[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 100 (Wednesday, June 25, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H5761-H5765]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   TELLING OUR CONSTITUENTS THE TRUTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Collins of New York). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from 
Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) is recognized for the remainder of the hour.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Arizona who actually 
has an amazing district and was actually an amazing leader when we lost 
19 of our firefighters this time last year, I appreciate him putting 
that into the Record for all of those in Arizona.
  I wanted to do something a little different tonight. A few months 
ago, we came to the floor here and sort of walked through what was 
really going on in the math. One of the things that sort of enrages me 
is so much of the debate we have here in Congress is the noise. We talk 
about this issue or that issue when we have the 10,000 pound gorilla in 
front of us, and that is what is happening to us fiscally.
  Right now, and I am going to be using a lot of numbers tonight, and 
we

[[Page H5762]]

are going to try to put up as many of these on our Facebook page and on 
our Web site so folks can actually see these charts. First off, if this 
were 1 year ago, we were having discussions of what was the fiscal year 
2014 deficit going to be, and we had some folks making these optimistic 
projections that we were only going to be in the $400-some billion 
shortfall that year.

                              {time}  1815

  It is still a stunning amount of money. It has only gotten worse 
though. Remember, we were supposed to be on the way out. Employment was 
getting better; income was getting better. Taxes are up dramatically in 
this country. Remember, we have just hit the alltime high revenues ever 
for the United States.
  So what could possibly be wrong? Because then, this last April, the 
projection of the deficit for this fiscal year was $492 billion, then 
in May, it was $648 billion; and with today's news that the first 
quarter GDP was down--was negative, went down--our growth and our 
economy went down 2.9 percent, that is a stunning amount of GDP to 
lose.
  We were going to be giddy if we were over 2 percent, and we had a 
negative GDP in the first quarter of 2.9 percent.
  I am going to make you a projection and a prediction that, when we 
end the 2014 fiscal year, we are not going to be much different than we 
were last year. So all these discussions of, well, it is getting 
better, and the spending and with all these new taxes, the future 
fiscal burden we are about to dump on our kids and our grandkids is 
going to get better--it is not in the math. It is not showing up.
  This is important. I wanted to actually walk through a little reality 
check here and to show you how disappointed I am on so much of the 
discussion that you will hear here in Washington.
  You see the chart next to me. If I came to you right now and said: 
tell me what you think the debt and unfunded liabilities are for the 
country--now, we can all go to these Web sites where it is the debt 
clock, and if you look at it right now, it is going to say: well, the 
unfunded liabilities and the debt for the United States are about $127 
trillion.
  Well, there was a study done--it was done over at George Mason's 
Mercatus Center, and it was done at the beginning of the year. The 
number is $205 trillion that we are about to dump on the heads of our 
kids and our grandkids.
  What should terrify you about this number--well, let's find a way to 
talk about this. If I said our unfunded liabilities--our debt and the 
promises we have made in this government--are at $205 trillion, go on a 
search engine right now and search for: What is the entire wealth of 
the world?
  Mr. Speaker, you are going to pull up estimates that it could be $167 
trillion. I saw one that was $180 trillion.
  So process this: what we have promised in benefits, promised in 
spending, what we have already borrowed is greater than the wealth of 
the world today. Process that. If you, right now, grabbed every penny 
of the wealth of the world, it would not put enough money in the bank 
to cover the promises we have already made as a government.
  You have got to understand this. This should be the discussion of our 
times, and yet it is uncomfortable. Look, I am in my second term, and 
let's have a moment of brutal honesty here: What do most elected 
officials--what do we often focus on? Being reelected.
  When you stand up in front of a room, the pollsters and the political 
consultants often tell us: well, happy talk or talk about something 
that is easy because big numbers scare people and, besides that, they 
are so negative, you would lose votes.
  If you talk about what is happening in the entitlements, if you talk 
about $205 trillion being the debt and unfunded liabilities of your 
country, Schweikert, you are likely to get unelected.
  We have got to step up and start telling the public, telling our 
voters, telling our constituents the truth: the single biggest issue 
facing your government is the debt and the explosion of the 
entitlements.
  I am going to spend a little time here talking about what is really 
driving this. Just how do you get to this? Part of this is this is what 
it would look like if you used honest GAAP accounting.
  Now, what is GAAP accounting? So let's put this in perspective. If I 
came to you right now, today, and said: all right, the country, we 
already know if you go on the debt clocks on the Web, you will see we 
are about $17.5 trillion of borrowed money.
  About $4 trillion to $5 trillion of that, we borrowed from ourselves, 
which we steal out of Social Security, we steal it out of Medicare, but 
the $17.5 trillion--but then I come to you, and let's do something that 
is simple math.
  The Social Security trust fund, with the benefits we have promised 
right now, is about $23 trillion underfunded. Okay. So my $17.5 
trillion of hard debt right now and the $23 trillion we owe--and if we 
were doing GAAP accounting, if we were doing honest mathematical 
accounting--like we all learned in, hopefully, accounting classes--you 
are looking at $40 trillion that you would put onto this number because 
that would be honest.
  That $23 trillion that we owe to Social Security beneficiaries, that 
we do not have the money, we just pretend, yeah, we owe it, but we are 
not going to tell the public about it because it will make them 
nervous.
  That is the GAAP accounting, so when we start doing the honest 
accounting--like every business, every charity would have to do--that 
is how you get to real numbers and understand the real situation that 
the government, that the people, the beneficiaries, and those in 
Congress should be dealing with today.
  Mr. Speaker, why is this not working? Why the problem? Let's actually 
go to the next chart, and maybe this will sort of help because we have 
had so many discussions.
  Do you remember all the rhetoric that was around this place before 
the 2012 Presidential race and the election, the discussion of how much 
better everything was getting, how much better the job situation was 
about to get, these debts and deficits will start becoming under 
control?
  Well, it just wasn't true. The political class, probably for 
reelection--heaven knows the President did--we misled the people. We 
didn't tell them the truth about basic math.
  So what is wrong here? We are going to walk through what is really 
going on in these charts, but think about just the last year or two. 
What has happened out there when even we have succeeded at getting good 
legislation--bipartisan legislation--passed through the House, getting 
our brothers and sisters in the Senate to actually work with us, and 
getting the President's signature? Something like the JOBS Act, passed 
it 3 years ago.
  Think about this: little things that were going to help the 
individual entrepreneur, like crowdfunding, the reg A, some of the 
mechanics in there where we were just trying to help capital formation 
for the little guys, for the startup businesses--what happened? They 
got lost in the bureaucracy.
  Some activists on the left said: oh, we are scared of this, and we 
took away the optionality for everyone out there to grow that business 
out of their house, out of their garage.
  It breaks my heart--something as simple as crowdfunding has now had 
so many rules and regs, and it still is in reg writing, even though we 
were supposed to have the rules 2 years ago.

  Think about it. Even when Congress has gotten it right, this 
President and the bureaucracies he controls--he is appointed to--
continue to destroy the optionality that we were trying to give to the 
American people to get this government out of their way and start 
growing this economy.
  Let's take a quick look at this chart--and I am sorry, I know how 
hard it is for those folks who might be watching on television or 
sitting in the back row or galleries, these are hard to read--but what 
is important about this is the blue line here was our projection a year 
ago.
  We were actually projecting that the deficits and debt were actually 
going to get better. Then when we actually had to start doing our 
recalculations and realizing the economy is not growing, it is not 
producing the economic expansion, the economic wealth that we need in 
this country to cover the promises we have made, that became the red 
line.

[[Page H5763]]

  Now, we need to do the next part of the discussion of what really 
goes on in government math. You do realize that government math, the 
budget projections, the debt projections that are put out--I am going 
to be fairly harsh here--border on fraud.
  Here is simply why: this red line is based on current law. Well, you 
do realize in current law--something we call the SGR, you will often 
hear it as the doc fix--that in about 10-12 years, we expect doctors to 
accept 73 percent less to see a Medicare patient. That is the current 
law, so that is why this line goes this direction--because we have 
these things in law where we expect these fantasies to take place.
  Now, the reality of it is: How many of you think a doctor is going to 
see a Medicare patient for 73 percent less? It is just not happening.
  So we will run here to the floor and say: oh, heavens, we have got to 
make sure that our seniors have access to their doctors, we have got to 
make sure doctors are at least covering their costs, and we will come 
in here, and we will raise that doc fix, that SGR, another year.
  One of the reasons it does not happen around this place for the 10 
years out or the 20 years--our permanent fix--is because, all of a 
sudden, the math changes again, so we get the benefit of fake math. We 
know we made the promise that there is going to be this health care 
within Medicare.
  We put out these fancy charts, and I see some of my brothers and 
sisters speechifying with the numbers they are handed. When you start 
to grind into what is underlying underneath those numbers we are often 
given by the Congressional Budget Office, you start to realize: well, 
they say this is based on current law.
  You have got to understand, inside that current law are things that 
are implausible. Actually, go look at the Medicare actuaries report and 
go to the very last 2 or 3 pages, and even the head Medicare actuary 
makes it very clear that the projections in the report--because the 
projections in the report are based on current law--are implausible.
  The head actuary actually uses the word--year after year, when they 
do their Medicare actuary report--that it is ``implausible.'' Why is 
that not the headline? Is it because it comes with big numbers?
  Here is what happens. There is something also that our Congressional 
Budget Office does, which is referred to as the alternative scenario, 
when you actually take out the things that are in current law and put 
them into what actually is more likely to happen: we will do doc fix 
and other things that are current law that hit the wall that are 
unfunded in the future, and we will step up because of the political 
pressure and adjust them and raise that spending.
  Well, what happens when we do that? You get a curve, this green line. 
I know it is hard to see, but just understand that what this means is, 
if we hit this alternative scenario, in about 14 years--actually, 
slightly less--your country hits 100 percent of debt to GDP.
  Okay. That is debt to GDP where, actually, that is just what we are 
booking. Remember, we started the conversation with we tell everyone 
here is the money we are borrowing, so here is our debt to GDP.
  This would not even have--that 100 percent to GDP in 14 years would 
not actually have GAAP accounting. It would not have the real numbers 
because you do understand, that number we did before, saying if you 
just take Social Security and our current debt, add those together, it 
is approaching $40 trillion, you do realize that is double your 
country's GDP right now.
  We are already not at 100 percent of GDP. If we actually had honest 
accounting--just those two are 200 percent of GDP, yet how often do you 
hear us talk about it?
  This is the issue of our time. If we don't step up and start dealing 
with it, I have no idea, I have no idea what happens in the future when 
we hit the wall--and we will hit the wall.
  Oh, by the way, understand, if you just add up the debt we have and 
the unfunded liability in Social Security, we are far beyond where 
Greece is. I think Greece was $1.7 trillion, so 100 percent debt to 
GDP. If you just add up those, we are at 200.

                              {time}  1830

  We need to have some folks actually start to learn some calculus, and 
that was actually one of my running jokes for my first year here. I 
started to realize many of my constituents thought the problem in D.C. 
was Republicans versus Democrats, and I have grown to believe it is 
those that own calculators and those that don't.
  A question I will actually give--and we have had this discussion with 
a lot of Members both on the right and the left--is: Why do we seem to 
fight so much? Seriously. Why do we seem to fuss with each other so 
much? And I am going to make you the argument it is about the money.
  In the next couple of charts, I am going to try to walk through what 
is really happening with the money so you understand if you are tired 
with Congress fighting with each other about the money, it isn't going 
away. It is about to get--and will continue to get--dramatically worse.
  Another chart, probably almost unreadable from a distance, but 
understand here is what you are looking at. Do you see the red lines 
there? The red lines are what we call discretionary. That is what I get 
to come to the floor and debate over and work on these appropriations 
bills where we are trying to move money here, take it away from here, 
try to save here. That red line is discretionary. That red line is your 
military. It is your parks. It is the FBI. It is things that are not 
mandatory spending, things that are not entitlements.
  Here is where we are right now. We used 2013.
  In 9 fiscal years--2024--do you notice something in the pattern on 
this chart? Do you notice that what we vote on here in Congress, the 
discretionary, is pretty much the same? Nine years from now, 10 years 
from now, it is basically the same.
  But what we call mandatory, which is mostly entitlements--and I will 
get phone calls tomorrow from folks that are enraged that I used the 
word ``entitlements.'' That is what it is. It is an earned entitlement, 
but it is still a promise. It is a social contract we made as a 
government with our people. We just forgot to tell them we didn't have 
the money to pay it.
  So understand from here, from 2013 to 2014, that increase, we will 
now be sitting at a $2.29 trillion increase on mandatory spending--and 
that is in 9 fiscal years. They are huge numbers, but you have just got 
to follow the chart.
  Let's say you are someone who is passionate about drug research, 
passionate about the national parks, passionate about securing our 
borders, passionate about the military. That is in this red line. It is 
being consumed by mandatory spending.
  So understand, the simplest way I can phrase this is your government 
is very quickly becoming a health insurer and an entitlement provider 
with a shrinking army.
  Process that for a moment. That is where we are at. That is what is 
going on around us in our lives.
  We will have these charts up hopefully in the next couple of days on 
our Facebook page and our Web site so you can vet them yourselves. It 
is important. If you want to understand public policy in the United 
States, if you want to understand public policy that is happening here 
in Congress, everything is about the mandatory spending.
  Do you remember the first board we put up where I was showing you the 
$205 trillion of unfunded liability and debt? It is important to 
understand that half that is Medicare. Medicare right now represents 
close to $100 trillion of promises we as a government have made, and 
there isn't money to pay for it. And those are in today's dollars.
  We are going to come back and forth to a couple of these so that we 
better understand them.
  This is actually the 2013. You will notice the red. That is what we 
all come here and we debate over and we fight over and work through and 
come up with ideas. That is the discretionary. It is 32 percent of all 
of our spending.
  We have Social Security and Medicare. We don't have the Obama 
subsidies in here yet, but that is one of our newest entitlements. 
Remember, we were almost promised that this ultimately was going to be 
a savings. It wasn't the truth.

[[Page H5764]]

  Medicare, income security. These are food stamps and other types of 
programs that are entitlements because of where you sit income-wise--
veterans' benefits, other mandatory certain pensions, certain other 
requirements we have to meet, mostly on the retirement side, and 
interest on the debt.
  I want you to pay attention if you can see this. Six percent of what 
we spent in 2013 was interest.
  I am going to be rotating back and forth so this is going to get a 
little awkward with these boards, but it is important to see.
  So where will we be in 9 fiscal years? Now, this is important. 
Remember, you just saw discretionary spending. This is your military. 
This is your drug research. This is the FBI. This is the border. It is 
32 percent of all our spending. In 9 fiscal years, it is 22 percent of 
all of our fiscal spending. Social Security becomes 24 percent of all 
of our spending. Medicare becomes 17 percent of our spending. Best 
guess--and this becomes a moving target right now--the ObamaCare 
subsidies in about 9 years will be about 2 percent of our Federal 
spending. A little different than we were told a couple of years ago; 
right? Medicaid, 9 percent of your entire Federal budget; income 
security, 8 percent; veterans, 3 percent; other mandatory, 1 percent.
  And this is the most dangerous part of this chart. Do you see 
interest?
  Remember, in the previous chart we were saying interest is 6 percent 
in 2013. How many of you believe today's interest rates are normal, are 
real? What happens when we go back to normal interest rates? Well, this 
projection is that 9 years from now we will be back in normal interest 
rates. At that point, 14 percent of your entire Federal Government 
spending is interest.
  Understand how fragile that makes all future discretionary spending 
if we had an interest rate spike. What happens if we were in the early 
eighties, late seventies type of interest rates? This number explodes, 
and it would consume what is sitting in the discretionary budget. As we 
continue to borrow, as we continue to add to programs and make promises 
and not set aside money for them, we are squandering our future.
  On occasion, I get to sit down with an audience where I will see 
parents and grandparents and the grandkids and you will turn to them 
and say to the parents, ``How many of you love your kids?'' and most of 
the hands go up. And then you will turn to the grandparents and say, 
``How many of you love your grandkids?'' and all the hands go up. Then 
you start to show them these charts, and you turn to the parents and 
the grandparents and say, ``Do you understand what you have done to 
your children, what we have done to our grandchildren, and what we have 
done to a generation that is not even born yet?''
  The math right now, just to cover the promises that are already 
done--this is baked in the cake; this is done--your kids, your 
grandkids, your unborn children are going to have a 60 percent mean tax 
rate. And that is not for those with a high income; that is 
everyone. Sixty percent of your income will have to go just to cover 
this spending. And that is not your State, your local, and your FICA; 
that is just 60 percent of your income. You will have a of 60 percent 
income tax just to cover the promises that are already made. And that 
doesn't pay anything off. That just maintains where we are, because you 
start to have externalities like the net interest that you have got to 
pay. And what happens when interest rates move again?

  So for those of you, once again, who care a lot about the military, 
care a lot about protecting the border, care about drug research, care 
about education, care about all these things, if you really do care, 
every time you speak to an elected official, every time you speak to 
someone with election ambitions, every time you speak to a policymaker, 
every time you speak to someone from the press, please ask the 
question: What are you willing to do about mandatory spending, because 
the mandatory spending, the entitlements, are consuming us as a people. 
And they are consuming your Republic's future.
  One more time. Basically, this is 9 fiscal years from now. So take a 
look. Here is what actual was for 2013. These are the actual numbers. 
We had 32 percent of our budget go to discretionary. That means not 
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare. Those are the 
mandatories. This actually crashes to 22 percent. This is in 9 fiscal 
years.
  So what is the solution? The solution actually is pretty obvious, and 
it is really tough. We need the American people to understand maybe not 
the math but what it means.
  It is hard to get in front of an audience and say a trillion this and 
trillion that. How many folks even understand what a trillion is, the 
thousand billion and a million. So many of our brothers and sisters do 
not understand what these numbers mean, but they need to understand 
what it means to their future and that what we are doing today isn't 
working.
  These numbers continue to get worse and worse month by month because 
we have policy from this administration and we have policy coming from 
the U.S. Senate where they won't take the pieces of legislation that we 
put out of this House that would actually help us to start to grow the 
GDP.
  So let me give you how simple and how tough the solution is.
  Number one, we are going to have to step up and tell the truth and do 
something about mandatory spending.
  How many politicians, how many consultants out there will say: If you 
talk about Medicare, you are going to get unelected? Wouldn't it be 
amazing if the public started to understand this and say: If you don't 
talk about Medicare, you get unelected?
  The other thing is you have two things that potentially start to 
really grow our economy. The energy renaissance--let me walk through 
this because this is sort of a stream of consciousness, but it is 
really important.
  If I had come to you a decade ago, when you would pick up the 
newspaper, when you would pick up the magazine, when you would go 
online, whatever you read, there was this term called ``peak oil''? Do 
you all remember that 10, 12 years ago? It is very simple. The next 
incremental barrel of oil was going to be less than we had the day 
before. The world was running out of energy.
  How many of you out there can tell me what is wrong with that? 
Seriously.
  The fact is that it was absolutely wrong. We are not running out of 
energy. As a matter of fact, as of today, we have more known fossil 
fuels than any known time in history. We have been blessed, 
substantially through technology. And be prepared, there is another 
wave of technology coming, particularly for natural gas, between now 
and the end of the decade that may even make it better and more 
accessible and, hopefully, even cheaper. You have an energy renaissance 
happening in your country.
  How do I keep Congress, the bureaucrats, the control freaks here in 
Washington from destroying this energy renaissance?

                              {time}  1845

  The second thing that is happening is even more complicated to talk 
about. I have grown to believe there is an economic renaissance around 
us, but it is unlike anything we have ever experienced. Let me see if I 
can find a way to make this work.
  I believe we are entering the age of the hyperefficient economy. Who 
here has ever used a ride-sharing service? I guess the big ones are the 
things like Sidecar. How many of you have ever used something like 
Uber? Okay. You have this little computer in your hand that, on 
occasion, works as a phone. What about the other things that it is 
doing in business? If I came to you right now and said, ``In the 
country, who is the largest pet groomer in the United States? I think 
it is PetSmart. Who is the second largest one in the United States?'' 
It is an app on your phone, where you hit it, and that is how you 
access your pet groomer. Think about that. Then at the rate of growth, 
in a couple of years, it becomes the biggest. If I came to you right 
now and if you were a policymaker in New York City or were a hotel 
owner, would you consider something like Airbnb an existential threat 
to your business? Remember the discussions coming out of New York about 
what it is doing to the bed tax.
  So, when you start to worry about incumbents coming to their 
politicians and saying, ``You need to stop this new economy,'' the 
incumbents aren't always the businesses. It is also the tax

[[Page H5765]]

system that is built on the way it is, not on the way it is becoming.
  We had a presentation from one company. I think it was out of 
Michigan. It had this idea--I think it was 1000 Tools--where you could 
go online, and instead of going down to your favorite hardware store 
and buying the $1,200 compound miter saw with laser sighting--and if my 
wife is listening, that is actually what I want for my birthday--you 
now hit the button on your phone, and you rent it from your neighbor. 
Think about that. That is a change in the economy. The sale no longer 
happened at the hardware store, and the manufacturer didn't get to sell 
a new compound miter saw with laser sighting, but you as the consumer--
you, as the renter of this equipment--now probably have, not the $1,200 
you would have spent, but the $1,140--because you spent $60 on the 
rent--still in your pocket. Do you go and spend it on other things? Do 
you spend it on investments? Do you spend it on your family?
  There is this rotation happening all around us of things that you and 
I have not even thought of. Will the bureaucracies and will the 
incumbent businesses show up in legislative bodies and courts around 
the country and do everything they can to stop that new hyperefficient, 
highly optional economy that is around us right now? Will they try to 
put the Ubers out of business? Will they try to put the Airbnbs out of 
business? Will they try to put the 1000 Tools--and who knows what else 
is out there?--out of business? Every day, entrepreneurs in this 
country are coming up with ideas, but those ideas are restructuring the 
economy, so let's walk through some of the options we have.
  We have an energy renaissance. Every week in our office, we have 
people coming to us, saying, ``Oh, David, we really want you to 
regulate hydraulic fracturing because--oh, yeah--we worry about it, but 
it is also ruining our investments because we invested in alternative 
energies, and when there is $4.50 long-term futures in natural gas, it 
is screwing up our investments over here.'' Remember the family rule: 
money, power, vanity. It is about the money. You would be shocked to 
know how much of the public policy that so many Americans think is 
Republican and Democrat is about the money.
  Will this Congress do everything in its power to maximize this future 
of the energy renaissance and the revenues that it produces--both 
inbound, outbound? Will it be like some of the discussions we even saw 
earlier tonight of: let's come up with ways to regulate or let's come 
up with ways to minimize what we are able to sell when we are bringing 
in revenues from both our own country and from around the world?
  Be prepared and think it through.
  It is so often about: well, the people who support it are I and my 
political party, who are invested on the other side, so we need to stop 
this because it is hurting their investments. Then remember the number 
one thing most elected officials care about--their reelections. Forgive 
me. I know I am trying to be brutally honest here.
  The second half is, today, here in D.C., the taxicab industry spent 
an hour blocking the roads and honking. My understanding is a 
substantial portion of that was the disdain for the competition from 
rideshare applications, from things like Uber--another optionality. It 
is a changing economy. There is going to be displacement in it, but 
with that also comes opportunity, and with that comes the new 
efficiencies that give us a chance to grow this economy.
  Remember the first board here. We are $205 trillion upside down. If 
we don't get amazing growth, we are never going to provide the promises 
that we have made to 76 million baby boomers who now have begun to 
retire. As just a bit of trivia, why is that so important? Average baby 
boomers--my math may be about a year out of date--will have put about 
$100,000 into Medicare. My understanding is they are going to take out 
about $320,000 to $330,000. If you take that shortfall and multiply it 
times 76 million of our brothers and sisters who are baby boomers, then 
just in that one program, you start to see some of the demographic and 
math problems we have.
  How do we start to grow the economy?
  The last part of this is the regulatory zeal that has come from this 
administration.
  Please, President Obama, turn to your folks. It is time to rethink 
this. How many more bad GDP numbers do you need? How many more misses 
do you need on the projections of: ``Oh, the economy is getting better. 
No, it is crashing the other way. Oh, we are going to be this much 
better in our deficit. Oh, dear heaven. We are a year later, and it is 
still the same even with all of these new, higher taxes''? Regulatory 
overreach on things like waters of the U.S. and on so many other 
programs out there that are coming out of the bureaucracy are crushing 
the expansion of this economy.

  My closing is pretty simple here. If you have someone out there who 
is asking for your vote or if you really care about the future, have 
the conversation, and be willing to open your mind up and understand 
the math--even though it is uncomfortable--that the mandatory spending 
is consuming everything in its path. If we don't deal with that and, at 
the same time, if we don't do everything we can to grow this economy 
absolutely vigorously, it could be a very dark day in the future. Yet I 
am incredibly optimistic that, if we embrace the new hyperefficient 
economy, if we embrace the energy renaissance, if we start to 
understand the regulatory crushing that has been going on right in 
front of us--if we deal with those and deal with them honestly--I think 
we actually have an amazing future, and we are going to make it through 
this.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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