[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 148 (Wednesday, September 13, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H4289-H4292]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            TRUTH WITH MATH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, as a courtesy and also the fact that the 
gentleman did a kindness to me a while back--so what goes around comes 
around--I am going to give Mr. Hoyer a couple more minutes to finish 
his speech.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for that, and 
I am glad a good deed is returned. I will return it again.
  Would the gentleman yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. 
Kelly) so she may finish her comments?
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois 
(Ms. Kelly) so that she may complete her comments.
  Ms. KELLY of Illinois. Gun violence does not need to occur inside a 
school to harm our children. The stress from living in a community 
impacted by gun violence has been proven to lower test scores and 
increase mental health conditions like anxiety and PTSD.
  Just last week, I was in a place called Danville in the central 
Illinois part of my district with 25 young people. The stories I heard 
were devastating. One young man talked about how two brothers and his 
father were killed because of gun violence.
  Just last week alone, there were 42 shootings in Chicago--a 15-year-
old was shot in a park, a 14-year-old was shot while he was riding in a 
car, and an 8-year-old--think about that, 8 years old--was shot just 
walking on a sidewalk.
  I am so happy that Congress has begun to make progress to combat this 
public health crisis. We got the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act done, 
the first time in 30 years that Congress took meaningful action on gun 
violence.
  On August 31, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the ATF to 
comply with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act's licensing 
requirements for gun sellers. We have made progress, but there is so 
much more to do.
  Democrats are prepared to take these next steps. The American people, 
young people, are asking us to deliver. We put people over politics 
when we passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. We can and must do 
more. We cannot afford to wait.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland 
(Mr. Hoyer).
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) for his courtesy.

                              {time}  1930

  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Hoyer has been kind to me. There was 
a while back when we were beating each other up on the floor, I think 
he gave me more time to finish. Sometimes you remember those things.
  Mr. Speaker, I am well caffeinated, and I am angry, so let's actually 
have some fun on the truth with math. I am terrified what is going on 
around here because we are making crap up. So let's actually do math.

[[Page H4290]]

  Mr. Speaker, this is what we were borrowing per second over the last 
12 months. Every single second we were borrowing $72,932. Every second 
we borrow 72,000, and 20,000 of it is just interest, and it gets 
dramatically worse between now and the rest of the decade.
  There is a punch line here I need you to understand. How many times 
have you listened to Members walk behind these microphones and do this: 
Well, I don't get to vote on mandatory spending, I only vote on 
discretionary. Seriously, you have been here how long, Mr. Speaker? It 
is our mantra. Well, I vote on defense and nondefense discretionary, 
and that is like 30 percent of the budget. It is actually closer to 27.
  Well, guess what? Every dime we as Members of Congress now vote on is 
borrowed. It is all borrowed money. Look, I threw together this chart--
thank you to the staff--but in the current budget year the 
appropriation was about $1.8 trillion, 1.8, 1.3, and in the July update 
we have spent about $1.7 trillion on discretionary. This is not 
Medicare. This is not Social Security. That is this orange part here. 
We have functionally in the last 12 months we have borrowed $2.3 
trillion.
  Does anyone see the math problem?
  The 2023 discretionary spending budget was going to be 1 trillion, 
831 billion, and we are going to borrow, when this fiscal year is 
over--my math is encroaching in on $2.2 trillion, so my staff thinks it 
is going to be 2.1. You know, what is $100 billion between friends?
  I need you to process what I am saying. If anyone out there is 
listening, if there is any staffer sitting in your office watching the 
television, understand everything your Member of Congress votes on, 
everything is borrowed money.
  Tell me, do you remember, it was a year--actually, let's go back 
where I can say something personal. In February, March I came behind 
this very microphone and I predicted saying, do you know I think we are 
actually heading towards borrowing $1.8 trillion, and I got mocked. I 
have to apologize, I was wrong. It wasn't $1.8 trillion. We are heading 
towards 2.1, 2.2. It is much worse.
  You just heard the left talking about how wonderful everything is. 
Explain to me how in May last year, a year ago, May 2022, we thought 
the budget deficit for this year would be about mid-800s, 860, $870 
billion, and now we are heading toward 2.2. What happened?
  Medicare costs went up dramatically. Tax receipts have fallen. You 
heard about how wonderful this economy is. Isn't it neat? We are doing 
all these subsidized projects. The government is handing out money to 
anyone who wants to build a factory. Yay, a socialized, nationalized 
economy. We functionally soft nationalized the chip industry. Isn't it 
wonderful? Think of what is going on. Yet the tax revenues have fallen 
actually fairly dramatically. Brilliant economics once again from what 
the left did last year.
  Then the third thing no one seems to want to fixate on, that 
Inflation Reduction Act that they passed, you know, that they were 
celebrating here, if you even read what the leftwing economists say in 
their journals, okay, about half of inflation was supply chain stress, 
and yes, half of it was the excessive spending.
  Okay. So the people in my community, unless you have had a 20 percent 
pay hike, if you live in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area, you are poorer 
today. You are poorer today than you were 24 months ago. Will the left 
take responsibility for that? Will they take responsibility for 50 
percent of it?
  This is the insanity, and the wheels are coming off, and no one else 
seems willing to come behind these microphones and tell the truth about 
what is happening.
  Every dime we vote on--because remember Social Security, veterans 
benefits, and those things are on autopilot. They are mandatory. They 
are earned benefits. They are a formula. No one here votes on them. It 
is borrowed money. So the old days when you heard Republicans come 
behind the microphone saying, well, if we would just get rid of waste 
and fraud, if we would just get rid of foreign aid we will be fine. 
Foreign aid is about 12 days of borrowing, and I will show you a number 
of things where Democrats, the left, makes crap up.
  The dollar amounts--well, if we would just tax rich people more, if 
we would just get rid of the threshold on Social Security. I am going 
to show you it gets nowhere near the types of moneys they misrepresent 
to you. We won't use the word ``lie'' tonight. I am going to try to do 
my best.
  All right. We are just going to run through a number of these because 
I gave away a little time, and I only have a half an hour tonight--
actually, I probably only have 20 minutes left--trying to start to 
demonstrate how fragile we are.
  There was a bond auction about 4 hours ago, 5 hours ago of 30-year 
paper here, and it all sold at the very top of the market, basically 
meaning if you thought interest rates were going down tomorrow, they 
are not. You are starting to see actually how fragile we are. We are 
starting to look at numbers within 10 years. Our interest rate 
calculations on what we are going to pay on the debt are absolutely 
wrong. They are absolutely wrong.
  We are now starting to see math saying, we may be missing in--9 
budget years from now total interest was predicted to be as high as 1.4 
trillion, just the interest. I need you now to add another $315 billion 
to it, and that difference is just the marginal interest rate increases 
we have had over the last several weeks.
  When you are borrowing $26 trillion from the public--when you hear 
the 32, $33 trillion, a bunch of that is money that we actually borrow 
from the trust funds, which are also running out of money. So why this 
is important: This big red hump here, that is defense spending for 
2024. It is like $820, $830 billion. This one here is interest, just 
interest, we are going pay in 2024.

  My math says, there is a very high likelihood that the interest this 
government pays in the next fiscal year will be equal to every dime we 
spend in defense. Interest will equal the defense budget. So next time 
you are talking to a leftist who says, if you would just cut defense 
spending--interest now is equaling defense, and that is next year. That 
is the budget we are working on right now.
  Understand how much trouble we are in. I am going to go through some 
of these fast because there is not a lot of time, but this one is 
really important. Almost no one here understands or talks about it. It 
is not the $2 trillion we are going to issue as new debt next year; it 
is functionally the almost $10 trillion that comes to market next year. 
We have about $7.6 trillion that gets refinanced. Those are bonds from 
years ago that were at remarkably low interest rates. They are coming 
due.
  We are going to bring almost $10 trillion to market of U.S. sovereign 
debt next year.
  What happens when we bring that debt at these new higher interest 
rates? Anyone here paying attention?
  We have gone off the rails. Well, we don't care. That is math. We 
don't do math here. This is a math-free zone.
  Pay attention to this. This will be a story as we move through next 
year when you bring $10 trillion to market, and you have got to 
convince investors to buy this debt and that they won't get a better 
rate of return if they go buy a high-quality corporate paper over here 
or they should roll over their debt and buy U.S. sovereign and at the 
same time we are going to be issuing a couple trillion also as 
additional virgin debt.
  This is where we are at.
  You start to look at--we were doing this calculation a couple months 
ago, that just by raising the interest by a single point, which we have 
more than exceeded, you start to look out a few years, and by the 10-
year window you might be having a $3.7 trillion a year shortfall, a 
deficit of $3.7 trillion and it is mostly that growth. This is not 
calculating in the new higher medical costs. This is just basically 
interest fragility.
  This board is important to my Democratic brothers and sisters who 
basically--the comment I always get is, well, if we just would tax rich 
people more. Please, buy a calculator. Read some of the documents that 
your own leftist economists produce because if we would confiscate--I 
had a lot of caffeine today--next year, if we would confiscate every 
dime--so you make $500,000. The next dollar you make we just take it; 
the government takes everything. So you make $500,000, give everything 
up. So the guy that makes a billion dollars next year, we take

[[Page H4291]]

every dime of it, that would bring in about a trillion and a half 
dollars. A lot of money.
  This number is already wrong. Before we were projecting a $1.7 
trillion shortfall budget deficit in 2024. Now we are thinking if this 
year is 2.2 what will next year be? But confiscate everything over 
$500,000--how often have you heard, if we just tax the rich we will be 
fine? That is an absolute fraud. Remember, the number one driver of 
debt here is not Democrats, it is not Republicans, it is demographics; 
the one thing we are not allowed to talk about.
  We are not allowed to tell the truth.
  We made promises and we have no cash to keep them. At some point here 
I am going to set myself on fire after soaking in kerosene. We are 
going to talk about Social Security and how ugly the basic math is.
  Oh, let's actually start that right now. Look, we have put together 
these slides just trying to demonstrate--on this side over here, these 
are the taxes you have paid over your lifetime, the average couple, the 
average couple. The one bar here I want you to get your head around is 
this orange bar, that is Medicare. Do you see that gap? These are the 
benefits you receive. That gap from here to here, that right there, 
that is 75 percent of all future debt. We are not supposed to talk 
about this because it gets people unelected. But the fact of the matter 
is unless we have a revolution in delivering the cost of healthcare, 
the 130--it may be dramatically more now; that number hasn't been 
updated in a while--of U.S. sovereign debt that we plan to issue over 
the next 30 years, 75 percent of it is Medicare, 25 percent if we cover 
the shortfall on Social Security.
  I am not going to make you go through that one.
  So let's actually have some fun with math. I had a sort of a group 
discussion. Most of the room were people on the left, but they were 
very polite. Every other person claimed to have a Ph.D., and we got to 
the discussion saying, hey, the actuary reports the CBO basically 
saying 9 years from now the Social Security trust fund is empty. It is 
empty. So that first year, 2033, $616 billion is the shortfall. If you 
are an average couple in America, that is a $17,200 cut to your Social 
Security check. We will double senior poverty. How many people have you 
seen come to this microphone and say, I give a damn about seniors; I 
don't want to double senior poverty? Have you seen the stories of how 
many baby boomers are starting to live on the streets in America? The 
projections--this is an article today, and I think this was actually--
God, I am not even sure where this was published--actually, it may have 
been The Wall Street Journal today. Read the article. Understand what 
is happening. The fragility. Then we are going to tell these people we 
are taking 25 percent of their Social Security check from them? It is 9 
years from now.

  But the problem is that first year we are short--let's just do 1 year 
of math--in 2033, that is $616 billion.
  Let's do the Democrats' suggestion. We are going to tax people over 
$400,000. Tax everyone over 400,000, so there is a stone hold. You pay 
your Social Security, your FICA tax up to $160,200. Then you don't pay 
any, but once you hit 400,000, and everything up, you will pay the 12.4 
percent Social Security tax. Great. It is $80 billion. The shortfall is 
616, but the Democrats' solution is 80 billion.
  Does anyone see a math problem?
  So let's go on to the next one. Let's do Bernie Sanders' suggestion. 
Let's get rid of the capital. Every dime you earn you are going to pay 
12.4 percent. When you do the dynamic score on it that is about $158 
billion.
  Did I mention the first year shortfall is 616? $616 billion, removing 
the cap, tax everything, only produces $158 billion.

                              {time}  1945

  What is that? $437 billion shortfall. What would you like to do? 
Where would you like to get it? Our Democrat colleagues refuse to have 
the discussion, how we are going to save Social Security and not do the 
immoral thing and double senior poverty. They won't have the 
conversation, because the President stood right there and said you are 
not allowed to talk about Medicare and Social Security, and everyone 
applauded, because they are going to do attack mail and attack 
television ads because you talked about trying to do the moral thing 
and save this program.
  Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Arizona has 11 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, let's actually walk through what this 
means. You are right now expecting that 17,200 or 17,400--there is a 
little dispute--the cut you are getting as an average couple in America 
in 9 years. Yea. Okay. Let's actually do that thing where we are going 
to tax everyone over $400,000. That cut now becomes 13,482. Remember, 
that is just on the first year. If you completely remove the cap and 
just tax every dime, without the dynamic score of how much of the 
economy you slowed down, the cut that average couple on Social Security 
is going to get is going to be approaching $11,000 a year. That is the 
Democrats' moral solution. Does anyone here own a calculator?
  Then let's actually go a little bit further. The hard left here says: 
Well, let's do the oligarch tax. You say, huh? This is a tax that is 
unconstitutional, and it is I think in front of the Supreme Court this 
coming year, where the Democrats' solution is: We know we have been 
lying to the public. We are not going to tell them that, but we are 
going to offer another tax proposal where the Democrats want to tax 
unearned capital gains.
  You say, huh? What is that? Well, you are rich. You have a building. 
You have a business. You have an asset here. You haven't sold it, but 
there are capital gains there. Every year, the government is going to 
come in and ask for part of it. If you are really rich, they might want 
10 percent of it, but if you are only moderately rich, every year you 
might only have to pay 2 percent. It would be paying unrealized capital 
gains because that is where the real money is.
  The problem is the fantasy of going after that money--and this is 
without a dynamic score. How so how does it change behavior? Remember, 
taxes like this change behavior. We won't do the geeky economics. It 
produces about $137 billion. That first year, it would produce $137 
billion.
  Do you remember the previous board? Social Security has a $616 
billion shortfall in the first year, and the most radical tax proposal 
produces $137 billion. Am I getting the point across? Do you understand 
how difficult these numbers are?
  They said we are going to come and do feeder. Oh, we are building 
another factory that there are no workers for and there is no one who 
wants the product, but we subsidize it. In our office, our new nickname 
we call this is soft nationalization of industry, because the Democrats 
figured out the way to buy the love of big industry, big business, is 
hand them cash.
  As Republicans, we try to say let's fix the tax code so you have to 
compete with each other. You have got to go out there and engage in 
creative destruction and make these better, faster. Democrats say, make 
the same old crap you used to make, but we are going to give you the 
cash to do it. It is insane economics.
  This board is a little harder to read, but we were trying to figure 
out if the hard left's theory of we are going to have all of these 
taxes but we are going to sweep the assets of rich people, which is 
unconstitutional and we will find out next year if my nonlawyer legal 
opinion is true from the Supreme Court.
  The principle of this board is that the CBO has told us we are 
heading toward 115 to 120 percent of debt to GDP in sort of the 10-year 
window. With all of these new taxes of the Democrats, we are still 
about 111 percent of debt to GDP, and this is assuming every dime comes 
in. It is a fraud, and this is supposed to make you feel better. Oh, we 
have a tax proposal; just those nasty Republicans won't let us blow up 
the economy.
  I know this is hard to read, but why this is so difficult is, you see 
these gaps, these lines are basically to say--you see the gap? The tax 
proposals being proposed by the Democrats to save the Social Security 
trust fund get nowhere near it. As you go out further in time, the gap 
gets bigger and bigger.
  Part of the punch line here I need someone to process. That is in 9 
years.

[[Page H4292]]

In less time than that, the Medicare part A trust fund, which is about 
40 percent of all Medicare spending, is gone. The transportation trust 
fund is gone. We are hitting numbers. The $2.1 to $2.2 trillion we will 
borrow this year, we were not supposed to hit for a decade. We are 
borrowing now at rates that we were not supposed to see for years. This 
is the Democrats' economy. This is sort of nationalizing much of 
industry. The chips industry, now the green energy industry, we are 
handing out cash. Something happened. We are building all of these 
factories, but we are getting no tax receipts from it. Something has 
gone horribly, horribly wrong out there, instead of our brothers and 
sisters on the left and those of us on the right coming together and 
saying we have a moral obligation not to have baby boomers on the 
street as part of their retirement, not to double senior poverty.
  To my young kids--yes, I am an old dad. I have a 14-month-old and an 
8-year-old. Do they deserve to have a future? CBO math basically says 
in 20 years, if we wanted to maintain baseline services as they are 
today, we have to double taxes. That means my kids live in a world 
where they are dramatically poorer than how all the rest of us have 
lived.
  You want to know why the middle class is so cranky? Once again, back 
to something I said in the beginning. The middle class in this country 
is poorer today than they were 24 months ago. If you live in my 
community, if you haven't had over a 20 percent pay hike in the last 24 
months, you are poorer today than you were before. This is the 
morality?

  Let's have the most difficult discussion this place a capable of. 
What are we going to do? I have come behind this microphone dozens and 
dozens and dozens of times showing you that if we could actually have a 
revolution in the cost of healthcare--and I have brought the ways to do 
it. I have brought all sorts of charts to say, hey, did you realize 
diabetes is 33 percent of all healthcare spending? Could we have a 
revolution there? Are we really going to do the same old farm bill? Are 
we going to actually understand we have ways to help our brothers and 
sisters live healthier lives, come back into the labor force, have some 
economic growth, and stop watching America die? In the next decade, we 
will have more Americans dying than being born in this country. We are 
dying as a society, and we are financing it ourselves.
  The immorality of what we are doing, whether it be the debt or the 
way we are hiding from it, there is hope. There is a way it works. Is 
this place capable of actually thinking? Are we going to continue to do 
the petty, well, so and so hurt my feelings, so I am going to oppose 
this?
  I mean, I like this. I am not going to read this. This is 
uncomfortable. I can't go home and explain this to my chamber of 
commerce. Screw you. This is a moment of action, so I am going to give 
you an absolute radical proposal that I just want you to ruminate. I 
accept it has no chance of passing, and I will use this year's numbers.
  In the 2023 budget year, nondefense discretionary spending is--let's 
call it about $740 billion. About $326 billion of that is money that we 
are borrowing and sending to States, counties, cities, many of them for 
programs I absolutely love like justice grants and other things. I have 
always supported these, but we are borrowing money to send to entities 
that have their own taxing and borrowing authority. That is the 
definition of insanity.
  For those who come in here and say, I want to defend the 10th 
Amendment, I have got a great way for you to do it: Stop borrowing 
money over here to send to States so they have to come and lobby and 
grovel at your office every 6 weeks. It would be hard. The hallways up 
and down might be depopulated because they won't be lined up at our 
door begging for more cash.
  Is it rational for us to borrow hundreds and hundreds of billions of 
dollars over here and hand it to entities that have their own taxing 
authority?
  To my brothers and sisters on the left, this is the punch line. You 
bang on me saying, we just need to raise taxes. Great. You control most 
of these cities. Go raise the taxes and make it so we stop borrowing 
the money.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________