[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 75 (Tuesday, May 7, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H3466-H3468]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1945
                       KEEPING SOCIETAL PROMISES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Van Drew). 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. Mr. Speaker, one of the things we are going to do 
tonight is touch on some of the numbers that have substantially come 
out since last Thursday and Friday, and then even more numbers that 
came out yesterday and today. This is sort of the continuation of the 
theme that we have been doing since the very beginning of the year, a 
theme of what do we as a society have to do to keep our promises.
  The number of times--and I don't want to be too snarky--that we will 
have Members come behind these microphones or in our committees and 
want to do policy by anecdote--because telling stories is great. They 
make people happy. It is easy to understand. But it is not math. It is 
not public policy.
  We have to stop trying to make public policy by feelings, by 
impressions, by stories, and start doing it by the numbers because the 
numbers ultimately make our lives better when we get it right.
  The greatest fragility in our society right now, if you look, is the 
unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. We have a moral 
obligation to keep our promises, but the only way mathematically we 
keep our promises is to do a handful of things. It turns out, by doing 
this handful of things, my 3\1/2\-year-old little girl has a great 
future, and the person who is a baby boomer who has moved into 
retirement also has a stable future.
  We have been doing this every week, our five elements of economic 
growth of things that would provide population stability, dealing with 
the benefits and incentives to stay in the workforce, technology 
disruptions, how there is a revolution coming in healthcare through 
technology and these drugs that are curative, how we are going to 
finance those and bring those into society, so that we stop having the 
debate on who pays in healthcare but what we pay. We have this ability 
to have this disruption.
  Then the other thing is what we do to continue the employment cycle, 
keeping people in the labor force, encouraging others to enter it. We 
are going to walk through some of those different numbers.
  The crazy thing is this stuff shouldn't be Republican or Democrat. 
This should be society's goal, that growth is moral because it provides 
opportunity.
  I want to walk through a couple of things that have happened in the 
last few days. Think about the data we received last Friday. If you 
love and care about people, if you go back and look at some of the 
economists' writings from just a couple of years ago about our brothers 
and sisters who didn't graduate high school, who didn't have any 
particular technical skill sets, we had written them off as being part 
of the permanent underclass in our communities and our society. Yet 
that is the very quartile that right now is having the fastest movement 
in their wages.
  How do we keep that going? How do we keep that going as long as 
possible?
  The jobs report, the unemployment reports we received, was amazing. 
We are hitting a trend where we are basically breaking all the rules. 
Those of us who grew up reading this stuff, the textbooks have to now 
be rewritten.
  This is moral. This is something both someone on the liberal side and 
conservative side should have joy about the fact of the matter is that 
populations we had thought were going to be functionally part of the 
permanent underclass in our society are now seeing opportunity.
  If this body was doing its actual work, we would be fixated on how we 
keep it going and keep it going for as long as possible.
  Let's walk through some of the things this economic growth is 
providing. I will openly admit that this slide is out of scale because 
of the margin on it, but what is important is the first 6 months of 
2017--and that is the fiscal year, so October on is the beginning of 
the fiscal year--the first 6 months of 2017 and then the first 6 months 
of this fiscal year, prior to tax reform, after tax reform.
  One of these days, I keep being told by my staff it would be far too 
snarky to bring up here and just read the quotes that were said about 
what would happen to the economy with tax reform, to read the quotes of 
what would happen with employment and tax reform, what would happen to 
Federal receipts with tax reform.
  Guess what has happened? The first 6 months of this fiscal year, the 
first 6 months of 2017--the reason we do 2017 is the first 6 months of 
the 2018 fiscal year straddled part with tax reform, part without--
revenues were up.
  They are not up a lot. It is about $10 billion. But the technical 
term is receipts are actually up.
  Do we get an apology from all those folks who basically got it wrong 
or just a recognition that something amazing is happening right now and 
we should be joyful?
  So what is happening? Why revenue shortfalls compared to our 
spending?
  If you want to dig in, a year ago, spending on defense--but also, we 
have to deal with the reality that, from 2008 to 2028, 91 percent of 
the spending increase is going to be interest, Social Security, 
healthcare entitlements. In 8.5 years, two workers, one retiree. In 8.5 
years, 50 percent of the spending coming through this body less 
interest will be to those 65 and older.
  Demographics are not a partisan issue. They are just math. The 
fastest growing population in our society is those of us getting older, 
and somehow this body is trying to turn it into something partisan.
  The fact of the matter is, if you go back to the end of 2017, the 
modeling said a 0.4 percent growth in GDP over those 10 years. It would 
pay for itself. Yet the base, the size of the overall economy, would 
be dramatically larger, meaning more of our brothers and sisters having 
jobs, opportunities, and economic vitality.

  Guess what has happened so far? The chart is a little hard to read, 
but if you look at the green, which is 2019, and you start to see where 
our mean GDP growth is, you start to understand how far we have come on 
that 0.4 percent economic expansion in GDP growth with the tax reform.
  We are only 1.5 years into it. A year and a half isn't a complete 
sample size of a 10-year tax policy, but at some point, where is the 
joy? If you claim you care about the working men and women of the 
country, and you care about people's economic vitality, and you care 
about their economic futures, where is the joy?
  Let's start to do a couple of things that should be joyful. Being 
from the State of Arizona, where I have a fairly substantial Latino 
population: lowest unemployment in modern history ever in our numbers. 
There is the chart. Where is the joy?
  The fact of the matter is that something is working in our society 
right now. If you claim you love and care about people, we should be 
trying to figure out what we are doing right and doing more of it. It 
is working.
  A lot of the really smart people who used to come lecture us and 
testify to us even a couple of years ago, they got it wrong. They are 
the same people we are going to invite to come testify in front of us 
next week, and we will never get around to asking them why they got 
their math so wrong.
  What is the fragility? If you read the joint tax documents when tax 
reform was being put together, or you think about what the headwinds 
are, we have known our demographics, one of the biggest headwinds for 
our society. Within that, if you remember our five points, one of those 
points is population stability. That means we are going to have to deal 
with ways to encourage family formation and deal with immigration in a 
way that brings that population vitality to our society.

[[Page H3467]]

  The two things that if you go back to the joint tax reports saying 
the headwinds for economic vitality to work were capital stock, money 
that was saved that could be loaned out to buy the capital equipment, 
and those things that were being incentivized, it turns out if you look 
at the savings rates the last 2 years after tax reform, savings rates 
are substantially better than anyone modeled.
  It is a combination of a lot of things. It is a combination of the 
population getting older and getting ready for retirement, a population 
that we just misestimated, the number of businesses that were going to 
set aside cash. But remember, when those savings are set aside, they 
become a multiplier effect in the economy because they become lending 
capital.
  As a simple example, take a look at interest rates. Take a look at 
our interest rates today compared to what was being predicted. This is 
one of the most unique times in modern history, where we have, 
functionally, a full employment economy. You all fixated on the numbers 
that happened today. Let me pull it up. U.S. job openings rebounded 
sharply in March with 364,000, seasonally adjusted, additional job 
openings posted up in March.
  Functionally, we have a society right now with more jobs available 
than labor. If I had come and told you that was going to happen a 
couple of years ago, what would you have thought?
  What this chart is basically talking about is labor force 
participation. As a society, how do we deal with some of that 
fragility? Because capital stock is working, and the numbers are 
working, but we are bouncing up against a fragility. That is that we 
have more jobs than we have available labor.
  How do we encourage people to enter the labor force? Should we create 
certain incentives and things for those who are older to stay in the 
labor force?
  This is one of my last slides here. We started seeing some really 
interesting numbers if you really break down the data. It started in 
December. Millennial females have started to substantially move into 
the workforce. Wonderful.
  Why do we have such a lagging effect with millennial males? It is not 
Republican or Democrat. It is just that there is something we need to 
try to understand in how we get these populations into the labor force.
  Because if we are going to keep our promises--and if you are like I 
am, where you believe growth is ultimately moral because it provides 
opportunities, stability, and the ability to plan for our future, we 
need this growth to continue.
  What can we do to help our brothers and sisters out there that, for 
some barrier, are not entering the labor force?
  The other thing we also saw beginning in December, which should make 
you joyful, is some interesting data of those who would be considered 
to have a type of handicap moving into the labor force, which was 
letting us know that businesses were finally making accommodations to 
draw in that population. That is wonderful.
  You could see some of that about 10 days ago, 2 weeks ago. The 
Medicare-Social Security actuaries did one of their reports. We have a 
problem, but you also saw Social Security gained an entire year. That 
means someone out there is paying FICA revenues. But did you see the 
number for those of our brothers and sisters on Social Security 
disability?
  Some of that is that we changed some rules. We tightened up some of 
the mechanisms. But a big chunk of that was those who have life 
challenges were finding opportunities to work. These are good things.
  We should, once again, be joyful and figure out, in the partisan 
divide of this place, not to try to find excuses of, well, this belongs 
to so-and-so or someone gets credit, but to figure out how to do more 
of it. Let's do more of it. Then, during the election cycle, we will 
figure out who gets to take credit for it. We will all take credit for 
it. But let's do more of the good things.
  As we start to look at some of the labor force participation, one of 
the other things we are also fixated on in our office is that we are 
trying to really drill down to try to understand some of the 
demographics.
  I am personally fixated with the fact that demographics often have 
much more impact on what happens in a society's vitality than the 
policy we make around here.
  The fact of the matter is that we have 74 million of our brothers and 
sisters who are baby boomers. They were born in an 18-year period. 
Remember, in 8.5 years, they are all 65 and older.

                              {time}  2000

  That bubble is the single biggest challenge to this body. How often 
do you have anyone get behind these microphones and talk about: What 
are we going to do to create as much economic vitality so we actually 
have the revenues, the resources, the opportunity, and the adoption of 
technology to keep our commitments there for those who are still vital 
and want to stay in the workforce--there are opportunities--and, at the 
same time, reaching the other direction, as we have seen this unusual 
number with millennial males, helping them find a path into the labor 
force?
  I know this is a little geeky, but come back to the principle. If we 
as a society are going to keep our promises on Medicare and we as a 
society are going to keep our promises on Social Security, it turns out 
that economic growth--and it is one of only five things, but we are 
going to have to dramatically change the cost of healthcare. I believe 
there is technology coming that is going to be the disruption.
  As I was saying before, think about the ACA. Most folks know it as 
ObamaCare, those of us who worked on the Republican alternative. They 
were debates about who got subsidized and who paid; they were about the 
financing.
  We haven't had a debate about what we as a body are going to do to 
encourage the technologies and the revolution that is coming to crash 
the price, and here is the thought experiment.
  I have already done multiple presentations here on the floor of the 
technology that is coming, the thing that looks like a kazoo that you 
can blow into and instantly tell you if you have the flu. If we will 
make it legal, it can bounce off the data on your phone, which is your 
medical records, to make sure you are not allergic to a particular 
antiviral and could order your antiviral that could be delivered to 
your house a couple of hours later. How much healthier did we make 
society?
  The other side is that 5 percent of our population is well over 50 
percent of all of our healthcare spending. How do we help that 5 
percent with chronic conditions live the type of life they deserve?
  When you understand that--and I am hopeful it still stays on time--
something like the concept of a single-shot cure for hemophilia, which 
may be available this November. Now, the shot is going to be really 
expensive, but a hemophiliac may be about a quarter million dollars a 
year in their clotting factor and other ancillary costs.
  But what sort of revolution is in our society when you start to think 
about these biological drugs that are cures, what happens to that 5 
percent of our society that have chronic conditions and we as a body 
start to say: Let's stop arguing about the financing side of healthcare 
and start having this discussion of how we are going to finance the 
cures that are really expensive but are revolutions to our society and 
our community?
  We have a whole proposal we have been working on on the idea of 
selling a healthcare bond and then using the future savings to pay for 
it, but we are going to have to come up with some sort of pricing 
mechanism because, in many of these pharmaceuticals, it is a one and 
done.
  Even The Wall Street Journal, today, has a discussion about a 
potential biological drug; $2 million is the discussion price, but it 
is for this tiny population of very, very young children who have this 
disease that wastes their body away, and they die within 2 years. It is 
a moral imperative we find a way to make that drug available.
  But what is the economic value of curing such a thing, even though it 
may be a population of only a few hundred of these children in our 
society?
  These are optimistic, joyful, and powerful opportunities, and this 
body needs to wake up and stop having the same debate we have been 
having for 20 or 30 years here because it is now the

[[Page H3468]]

wrong debate. It turns out technology has passed us, and so have our 
demographics.
  So what do we do to incentive participation in the economy, 
particularly when you have an economy with dramatically more jobs than 
we have available workers?
  Here is this last slide. My hat is off to millennial females. They 
have begun entering the workforce in terrific numbers. If any of them 
happen to know a millennial male, could you please grab him by the hand 
and drag him into the workforce.
  My wife blames video games. I still haven't seen actual data on this 
yet.
  So my reason for taking some of this time tonight, I actually think 
there should be some joy out there. For those of us who get behind 
these microphones and we claim we care about people, there are really 
good things happening. How do we make more of it happen? How do we make 
this last as long as possible? Because we as a body, Democrats and 
Republicans, are in uncharted territory, and we have got to be brutally 
honest about this. We are in uncharted territory.
  If you actually read some of the financial, economic articles over 
this weekend, lots of really smart economists and businesspeople are 
talking about having this type of economy with functionally full 
employment, with populations moving into the labor force at the same 
time our available workforce is starting to bend pretty dramatically 
because of baby boomers turning 65, and yet, functionally, no core 
inflation--if there was ever a time for us to functionally go after a 
number of societal ills with this type of opportunity to work.
  And the last anecdote I am going to give after making fun of 
anecdotes--well, it is more than an anecdote; it is an observation.
  A few months ago, I visited the homeless shelter in Phoenix. It is 
actually a fairly impressive facility. Over here is St. Joseph the 
Worker; over here is the dental clinic; over here is where we help you 
get ID; here is the 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week 12-step meeting.
  You walked in and saw St. Joseph the Worker. It is a Catholic 
charity. I believe it has been around 100-plus years. Their job is to 
help the most disaffected of our population, of our world find work.
  There was a stack of job posts, notes, on top of the desk. Their 
greatest difficulty was how do they get someone from the homeless 
campus to that dishwashing job or to the stocking job or these things 
to get them back into the labor force in our society to begin that 
nobility of work but also as becoming part of their rehab programs.

  We came up with this idea of, well, if transportation is a 
fragility--we all walk around with these in our pockets, and there are 
these buttons that you hit and a ride sharing comes up, and many of 
those very companies will actually provide the service at a fraction of 
the cost as a societal good.
  We need to start thinking through the types of technology that we all 
use in our lives. How do we make it so that the mother who might be on 
a Medicaid system can get to her prenatal appointment? the person who 
has just gone through Goodwill's job training actually can get to their 
job interview? the person at the homeless campus actually can get to 
that job?
  If you are from Phoenix, Arizona, asking someone to stand out and 
wait for the bus when it is 110 degrees, you start to understand that 
maybe we need to come up with a better solution.
  I make the argument that we already know the solution. We already use 
it for ourselves and our children. We now need to start thinking about, 
if labor force participation is one of our great fragilities for future 
economic growth and that economic growth helps us take care of our 
promises, how do we get the most marginalized of our society and make 
sure they have the same opportunities? So this is one of those moments.
  I know I have covered a lot of things, but I get to come behind the 
microphone. Even with all the sourness that happens around this place, 
I think there should be some joy because we are seeing our brothers and 
sisters who had a really tough decade back with some optimism and some 
options and some hope. Our ethical obligation, I think, is: How do we 
do more of it?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________