[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 6, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H2500-H2502]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                FIVE PILLARS OF WHAT WE BELIEVE SAVES US

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Mucarsel-Powell). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, and to my friend, thank you for 
stalling.
  What we are doing tonight--and we will try to do it somewhat 
efficiently so you don't have to spend too much time in the Chair--is 
every week we have been taking a half an hour or so--tonight we may do 
something less--and sort of walking through what we believe is actually 
an idea that actually saves this country. And not to be too 
melodramatic, but let's actually walk through some of the mathematical 
realities.
  We have 74 million baby boomers moving into retirement. The peak of 
the baby boom is just a couple years away from retirement. So baby 
boom, 74 million over an 18-year period.
  If you look at Federal spending, the growth in Federal spending from 
2008 to 2028 as CBO has calculated--2008 to 2028--91 percent of all the 
growth in Federal spending is interest, Social Security, healthcare 
entitlement.
  I know this doesn't sort of fit the mantra that you so often hear 
around here from Republicans and Democrats, but it is math.
  We have a demographic issue. We are getting old much faster than 
almost anytime--anytime, I think--in our society, and our birth rates 
have substantially collapsed.
  So one of the things we have come to is saying: How do you maximize 
economic vitality in our society so we can keep our promises, those 
promises of earned benefits like Social Security or promises such as 
earned benefits of Medicare?
  We believe we have five pillars, so we always start with this chart, 
and you can do them in any fashion you want.
  Last week, we actually did 30 minutes--which I am sure was riveting 
for anyone who was willing to watch--on labor force participation, but 
it is important.
  If you go back over the last couple years and look at some of the CBO 
reports, repeatedly there are sections in there that talk about: What 
is the barrier to economic expansion in our country?
  They will often talk about two things: capital stock, basically, 
savings rates, money to be lent into the economy to multiply, to build 
things, to grow things; and the second thing is population, labor force 
availability.
  Well, it turns out, since tax reform, the capital stock numbers have 
been much better than almost any of us had expected in the modeling. So 
our restraint on economic expansion turns out to be substantially labor 
force.
  Okay. So that is what we talked about last week. How do you draw in 
millennial males? How do you add incentives to those who are older to 
stay in the labor force? So that was last week.
  We have also actually talked about what we will have to do--and every 
week we are going to do one of these--dealing with the earned benefits. 
Are there things we can do in those earned benefits to add some 
competition for when someone is buying their medical benefits through 
Medicare? Can we add certain incentives?
  Say I am healthy. I wish to work longer. Can we give you certain 
incentives to either of those programs in the Tax Code to stay in the 
labor force as long as you are healthy?
  And we actually see other societies around the world--you know, look 
at Japan and others--who are actually having to work through this 
concept as their demographics get older. How do they actually keep as 
much of their population still within the labor force so the economy 
continues to stay stable and grow?

                              {time}  2000

  Economic growth, we are going to do a whole presentation on 
everything you do from designing a Tax Code that stays competitive in 
the world, somewhat like we did a year-plus ago, that incentivizes 
capital formation, incentivizes investment in plant and equipment and 
technology, because we had gone functionally almost two decades with 
very little productivity growth.
  Do you want to pay Americans more? Well, what is the formula? Do we 
all remember our high school economics class? What are the two elements 
that go into typical growth in someone's salary? Well, it is inflation. 
If you get an inflation adjustment, you are not getting any further 
ahead. You are just sort of holding steady. It is productivity.
  When we look at the formulas that end up organically, systematically 
thought through, when businesses pay their workers more, here is the 
inflation adjustment. By the way, we bought a new plant; we bought new 
equipment; we bought new technology. We are able to make this many more 
widgets now. Our productivity has gone up. We can pay more. That is the 
key reason.
  We functionally have gone a couple decades with very little wage 
growth because we didn't have productivity growth.
  As we start to talk about economic growth, it is going to be 
everything from designing a Tax Code that maximizes that type of 
growth, to trade policy that maximizes economic expansion in our 
country, all the way down to how you design a rational regulatory 
environment.
  Some people like to come behind these microphones and talk about 
deregulation or re-regulation. I want to make the argument that we 
should be, as a society, talking about smart regulation.
  You have a supercomputer in your pocket or your purse, that phone you 
have. Why aren't we using much more technology to be the driver of our 
regulatory environment?
  A simple example: What would happen if you could crowd source data on 
the environment? You could have a few thousand people. If you are in a 
large urban area or other areas that have a sensor on your phone that 
says, hey, I am going to help crowd source ozone,

[[Page H2501]]

or crowd source volatile organics, or whatever, our environmental 
regulator is no longer a file cabinet of paperwork where we put paper 
and document more, document more. Instead, it is almost like a quick 
reaction for us of: Hey, the sensors are saying there is a hotspot over 
here. Let's go deal with it.
  I think it is time we revolutionize what we consider financial, 
environmental, health types of regulations, realizing we have 
technology today that would make us healthier, more prosperous, our 
financial markets much more stable, and the time between a bad act and 
something getting fixed could be minutes, not years.
  An example is, if you had certain types of technology, a Bernie 
Madoff could never happen because you would instantly know his accounts 
don't match his bank accounts.
  The other one we are going to do next week is technology disruption. 
What happens if you could go home and, at home, you have this thing 
that looks like a large kazoo? You could blow into it, and it instantly 
tells you if you have the flu or not and then instantly could order 
your antivirals. A couple hours later, those antivirals could be 
delivered to your home. How much healthier would you be?
  We are going to bring in a whole series of healthcare technologies 
that is a true disruption because, remember, part of our premise is, if 
you look at the cost curves, so much of it is Medicare. The fact is, we 
do not have the resources set aside to keep our promises right now.
  That technology, if we do the adoption, if we remove the barriers, 
could be an amazing disruption in the price of healthcare because this 
body--let's be brutally honest--for a decade, we have been having the 
wrong debate. We have the ACA over here, which, functionally, just 
moved around who got to pay. We had many of our Republican alternatives 
that we believed would add some competition and those things, but it 
was, substantially, who got to pay.
  It is time the Republicans and Democrats got together to understand 
there is a technology revolution out there that could be, that can be, 
that will be the price disrupter on healthcare, if this body is willing 
to remove those barriers to that technology.
  Imagine being able to have certain wearables, whether you are the 
type of person who walks around with a smartwatch or the type of person 
who has the patch that can read your blood oxygen and these types of 
things, or the autonomous healthcare clinics that are being 
experimented with in the Phoenix-Scottsdale market.
  There is a revolution happening out there. We need more of it. We 
need to adopt it faster. We need to remove the barriers and stop having 
these crazy conversations of little, incremental changes. We need the 
disruption.
  As we walk through, part of the premise is, if you look at this 
slide, and I brought this slide in previous discussions, 91 percent of 
the spending growth between 2008 and 2028, interest, Social Security, 
healthcare, and functionally the healthcare entitlements.
  When you look at that, you start to realize these other colors you 
see here are functionally the other portions of the budget. Nondefense 
is green. Yellow is defense. Their percentage of the growth and 
spending is substantially flat. A little growth here, a little growth 
there, but the explosion in the curve, where you see those lines going 
up, is interest, Social Security, and healthcare entitlements.
  Why doesn't this place, why don't we as Members of Congress, have the 
honest conversation that, if you care about the debt, if you care about 
retirement security, if you care about these things, this is the honest 
conversation?
  Take a look at this slide. Between 2018 and 2048, a 30-year period, 
and this slide is not adjusted for inflation, you see the little green 
bar on the far end? That is the rest of the Federal budget. That is 
the non-Social Security, non-Medicare. It is actually $16 trillion to 
the positive. How do you end up with $84 trillion in the negative over 
those 30 years?

  It is functionally the interest and the spending on Social Security, 
the interest and the spending on Medicare. I believe we have a moral 
obligation to protect these earned entitlements. But you aren't 
protecting them by avoiding the subject, and that is what this place 
has become famous for doing.
  Let's talk about this concept we refer to in our office as sort of 
population stability. Remember, this is just one of our five pillars. 
In 9 years, our society, and its driven by demographics, will have two 
workers for every one person in retirement. Think about that for a 
moment.
  Programs like Social Security and Medicare, there were four or five, 
five-plus workers for every one in their benefits. In 9 years, we moved 
2-to-1. What also happens in 9 years? It is the end of the baby-boom 
cycle, so the end of the spiked years.
  If this slide doesn't make you go ``wow, maybe we should take this 
seriously,'' because we should have taken it seriously a couple of 
decades ago because we knew people were going to turn 65 from the baby 
boom for how many years? Nine years, two workers, one person in 
retirement. This is absolutely critical, and this is what is coming to 
us.
  What are the solutions on this particular pillar we call population 
stability? We need to be honest and work hard for policies that 
maximize family formation. I don't even know if I have them here--I 
hope I do--some of the charts that show you what is happening in the 
birth rates around the country.
  You do understand, as a nation, we are now well below replacement 
rates in our population. This one I particularly like because it is 
from my home State of Arizona, but the trendline is almost identical. 
We will go through some of that.
  If I asked you right now which State had the largest fall in birth 
rates, how many of you would have said Arizona? It turns out Arizona 
had the largest fall in birth rates. It is a little complicated. You 
have to read through the data, but Native Americans and Hispanics, 
their birth rates fell substantially and are looking much more like the 
mean of the rest of our society.
  Apparently, the demographers say, that is wonderful. What it means 
is, even though this place sometimes spends a lot of our politics 
keeping us apart, the actual demographics say, when we are all having 
babies like each other, it is a symbol that the melting pot is working, 
that we are all starting to have similar education, live in the same 
neighborhoods, have similar job descriptions. Now our family formations 
are starting to look very, very similar.
  That is wonderful. The melting pot is working. But understand what 
that means in the future, having enough workers to participate in 
keeping the economy growing and stable.
  These pay-as-you-go programs, which are Social Security and Medicare, 
have that vitality, and this is a real threat when you start to see 
these sorts of numbers and understand what that means.
  How do you reach a level of population stability? This is a brand-new 
slide for us. We are going to do a little more on what is happening 
population-wise. Once you substantially look at, we will call it the 
green line, the second one down, do you see that precipitous fall?
  If we are right here, that was sort of our last time of being in the 
positive, a bit before 2010. Since then, we have continued to fall, and 
fall, and fall. Now our demographers are coming back and saying, yeah, 
this is sort of the new normal, because it is not just the United 
States.
  Apparently, this trend is all over the industrialized world. A lot of 
the great writers and thinkers on demographics are saying the next 
prized asset in the world isn't going to be lithium for batteries or 
petroleum products. It is going to be people, smart people.
  You are starting to see that around the world where other countries 
right now are even starting to change some of their immigration rules 
to say, if you have talent, you are given a much faster path to enter 
our country. We are going to have to have that very honest conversation 
of a major change in our immigration system.
  The last slide here, and then we are going to talk about some of the 
solutions in this, this is just sort of fun to understand that it is a 
trend. We have one or two States that are still bucking the trend of 
having positive population growth, and that is through birth rates. But 
the rest of the country is substantially collapsing.

[[Page H2502]]

  What do you do for population stability? Okay, back to family 
formation. Are there things we can do that will work? We have spent 
about a year in our office reading literature from around the world, 
what they have done in Scandinavia, what they are doing right now in 
Hungary, what has been done in a province in Canada, trying to promote 
native births. Small, incremental changes--no one has found the magic 
formula.
  Maybe we as a society have to have this discussion. What works? What 
can we do? Is it something you do in the Tax Code? Is it something you 
do in family friendly policies? What do we do to maximize family 
formation in our country?
  Right now, when you start to look at the cost, I have only one 
beautiful little girl, and you realize, children are the greatest thing 
that ever happened to my wife and I, but it is expensive.
  The second part of that population stability discussion is, if you 
are over here working on family formation and making sure society 
understands the blessing of children in our society, are there 
immigration policies that if you are bringing in populations into the 
United States that maximize the economic vitality?

                              {time}  2015

  So part of this thought experiment, based on the actual numbers in 
the last 10 years, the U.S. fall in birthrates functionally equals 4 
million children that we expected that with the fallen birthrates will 
not be part of our society. You do realize that over 10 years that is 
functionally 4 full years of legal immigration.
  So let's say we actually were effective in being serious about family 
formation here, and we actually started to have an honest discussion of 
as a society do we start to do the things such as New Zealand, Great 
Britain, Australia, Canada, and others are doing where substantially it 
is a talent-based immigration system?
  Why do you want to fixate on that?
  It is an immigration system that actually has the elegance of we 
don't care about your gender, we don't care about your religion, and we 
don't care about your race. But what we care about as a society is we 
care about the vitality, the energy, and the talent you bring to our 
society to maximize the economic growth so we can keep our promises, 
particularly on Social Security and Medicare.
  Remember, demographics are really the biggest issue we as a society 
are facing, except it is really hard to talk about it because the math 
is complex.
  So are we as a body willing to take on complex issues and understand 
you can't just do one of them?
  There was a time here a decade ago or so people would come to the 
microphone and say: Well, if we do entitlement reform, then we get 
this.
  We have missed that window.
  Now my argument to this country, to my brothers and sisters here in 
Congress, is we have to actually reach out to at least the five pillars 
we have laid out of maximizing economic growth, and that is everything 
from tax policy to trade policy to regulatory policy, and labor force 
participation.
  How do you design programs, everything from Social Security 
Disability to TANF to food stamps to this and that, saying we want you 
in the labor force?
  What can we do so you have your safety net, but we have got to get 
you into the labor force?
  What do you do for population stability as we have talked about right 
now?
  What do you do for dramatic disruptive technology adoption, 
particularly for healthcare, but it can also be for environment?
  We are going to actually do that in the coming weeks.
  Then we will have to step up and have an honest conversation of as 
the promised earned benefits, we call entitlements, how can we adjust 
and refine them so they incentivize to stay in the labor force, but 
they incentivize efficiencies of how healthcare is purchased?
  We need to do this as an entire society. Once again, remember, in 9 
years, two workers, one person in retirement, one person 65. Over the 
20-year period, 2008 to 2028, 91 percent of all the growth in spending 
will be interest, Social Security, and healthcare entitlements. In 9 
years--the CBO report that came out last month has a beautiful graph in 
there--in 9 years, 50 percent of all the noninterest spending coming 
from Washington, D.C. will be for those who are 65 and older.
  So if you care about keeping our promises, if you care about this 
country being able to maintain its place in the world, it is math. It 
is demographics. There is a path for us to succeed, but it no longer 
works. The math no longer works by just doing one thing or these 
little, incremental, petty things I see happening around here on this 
floor where it is political power grabs instead of the things that 
stabilize and grow our country and protect my 3-year-old daughter and 
her economic future and her opportunity to actually live the American 
Dream.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________