[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 207 (Tuesday, December 19, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H10242-H10244]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
OUR ECONOMIC GROWTH FUTURE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) is
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the
majority leader.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, as we try to get the boards to line up,
we are only going to do three of these today.
Mr. Speaker, one of the things I wanted to do tonight, and we did it
during sort of the debate earlier today--I hear lots of the discussions
from our brothers and sisters on the left about the tax bill, and we
often tease that this place is often a math-free zone, but I wanted to
actually go a little bit bigger on why this tax bill is actually so
crucial to every American, whether you be on the left, on the right, or
just out there working as hard as you can and not thinking about
politics.
The chart I have right on the side, this is what our nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office has come up with as our economic growth
future. If you take a look over here, you will see 1.8 percent GDP
growth for the next 10 years. But we then skyrocket up to just,
actually, if you saw the details, just slightly under 2. And then the
next decade, so 30 years from now, we fall back down to 1.9 percent GDP
growth.
Why this is crucial is, as baby boomers are retiring, we have lots of
promises. You have heard discussions, just even someone that was behind
the microphone 40 minutes ago, on the other side, talking about
Medicare.
There are estimates out there that, over the 75-year actuarial
window, Medicare is $105 trillion underfunded. It is the largest
unfunded liability we know in America and, possibly, the world. This is
what happens when you are growing at 1.8 percent GDP.
If you love people, if you want this society to have an opportunity
to keep its promises to our seniors, to our kids, to that working
family, we must have economic growth.
I talked about this earlier today, a terrific editorial in The Wall
Street Journal over this weekend, saying, hey, from the left's eyes,
they think about equality, income inequality, and from the Republican
side, we often sound like accountants. And I am sorry, but the math is
important.
We think about economic growth because, if you look at the next
chart, I just want you to sort of look at the very, very end. You see
this sort of gold line, green line, the other green line. Do you see
the separation? That is income inequality. It has grown dramatically in
the last decade.
We have also grown at only 1.8 percent GDP the last decade. Slow
economic expansion is where you get the income inequality.
If the left here actually cared about the very issue they talk about
all the time, they would be embracing tax bills, regulatory bills,
things that would actually expand the size of this economy so everyone
has a fighting chance. But you find the politics of division very
powerful around here.
[[Page H10243]]
Look, we all get the joke. We understand that so many of our brothers
and sisters on the left, they are terrified, or their base is angry,
however we want to define it. You can't let the Republicans have a
victory, particularly on rewriting the Tax Code for the first time in
31 years, even though, if you actually look at many of their records in
the past, they have all stood behind microphones and said the Tax Code
is abysmal. It stifles economic expansion; it hurts hardworking people;
and, in a low-growth environment, with this crappy Tax Code, this is
what you get. But the politics are so uncomfortable that, for a lot of
our friends, it is more uncomfortable to vote for something that
actually might be seen as a Republican victory.
So I wish I had an elegant way of begging my friends on the
Democratic side, saying: Just think about it as giving every American a
fighting chance because, if we start to grow, you actually get paid
more; you have more job opportunities; you can save money for your
retirement, for your kids. Because where we are at today and where we
have been the last decade, we are in real trouble.
You actually look at some of the nonpartisan groups, and even some of
the partisan groups, on their analyses of what the U.S. debt structure
looks like, there are many of these models that, in about 15, 18 years,
they collapse, our debt to GDP.
What that means is, when we say, ``Here is the size of our economy,
gross domestic product--here is the size of our economy, and here is
the size of our debt,'' in just a few years, we actually surpass the
amount of publicly sold debt.
This is not where we are borrowing from our own trust funds. The
publicly held debt passes the entire size of our economy, and it keeps
going and going and going and going. That is status quo.
Please understand, the status quo has many of the models collapsing,
much of this economy, in about 15, 18 years because our debt is so huge
it consumes everything.
Social entitlements right now are about three-quarters of all of our
spending. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, that includes benefits
of other welfare programs, earned and unearned, that is three-quarters
of our spending, and it is going to become dramatically more.
So if you are someone who actually cares about health research, if
you actually care about education, if you care about the national
parks, if you care about the military, if you care about our relations
around the world, all those are getting squeezed because of,
substantially, the demographic curve we are already in, the growth of
those populations, and our attempt to keep our promises.
If you care about keeping our promises, you care about the economic
growth; and the tax rewrite is one of the key elements in that. And,
yes, it is going to also require thinking through immigration. It is
going to be thinking through regulations. It is going to be thinking
through the adoption of technology.
{time} 1900
But understand, you can't stand around here and give speeches about
income inequality and then support the very policies that actually
create it. The intellectual inconsistency around here is so
frustrating.
This is a really interesting board, and why it is so important is
that I ask for everyone to stop thinking about the actual debt number
and think about it as its ratio, as its percentage, as its burden on
the size of the economy.
If we have a $20 trillion economy and $20 trillion of debt, we are at
100 percent of debt to GDP. Our economy is actually a bit bigger than
that, but if you actually look at this red line, that is entitlements.
Do you notice all those years where it is flat?
That is actually not because we were spending less money on
entitlements. What that is about is we were growing as an economy. Yes,
we were still spending more money, but we were growing faster than the
growth in that spending.
If you care about fairness, if you care about opportunity, if you
care about the ability to save, if you care about income inequality,
you have got to step up and do those things that are difficult--and
they are very difficult--that will maximize economic expansion in this
country, because the difficulties that are coming in the next decade in
our inability to have enough resources or enough borrowing capacity to
continue to pay is devastating. We need this economy to continue to
grow.
As we walk through this, I want to actually walk through also a
couple of observations. And forgive me, but this is one of those
opportunities where you have a few minutes to share.
I hold a seat on the Ways and Means Committee. It has been
fascinating. On occasion you will hear folks say: Well, this was rushed
through.
Well, except it was built on about a decade's worth of work. If you
look at all the years that Dave Camp, the previous chairman of the Ways
and Means Committee; and then the chairman after him, who happened to
be Paul Ryan; and now the chairman, Kevin Brady, there are volumes and
volumes of documentation. There are volumes and volumes of hearings and
data. And there has got to be hundreds of hours of video out there of
different hearings, both the whole committee and the subcommittees have
done, in just trying to understand what affects economic growth, what
works and what doesn't work.
An observation. How many people in the last couple weeks have you
heard walk up behind these microphones and use the early 2000s as an
economic example of a tax cut?
Now, understand, that was just substantially a basic income tax. It
wasn't rewriting parts of the Tax Code. What so many folks forget to
tell you, if you go back to 2002 and you actually look at what we call
the baseline--and I am sorry, this is going to geek out a little bit--
baseline is our model of what we think revenues are going to look like
and what spending is going to look like over the next decade. Then you
look at those things that are referred to as the Bush tax cuts when
they finally expired.
You do realize the revenues--the revenues--that came into this
government were $77 billion higher than the projection, yet you will
hear people get up behind the microphone and say: Well, these didn't
pay for themselves.
But that is not the math.
Now, this government spent a lot more money than was projected. We
had wars, we had bailouts, we had storms. We have had all sorts of
things. We spent a lot more money. But if you actually look at the
revenue line when those 2002 tax cuts expired, there was $77 billion
more in revenue than was projected.
Is that because of the tax cuts?
Partially. Maybe. But there were lots of other effects in the
economy, adoptions of technology, and all sorts of things. But the
basic rule of thumb is: Here is where we thought we would be, and we
were $77 billion over that.
Back to this concept of: Are there tax cuts that pay for themselves?
Absolutely.
Are there tax cuts that don't?
Absolutely.
And that was one of the really gut-wrenching parts of this
discussion. If you actually spend some time looking at a nonpartisan
group like the Tax Foundation and look at a lot of their modeling, they
would come back to us and say: Hey, you could spend this money on
something that is great politics, but you get almost no economic
expansion from it. Or you could spend that same money or something over
here that turns out not to be great politics, but is really good for
the economy and really good a few years from now and someone being able
to find a job, someone being able to be paid more, someone being able
to save for their retirement or their kids.
How do you get up in front of an audience and say, ``I know we would
love to have this because this gets me reelected. But for that same
money, our society, economically, will be healthier, bigger, wealthier
a few years from now if you put that money in expensing, in certain
types of business tax cuts, because that expands the size of the
economy''?
That is something a lot of folks haven't thought about as they grind
through the technical details of thousands of thousands of pages of the
Tax Code. Parts of the Tax Code are absolutely an economic document.
How you make us competitive in the world again? How do you maximize
[[Page H10244]]
economic expansion? How do you maximize opportunity for everyone to
have a good-paying job?
But a Tax Code is also a political document. These are things that
are very popular. These are things that get us elected. These are
things that certain special interests line up at our door, walk around
the hallways. If you actually saw the hallways over the last few
months, I didn't know there were that many lobbyists in this town, all
advocating for something for their business, for their State, for their
community. All are honorable. But you have got to understand, when we
put together a few-hundred-page bill and grind through it month after
month after month and make a change here and a change here, and then
realize the interactivity when they actually model it turns out this
idea blows up this idea, the number of hours that have gone into making
this math work are stunning and it is a really good document.
Is it everything all of us would want? No. Being a Representative
from Arizona, I believe it is really good for my State.
But the thing I care most about is it being good for our country. I
believe the tax bill, the tax reform, is fair to individuals. It is
simpler. It is going to also deal with the hemorrhaging we have of
corporations--and these are big corporations--leaving our country,
hiding their profits overseas, and moving their expenses to the United
States.
Is that fair?
Of course it isn't, but that is what the current Tax Code allows.
If you hear someone saying, ``Vote `no' on this bill,'' if you hear
them saying, ``We prefer the status quo,'' understand what they are
saying: We want to live in a world of absolute mediocrity, with almost
no economic growth, no opportunity to save, have higher salaries and
higher opportunities. We are happy having, in a decade and a half, a
debt crisis in this country.
And what they are also saying is they are okay with the hemorrhaging
of American industry leaving this country because of the tax arbitrage,
where they can get a better deal in other parts of the world.
That is the absurdity of some of the arguments you have heard around
this body.
So back to my fairly snarky comment: We get the joke. We understand
there are many out there who are terrified of Republicans getting a win
here. But I want to argue that this is not a win for Republicans. It is
a win for our society because, if we start moving away from that 1.8
percent economic growth that our congressional budget has projected for
the next decade, we have a fighting chance to financially keep our
promises, to have a strong military, to have that money for our
education, to have that money for healthcare research, and for you as
an American citizen to see your salaries increase, see your ability to
save, and know you have a brighter future.
Mr. Speaker, just as an idiosyncrasy, over the last couple months, I
have been keeping a little bit of a notebook of many of the comments
that have come from my brothers and sisters in this body, some
supporting the tax bill and making claims, many opposing the tax bill
and making claims.
I am going to make a mark in my calendar, 1 year from now coming back
behind this microphone, and we are going to open up that journal and we
are going to read what was said. Hopefully the American people at that
time will understand this is political rhetoric and this is actually
based in math. And that math, I am desperately hoping and desperately
believing, is going to be great for our country.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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