[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 62 (Thursday, April 11, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H2304-H2308]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FAKE MESSAGING
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ogles). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert)
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Virginia
(Mrs. Kiggans).
Supporting U.S.-Israel Relations
Mrs. KIGGANS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the
importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship. I urge Congress to support
our ally now more than ever, and stress the need to defeat Hamas and
all Iranian proxies.
Israel is a strong and resilient country. Born in the aftermath of
the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War, Israel's short
history is full of successes. Israel has become one of the world's
leading nations for innovation and technology. Its contributions to
fields like cybersecurity, healthcare, and agriculture benefit
Americans every day. Most importantly, Israel is and always will be our
closest ally in the Middle East.
I recently returned from a trip to Israel last week with several of
my House colleagues, where we saw with our own eyes the devastation of
the October 7 terror attacks. We visited the Nir Oz Kibbutz miles
outside of Gaza and also visited the site of the Nova music festival,
where hundreds of young people were murdered or kidnapped.
We heard from the parents of an Israeli-American hostage who has been
held captive by Hamas for 188 days. We saw burned homes with posters of
hostages on the outside. We saw children's toys scattered throughout
yards. We could almost feel and smell life there, the life that had
been, that was no longer.
Everything I saw and everything I learned verified the brutality of
Hamas' unprovoked attacks and reinforced the need to support our
longtime ally. The message we all walked away with was the same: Hamas
must be eliminated.
During our trip, we met with President Isaac Herzog and Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who shared with us the importance of
continuing a strategic partnership between our two nations.
The U.S.-Israel relationship is truly the embodiment of peace through
strength. By standing together, we demonstrate to our adversaries that
we will not be intimidated and that we will defend our shared values
and interests.
As malicious regimes like Iran continue their quest for nuclear
capabilities and ramp up their backing of radical terror organizations,
it is essential that America remain committed to ensuring a strong and
secure Israel. This starts with defending Israel's right to self-
defense. Israel did not start this war, but they have a right to defend
themselves from brutal terrorists.
Hamas' horrific October 7 attacks, as well as the more than 170
attacks against our own Armed Forces by Iranian proxies that have
occurred since, are concrete evidence that our enemies are emboldened.
Because of weak foreign policy choices made by this administration,
starting with the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, I worry that
[[Page H2305]]
our friends don't trust us as much, and our enemies certainly aren't
fearing us as much. We must make smarter choices on the world stage to
fight the evil that unfortunately exists in the global arena.
As a Navy veteran who deployed twice in the Persian Gulf, I know how
volatile this region is and understand that a key element of our own
national security is the strength and security of Israel, the only
democracy in the Middle East.
Now more than ever, the United States must stand with Israel to
ensure the safety of not only one of our closest allies, but also that
of America and all freedom-loving people across the globe.
I remain steadfast in my support for Israel and will do everything in
my power to provide the Israeli people with the military and security
assistance they need as they fight to defend their nation. In a world
that gets more dangerous by the day, we cannot fail to project strength
abroad. Standing with our allies and providing unwavering support is
the right place to start.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California
(Mr. Obernolte), my friend.
Honoring the Life of Roberta Darlene McCarthy
Mr. OBERNOLTE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and mourn
the passing of a dear friend of mine and my wife, Heather, Roberta
Darlene McCarthy.
Roberta, who was known to her friends as Bert, was born in Los
Angeles and moved to Bakersfield, California, in 1946. She attended
East Bakersfield High School, where she met her high school sweetheart
and her future husband, Owen McCarthy.
Owen was a captain in the Bakersfield Fire Department, and Bert spent
much of her time in service to her community. They were two people who
deeply wanted to help their friends and neighbors, which was a core
value they passed on to their children, Michelle, Mark, and last but
certainly not least, one of this Chamber's very own, the 55th Speaker
of the House, Kevin McCarthy.
Bert was instrumental in getting the Anti-Graffiti Program for Kern
County started, and she volunteered for many charities in Bakersfield.
Her passion for helping others meant that she often worked with some of
the people who needed help the most, patients suffering from cancer.
She regularly volunteered at the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer
Center in Bakersfield and at the American Cancer Society, where she
helped patients and their families fight cancer and overcome the many
difficulties related to treatment.
Bert was a strong mother and grandmother, whose family and their
needs always came first. She loved her community and helping others,
and she made everyone who met her instantly feel like they were talking
to a family friend.
Bert had such a gregarious and warm personality that even people in
Washington who didn't care for her son, Kevin--and there were a few--
cared for Bert. She was always willing to lend a helping hand to those
in need. Her selflessness knew no bounds, and her acts of kindness
reverberated far beyond the confines of her immediate circle.
Bert put her faith in God, and she knew one day she would be called
to go up to Heaven and meet her creator.
Bert's spirit will continue to live on in the memories of her
children and their partners, her grandchildren, and everyone her life
touched, including me and my wife Heather.
Mr. Speaker, I urge that we not mourn her passing but, instead,
celebrate the incredible legacy she left behind and carry forward her
kindness, strength, and boundless love for others.
I will miss her.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I am going to try doing something this
evening. This is going to be difficult because I am going to try to
explain something that has been annoying me and has me concerned that
what I am learning is actually really dangerous to our society. Then we
are going to walk through some of the latest budget numbers.
If you don't have a life and you are someone that watches C-SPAN, you
have had to deal with me coming up here once a week and functionally
doing economic lectures. I don't mean to sound like a jerk. I am just
trying to make it so there is an understanding of the actual fiscal
situation we are facing as a country.
A couple weeks ago, I did one, and boom. I didn't believe there were
this many people that don't have a life and watch YouTube, but there
were about 960,000 views. I have been blessed. This has happened
multiple times over the last couple of years.
Then I made a mistake. I actually looked at some of the comments.
This started a couple years ago, and you are going: Well, that is not
true. Well, that has to be a robot. Well, that is a bot. Well, why is
that one written in horrible English?
So we actually started a little project in our office a couple months
ago trying to understand what foreign infiltration is doing in our
ability to communicate in our society. How many bad actors are
basically filling up our phones with crap, with things that are
completely not true?
It turned out we found academic article after academic article;
Microsoft doing huge data analytics. There are all sorts of things that
are out there that show, in many ways, we are at war. We don't actually
understand it, but we have a war going on, and it is a war for hearts
and minds. There are bad actors all around this world.
The number of data points we have here is showing, particularly
China, Russia, and Iran, and they are getting weaponized at a level I
don't think any of us are intellectually ready for. AI is here, the
plain language is here, and they are moving off of just your Facebook
page or your social media accounts. It is now moving into fake text
messages, all sorts of other ways where they are going to try to
pollute and take down the West.
We are not the only ones. We have map after map of what China just
did to Taiwan. Now, Taiwan actually has built a policy on how to help
combat it. When they get attacked on social media with fake stuff, they
have teams that turn around and say: Okay, here is what they said. Here
are the documents. Look it up yourself.
I don't think we are ready for this. How do you and I and our
brothers and sisters on the left and anyone that actually cares about
this country have honest debates, honest discussions about, in my case,
my fear of the crushing debt--we are going to walk through that--but
other policy things where you actually lay out facts, lay out the
information of what is going on, and 1\1/2\ minutes later, there is a
bot that basically is putting out absolute crap?
How do you hold a society together when you can't even agree on the
baseline facts to build the debate from when article after article--
some of these are huge. These are the executive summaries. Some of the
ones we have gone through are hundreds of pages of tracking entire
troll farms. There is one document here saying that China may be
spending multiple billions of dollars in influence operations here in
this country to basically distort reality.
The point I am going to right now--this seems like a weird place to
go for a guy that wants to talk about the numbers and what is happening
in our government--I am incredibly frustrated because I do not know how
we have an honest debate when we have a disinformation wave coming at
us from governments, let alone the private troll farms that do it just
for clickbait to make money.
However, how do you have an honest debate when our brothers and
sisters or constituents at home or activists see things that are
absolutely not true?
We are going to have to find some way for us to have a commonality of
these are the facts, or, as I hate to say, how do I make the public
absolutely cynical?
Don't believe me. Don't believe half the crap on your phone. Look it
up yourself. Find things you trust and confirm it. We have article
after article here documenting the troll farms, documenting the new bot
farms, documenting the use of new AI. This one is actually sort of
scary because it is going to be industrialized.
{time} 1745
If you think things are screwy right now, wait a couple more months
when we are in the middle of the election season. This government here
has already decided they are--look what Russia has done to Ukraine.
Look what the
[[Page H2306]]
Palestinians and their teammates in Iran and, oddly enough coming
through China, are doing to Israel.
We are going to have to grow up and deal with the reality that as
much of the information that is smashing into this country isn't real,
and we are going to have to become much more discerning on it.
Look, that is my caveat because we have such incredibly difficult
things to deal with and there is hope, but it is hard. I have said a
dozen times behind this microphone, a family saying, for every hard,
difficult problem, there is a simple solution. That is absolutely
wrong.
It turns out complexity often requires complexity, but we have hope
if we just get off our heinies and actually start to deal with the
reality.
Let's walk through some of the reality of United States math right
now. We made this chart today. It is accurate, but it is also missing a
couple things.
The point I will make here is--you see this blue area? That is what a
Member of Congress gets to vote on. That is Defense and what we call
nondefense discretionary, such as the Park Service, the FBI, the State
Department. You see all that red? None of that gets a vote from a
Member of Congress.
The vast majority of our spending is on autopilot, and this interest
number here is actually the net number, not the gross number, because
there is another $300 billion or so that is actually borrowed from the
trust funds that we still have to pay back. We still have to pay
interest. We sort of hide that where other European countries actually
have to tell the truth about their total borrowing.
How do we as Members of Congress go home and explain every dime you
as a Member of Congress vote on is borrowed?
If you use my projections on the borrowing for this year, $800
billion of Medicare is borrowed, and the economy is actually okay. How
can we be at the current GDP--and I didn't check GDP now on the Atlanta
Fed before I walked in here, but I think it was like 2.4, 2.5, which is
actually a fairly decent GDP growth considering where interest rates
are and those things.
Yet, a couple days ago, we were breaking in--forgive me. I am going
to do this slightly out of order to make a point--nope. I don't even
have it. Somehow the board come.
In the last week, we have had two times where we went over $100,000 a
second in borrowing. Every second, we were borrowing over $100,000. It
came down a little bit today. Today, I think we are back to $98,000 a
second, and that is over a 12-month period. That is 365 days of
borrowing, averaging it out, dividing it down so you know what it is
per second.
If I had come to this body a couple years ago and said, ``We are
going to be borrowing $100,000 a second,'' you would have thought I was
out of my mind, but we are doing it. $100,000 a second is our
borrowing, and there is my anger. We will have honorable debates here
on this and that, but we are often debating over a couple minutes'
worth of borrowing because we are unwilling to talk about the driver of
debt. It is interest and healthcare.
There is not a lot we can do about interest because here is how bad
the interest numbers continue to be for us. I did this board a month
ago and I was saying my math is gross interest, which will be $1.67
trillion and I got some crap for it: ``How can you say that?''
Well, you will be happy to know that yesterday the Treasury announced
that I was wrong. Interest will be $1.1436 trillion. I underestimated
it, and if you saw what interest rates did this week with the higher
inflation data, the number is going to go higher.
Let's understand the hierarchy right now. Social Security is going to
spend $1.450 trillion, but that is off tax receipts and the trust fund.
Now, the trust fund is going to be gone in 8, 9 years, but right now
it is self-contained. Interest is the second biggest spend in this
government. The third is Medicare. Defense is now number four. Now
because I know every Member of Congress sits around and doesn't have a
life and reads--this is the MedPAC report from last week. Yes, I am an
idiot. I read it.
There is one thing in here and I wanted to make the point because I
am trying to get my head around this. In 2022, way back then, Medicare
was 13 percent of functionally income tax, corporate tax receipts.
In 5 more budget years, Medicare spending will be 22 percent of all
income tax, all corporate taxes. That is a remarkable movement.
We had a data point a couple days ago saying Medicare spending is up
10 percent this year, but we are not allowed to talk about that. It is
an earned benefit. You worked in America--it is just like Social
Security. You worked your 40 quarters, you earned it, but that doesn't
mean we have to lie to each other.
Just as I am angry about the foreigners polluting our information
set, we do something similar. We avoid telling the truth because the
math is uncomfortable, and we are talking trillions and trillions and
trillions of dollars here. Maybe the debate on this floor shouldn't be
rounding errors, it should be taking on the actual drivers of our debt.
Now, back to the point. Even here I am actually having to adjust, so
now we actually believe what we call net interest. Let me explain the
difference between gross and net. Net interest is where we have to sell
bonds. We have to get your pension system, your personal wealth, a nice
family in Japan buying U.S. debt.
Gross is where we sell the bonds over here and then over here we are
borrowing from the trust funds, even though we have a little technical
problem. The transportation trust fund, the Medicare Part A trust fund,
the Social Security trust fund, all are gone this decade. Well, in the
next 9 years, they are all gone.
It is math. Is it acceptable that this has become a math-free zone?
And these numbers, when I was starting to show these a couple months
ago and the inbound silliness we would get, ``stop making up numbers.''
Yeah, you are right. I missed them. I wasn't dark enough.
CBO will be updating all these numbers because it turns out interest
has gotten more expensive. Today's interest rate, we are back up to the
highs, almost to the highs of last November. They haven't been going
down, they are going the other direction.
You all saw the head of Chase Bank, Jamie Dimon, in part of his
report to shareholders this last week, saying his economists believe
there is a very good chance that interest rates are going higher.
Look, I will put these down and I will try not to hit anyone with
them.
Please look at this chart. Please look at this. You see this line
over here? This is 1975 to 2001, the average on U.S. sovereign debt was
7\1/2\ percent. The average for all those years was 7\1/2\ percent.
That was actually the average considering--now, I accept that has some
of the 1980s, Paul Volcker, but that was the average.
Then we go to 2001 to 2022, absolutely suppressed interest rates. We
lived in a fantasy world. It was down to 2.2. Okay. That is your
juxtaposition. What is the real interest rate? What is the real cost of
money here? We are only right now at 3.3. Our economists and the Joint
Economic Committee, Republican side, and even myself, we are trying to
figure out where it is going. We don't think it is going down.
We need to somehow understand the reality. If you are borrowing
$100,000 a second, do you think there is lots of liquidity out there to
see your interest rates come falling? What would happen to the United
States debt when you functionally have a total of 34.7; actually in May
we go to 35, in September we will be over 36, because we are clicking
off about a trillion dollars of borrowing about every 110, 115 days
right now.
We need to think about that. What happens if the interest rates go
anywhere back to the historic norm? Are we allowed to tell our
constituents the truth? It breaks my heart because there is a path, but
you have to be willing to be disruptive, almost revolutionary. You have
to be willing to be moral in saying, if these are the cost drivers, the
actual cost drivers, not the theatrics--I always love it when I go and
read some of the comments like ``if you just got rid of your
salaries,'' fine. Maybe we are overpaid--trust me. For our work
product, we are--but it is 2.6 seconds a day of all borrowing. Foreign
[[Page H2307]]
aid is about 5 days of borrowing. There is the fantasy. And then there
is the other side, the Democrats. ``Well, tax rich people.'' Okay.
Fine. Have at it. I have done the economic studies multiple times here
on the floor showing that you take your own plans, $400,000 and up and
maximize every tax. Maximize estate tax, capital gains tax, income
taxes, just do it all. Maximize it to the revenue producing maximum and
then do the economic adjustment, you get 1\1/2\ percent of GDP. That is
the studies, 1\1/2\ percent of GDP. We are borrowing over 9.6 right
now.
If someone out there is brilliant and you have an easier way to
explain this, please send it to me because I feel like I am just
treading water here while people look at me and go, ``Oh, Schweikert,
you did another speech on the floor. That was interesting. I didn't
watch, though.''
You start to understand that when you do the comparisons of where we
are heading--this is one--when you start to see numbers saying in 9
budget years you are going to have $60, $62 trillion of borrowing--that
is what we are trying to compare.
We are slicing the difference between our projection and the CBO
baseline, but the punch line here, the President's budget in 9 budget
years has us at $70 trillion and the CBO has us at $62 trillion. That
is 9 budget years from now.
Am I the only idiot here that is terrified? This is moral? But we are
going to engage in theatrics that is not even a days' worth of
borrowing, maybe minutes' worth of borrowing because that is what we
are willing to debate over because we are terrified to stand in front
of our audiences and say, unless we revolutionize the cost of
healthcare, I can't make the numbers work.
So what are you willing to do?
And that is with all the leftists taxes. You start to also look--
because the other day, I was taking inbound from one of my Democrat
friends--well, you had the tax cut. Have you seen your own numbers on
even just the Inflation Reduction Act? Seriously, where you are right
down here, oh, that is only going to cost $20 billion and the next year
will be $14 billion, and the actual now number projections where some
of the years it is over $120 billion outlays. That is cash money,
subsidies to corporate America, they basically bought the love of
multinational corporations. God bless them.
{time} 1800
It is more than the entire 10-year cost of tax reform, which actually
spread out wealth, but they can't admit that.
I am breaking one of my own rules because I keep coming here and
saying maybe we should spend less time litigating the past and deal
with the reality of our demographics and the math right now. Let's take
a look at some of the things that we are up against.
Why is the public so cranky? Seriously, I try to have this
conversation with folks at home. I am blessed. I represent the Phoenix-
Scottsdale area. If you have to represent a district, I represent one
of the most beautiful spots, particularly in the winter months. I
represent a fairly prosperous district. I represent a really well-
educated district, a really entrepreneurial district.
A lot of my folks appear, on the surface, to be doing fairly well in
life, but they are stressed out of their minds because, in my district,
we have had the highest inflation in the continental United States. If
you do not make 23.6 percent more money today than you did the day
President Biden took office, you are poorer.
No matter what economic data the clown show--excuse me, body of
Congress--wants to talk about over and over: Oh, jobs are this.
Unemployment is this.
This is what matters. When you actually look at the data of those who
are nonsupervisory or supervisory, today they are poorer, even when you
put back in wage growth. Our brothers and sisters in America are poorer
today.
In my district, it is worse. I have a prosperous district. Do you
want to understand why people are struggling, angry, and frustrated?
Maybe an honest conversation that we made them poorer.
Here is a bit of an intellectual tease: What is the biggest tax hike
in modern history? Come on, what is the biggest tax hike in modern
history? Let's work through this. If I came to you right now and said
the thousand dollars, the hundred dollars, the dollar you have saved
up, and over the next 3 to 3\1/2\ years we are going to basically take
away almost a quarter of its value, we made you poorer, right? That is
called inflation.
Where did that value go, though? It went to the debtors. Who is the
biggest debtor in the world? The United States.
We functionally transferred your wealth through inflation and
devalued the debt. The problem is now we hit the interest rate cycle,
so we were devaluing the debt by inflation. The financing of our debt
explodes, as well as the fact--and this is one that is a little
trickier to talk about. Social Security, Medicare, these other things
have kickers for inflation in there. You get a short-term benefit. You
saw a little spike about a year, year-and-a-half ago when debt to GDP,
even though the debt was higher--the GDP had sort of grown, but it is
because of the differential because of inflation.
Now, all that benefit is gone. Now, it is getting really ugly because
the financing of the debt--I just showed you--if you do the gross
number, is on its way to $1.2 trillion just this year. Interest now is
the second biggest expense in our government.
In a little while, you have to understand--back to my fixation that
we need to find some way to add technology, disruption, cures to
disrupt the cost of healthcare because guess what, Mr. Speaker? In a
few years, Medicare even passes Social Security in total spending.
The hierarchy used to always be Social Security is number one,
defense is number two, Medicare is number three, and interest was
actually way down here. Now, interest is number two, but Social
Security is number one.
In just a few years, healthcare costs will be the number one expense
in this country--just Medicare. This isn't adding in the Indian Health
Service, the VA, Medicaid.
Now, look, much of it is demographics. This is where maybe there is a
problem that we are so busy attacking the left, and the left is so busy
attacking us. The fact of the matter is, people getting older, moving
into their earned benefits, is that Republican or Democrat? It is
demographics.
We know it is going to happen. We have known there were 67 million
baby boomers for how long? Sixty-five years. We did brilliant planning
for it, didn't we? Understanding charts like this, it is coming, it is
in front of us, and we will do everything we can to ignore it.
This chart is a little hard to read, but I am trying to make a point.
This uses some of the math from our colleagues on the left. As we get
near the 8-year window, 10-year window, we get back closer to 18
percent--this is just structural, 18 percent of GDP coming in as taxes.
Yet, the debt continues to grow even with that because interest keeps
growing as well as the other expenses, particularly driven by, once
again, healthcare costs.
Unless we are willing to tell the truth, how do you take on the
problem?
This one is a little more for my Republican brothers and sisters. In
2023, how many times have you heard one of us get up and say
``growth''? Growth is incredibly important, and you can spike growth by
cleaning up the immigration system and moving to a talent base, not
importing massive poverty. You can do other things, such as getting
regulations--adapt to using technology as much of your regulator
instead of armies full of bureaucrats and file cabinets.
There are dozens of things you can do policywise to create growth,
but if you had someone who said, ``We will just grow ourselves out of
borrowing $100,000 a second,'' they are not good at math.
Here is the basic simple rule: GDP, the size of the economy, in 2023
grew a trillion and a half dollars. However, you do understand, for
that growth, you only get 17, 18, maybe even 19 percent of that in tax
receipts. The growth is wonderful, but it is not dollar for dollar. I
will get people who say, okay, you guys borrowed $2.5 trillion, but the
economy grew $1.5 trillion. Yes, it did grow $1.5 trillion, but I only
get 17, 18, 19 percent of that in tax receipts. Do you understand the
scale of growth we would have to have for the tax receipts to come
close to the borrowing? That
[[Page H2308]]
would require elementary school math, wouldn't it? Sorry.
Back to the baseline. Our brothers and sisters are struggling. If you
are in markets like I am, where housing costs have gone up
dramatically, parts of your food budget have gone up dramatically, we
have Americans who are struggling. I showed the inflation numbers, and
into that headwind, we have to find a way to stabilize the borrowing to
that growth of the economy. At the same time, we have to find a way to
get beyond the liars out there that are trying to pollute the debate
because they want to see this country fail.
If we don't step up and do our job, start telling people the truth,
realize there is a path to stabilize our debt to GDP--and this could be
a stunning century for America, but my fear is when I look at the debt
spiral that is coming, if interest rates continue to go where they are
going, you have maybe 3 years, 5 years. At that point then most of what
this government does is we have handed over the power of this
government to the bond market because the bond market will be in charge
of us. The bond market will decide what our priorities are. They will
control the price of our debt. They will control our resources.
Make a decision: Are you willing to act like adults, digest facts,
vet, double-check your facts, and then demand Members of Congress start
thinking like--it is impolite to curse behind the mike--start thinking
in a way where they are willing to do difficult things that are
accurate on their calculator and not their feelings? You can't make
public policy with feelings and have it actually work out on your
calculator. As the old family saying for the Schweikert household goes,
the math will eventually win.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________