is doing to encourage people to come here: We know, in the Build Back Better bill he was promoting, he was trying to get people who come here illegally to get free college. We know, as a practical matter, when you come here, if you are sick, we take you to the hospital. You will get free healthcare. I think probably virtually every State in the country--certainly, in Wisconsin--if you are ill and show up at the emergency room, they will treat you. So, you are getting free healthcare, perhaps free college. It is just a disaster. It is the end of America. They talk right now about this happening the second half of May. America has to look out. Like I said, we are heading toward the point where we could have as many as half a million people a month coming here--the end of America. The other crisis that we should be looking at--not quite as important as the border but close--is the amount of inflation. We had President Biden show us his new budget. In that new budget, we are talking about a 12 percent increase in nondiscretionary spending. It is not rocket science as to where this inflation is coming from. When you spend money excessively, and the Federal Reserve has to print money, you are going to get inflation. I had naively hoped, at the beginning of the year, after the huge, excessive spending the last 2 years, that Republicans and Democrats would get together and hold discretionary spending to even. Of course, mandatory spending is going to go up anyway as the population ages-- more money spent on Medicare, more money spent on Social Security. But, no, I didn't get my wish of zero percent increase. A 12 percent increase in nondefense discretionary, what does that mean? It means we are going to continue to have the Fed print more and more money. We have a graph here to look at. It shows the year-over-year increase in M2, one measure of the amount of money in the system, which directly leads to inflation. Looking at the 1970s--and I was alive in the 1970s--there might have been a 7 percent increase, year over year, in the size of the monetary supply. Look where we are right now. We are just short of a 40 percent increase. Look at where we are now compared to the 1970s and how difficult it was to get that inflation out of the system in the late 1970s and particularly the early 1980s. It really did take a real economic downturn to make the dollar have any value again. That is what it took in the 1980s, if you remember that downturn, that recession. Can you imagine how difficult it is going to be to give the dollar adequate value again? Not only that, as I look in that budget, it is a divisive budget. One more time, we have program after program aimed at certain groups, not all Americans across the board, as our forefathers would want. When I go back home, I talk to a restauranteur. He has a little restaurant. He has his chin up. He doesn't want to be publicized. He felt, during the COVID stuff, he was denied a $30,000 grant because of his race. He is a White guy. This is the type of thing that page after page after page of this proposed budget throws out. Again, we have to focus on some people rather than other people, which is one of the reasons why I do feel, in addition to his incompetence at the border, in addition to his incompetence with regard to inflation, in addition to the fact that I think he has done a bad job on COVID, as illustrated by the fact that he has been there well over a year and still they haven't adequately publicized vitamin D--President Trump should have been doing that as well, quite frankly. Despite all of these other problems, he for sure has become a divisive President, trying to lower the opinion of the police by saying that they are racist. In any event, these are the things that we should be focusing on right now. I must leave in a second due to a flight, but I will make one more comment on Ukraine. It is my belief, talking to other Congressmen in this Chamber, as well as talking to people in the Biden administration, that they are not adequately preparing for the end of the Ukraine war. The longer the war goes on, the more people die, the more both the Ukrainian and Russian economies are shattered. If you look at all the bombs going off in Ukraine, you can imagine how long it is going to take to rebuild that country. Therefore, it should be obvious that, like any war, eventually, an armistice is going to be signed, and an agreement is going to be met. I don't think enough exercise, enough time, is being put into bringing both sides to the table and working toward an agreement. As soon as an agreement is reached, it will benefit both of these countries as well as the rest of the world. I strongly encourage the Biden administration to see what they can do. I appreciate what France has done, and I appreciate what Israel has done, trying to broker a deal. There was a time when the United States was the world leader--I still like to think we are the world leader--in which we would get involved in brokering a deal, certainly brokering a deal before this whole war gets so out of line that it begins to affect the rest of the world as easily as it could if it would become a world war. Like I said, every day that goes by, the more people die, the more equipment that is destroyed, it increases the chance that things will get out of line. So, I beg the Biden administration to exert a little bit of leadership toward trying to get this war to end. We all wish the Ukrainians are doing well, but ultimately, an agreement will have to be signed. I am all for helping Ukrainians. I have certainly voted for billions of dollars which will be used by that country. But I am sure the people there will be happy when the war is over. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, it is a good-sounding bill. Everyone knows drug costs in general are too high, and insulin costs in particular are way too high. But it is a bill with a simple answer. We look at a problem and solve the problem by having the Federal Reserve eventually print more money, $15.5 billion over 10 years. I realize you feel you have a pay-for here, but it is just by delaying another program by another year. And as a practical matter, this bill spends $15.5 billion more over 10 years than we would without the bill. We are already told this source of funds--we already used this type or source of funds in the infrastructure bill. It is just grabbing another year. Why don't we just require PBMs to pass on their rebates to the patients as intended? That is something that would cost the Federal Government, in my mind, no new money. It would be a significant reduction in cost for the individual. I appreciate that so many people on the majority side of the aisle would like to work together with us, and it shouldn't be difficult to find a solution to this problem that is fair to all concerned.

Mr. GROTHMAN

Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I rise to hope for peace in Ukraine. Estimates vary, but perhaps over 20,000 people have died in this war already. Recently, both President Biden and Senator Graham have weighed in on what they feel should happen to Vladimir Putin. Obviously, their language could delay the end of the war and heighten tensions at the peace talks. Have they cleared their comments with the Ukrainian people, who lose more people every day the war goes on? Both President Biden and Senator Graham got press from these remarks, and some politicians just care about that. I encourage all Senators and the President of the United States to remember that they are in the big leagues now, and their careless remarks to get a little bit more press can cost Ukrainian and Russian lives.

Mr. GROTHMAN

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. Issues at the Southern Border