[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 151 (Thursday, September 19, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H7826-H7828]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1915
                      OUR GREATEST ECONOMIC THREAT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, don't you love that, when we take a 
few minutes getting organized because sometimes we walk around with so 
many moving parts?
  This is sort of the continuing conversation that we have been doing 
on a theme for well over a year now, in the last Congress and now into 
this one. It is a combination of a couple things:
  One, our office works very hard on actually looking at solutions, but 
first you have got to understand some of the problems. And I want to 
say this very nicely--and maybe in the next couple weeks we will come 
back and do it again, we have already done it a half a dozen times here 
on the floor--and that is: The miracles of technology are about to do 
amazing things in environmental protection.
  So to our brothers and sisters on the left who were sharing their 
heartfelt concerns over global warming and greenhouse gases, well, what 
is so disappointing is the lack of optimism in the incredible 
technology breakthroughs that have happened.
  Think of this: Outside Houston, they are burning coal, they are 
burning natural gas. And there is no smokestack. They are capturing 
every bit of this ACO2.
  There is just a litany of these types of technologies that--sort of 
the old Malthusian view of the way you save the planet is we live much 
poorer.
  Well, that has been wrong now for centuries.
  And once again, we are going to prove that the 1968 book, The 
Population Bomb, which predicted that the world was going to starve by 
the late 1970s has been wrong over and over and over.
  We, as policymakers, have an obligation to make sure we are moving 
those technologies forward, just like the Ways and Means Committee last 
year actually updated the tax credit for carbon sequestration. And if 
you follow the literature, there are amazing things that have happened 
just in that 1 year with that technology and now efficient, good things 
are happening.
  But that is not my reason for being behind this microphone tonight. 
We are going to continue the theme and I will fulfill my obligation 
from last week when I said I would bring in the new revenue numbers for 
the first 11 months of the year on what is actually happening in the 
economy; what is the greatest threat to our future.
  Let's start with the threat and then let's talk a little bit about 
the good things and the solutions.
  Almost every Member at some point has walked behind these microphones 
and shown this slide. But this is so important to understand what the 
actual conversation is that drives almost every policy on this floor. 
It is called demographics. It is the reality of the math.
  You see this red? That is 1965. I accept that is--what?--55 years 
ago. But 34 percent of the government spending was what we called 
mandatory, earned and unearned benefits. Social Security, you earn it. 
Medicare--this is prior to Medicare--but you earn those things.
  Today, it is no longer 34 percent of our spending. Today, it has 
actually crossed over 70 percent of our spending we don't even vote for 
on this floor.
  It is a formula:
  You turn a certain age, you get a benefit.
  You fall under a certain income, you get a benefit.
  You are part of a certain group, you get a benefit.

[[Page H7827]]

  The blue, 15 percent of our spending, that is defense. The green 
here, 15 percent is what we call the other part of discretionary. And 
that is what we sit here and debate. And that number is going to 
continue to shrink because we have 74 million of our brothers and 
sisters who are baby boomers who are moving into retirement.
  Madam Speaker, 10,300 Americans every single day turn 65. It is not 
Republican or Democrat. It is math.
  But as I have joked many times--even though it is a little bit of a 
dark humor--welcome to a math-free zone.
  So let's actually continue to talk about what is the greatest threat 
to our society and also the fact that we have some amazing 
opportunities to actually deal with it.
  Here is the math. Take a look at the chart behind me.
  If I could sit in front of you and say the next 30 years--we are 
going to remove Social Security, we are going to remove Medicare from 
the conversation--your government, your Federal Government has, $23 
trillion in the bank. But if we roll Social Security and Medicare back 
into the math, we are $103 trillion upside down--$103 trillion 
negative--so we are a couple 100 percent of GDP. And that is the 30-
year window.
  Because remember the math, every 5 years, just the growth in Social 
Security, Medicare, and healthcare entitlements, just the growth, equal 
the Defense Department--every 5 years. So every 10 years it is as if we 
added two Defense Departments, just the growth of Social Security and 
Medicare.
  Is that Republican or Democrat? It is demographics. Somehow, this 
place completely forgot there was a baby boom 50 years ago-plus--60 
years ago over an 18-year period of time, and we have 74 million of us 
who are baby boomers moving into our earned retirement and we have not 
set aside a fraction of the resources necessary.
  So this is the great fragility for my little soon to be 4-year-old 
little girl. This is a threat to her economic life, her economic 
future. But I will argue the future of our country, and actually the 
economic vitality of the entire world, because when the United States 
runs into crushing headwinds, the rest of the world also suffers.
  And once again, look at the chart. The reality of it is--Social 
Security is huge--but it is an easier fix. It is Medicare. Medicare is 
what our great fragility is.
  So let's actually talk about some of the positives because--and it is 
my very last slide that we typically start with.
  We come here and talk about, hey, there is sort of five pillars, 
economic expansion, Tax Code, trade, regulatory that you do those 
policies to maximize economic growth, incentives to join the labor 
force.
  As you know, we still have a math problem. Millennial men into the 
labor force--even though the August numbers were stunning--now we have 
broken over--what is it?--63.2 percent labor force participation. I 
know that is geeky, but when tax reform was done, the modelers all 
said, Well, we are fearful that capital stock and labor will be the 
headwinds that keep us from being able to grow.
  Well, it turns out, that thing they call capital stock has worked in 
our favor. It is working great. The amount of resources coming back 
in--we call repatriation, that was part of the Tax Code--have exceeded 
the models. Americans saving have exceeded the models, and now that we 
are, in many ways, still the healthiest economy in the world, the 
amount of resources that are flowing into our economy from around the 
world have exceeded what any one modeled. Capital stock is in great 
shape. Look at our interest rates.
  It turns out labor is our fragility. But think about this: If I had 
come to people in this room, Republicans, Democrats, and said, Hey, 3 
years ago--we are having this conversation 3 years ago--you are going 
to live in a country in 2019 with substantially more jobs than 
available workers, that in the last--like we saw in the August data, in 
the last 3 months for--we will call it our brothers and sisters--and I 
hate this term, but there is not a better way to talk about it--who are 
in some of the lower income quartiles, they will be having wages 
growing faster than 4 percent. You would have thought I was out of my 
mind. Yet, it is happening. You would think there would be just joy 
from our friends on the left and a little more talking about how 
wonderful that economic growth being moral, because it helps so many of 
our brothers and sisters who have had some really rough decades.
  The math is still early, and it is going to be hard to do, but there 
are a couple modelers out there that I had these conversations with 
that are saying this may be the year, that because of income growth in 
those--our brothers and sisters who didn't finish high school, who had 
those types of equivalent of moderate-to-lower-skilled jobs, but their 
wages are growing so fast, this may be the first year where income 
inequality actually shrinks a bit.
  And our friends on the left say that is one of the biggest moral 
imperatives in their vision. Guess what? Something we are doing is 
working in the economy.
  Look at our brothers and sisters, the Hispanic population, African 
American population, handicap population--all these different 
subcategories we do to do our U6 math--either at or bypassing some of 
the best employment numbers in modern history.
  You would think there would almost be joy. And you would think 
actually the debates around here would be, how do we keep it going? 
Instead of who we intend to punish next.
  So part of the amusement I have had so far this year, particularly--
and it is sometimes hard, but never do it, come up here behind the 
microphone, and we have this whole binder of some of the crazy things 
that were said a couple years ago when we were doing tax reform: 
Revenues are going to collapse. The economy is going to be thrown into 
a recession; all of this sort of darkness. And it was wrong.
  So think about this: The chart behind me is the yellow--I think that 
is yellow--is the, what we call receipts for the first 11 months of 
this fiscal year.
  Remember, your Federal Government's fiscal year begins October 1. The 
blue is 18; the green is 17. Receipts for the first 11 months of 2019 
in hard dollars, in inflation-adjusted dollars, are the largest revenue 
receipts in U.S. history. And I was doing the math off the top of my 
head. I need to grab it and sit in front of a calculator, but off the 
top of my head, I believe that is a 4 percent growth rate in revenues. 
Yet, the argument around here is the tax cuts are these horrible--and 
they are going to crack--they are wrong. And the math is here.
  Do you think we are going to get an apology? That number is also--if 
I inflation-adjust it so I do constant dollars over the last few 
decades, it is the second-highest revenue in U.S. history.
  And think about what is happening in our economy. How many of our 
brothers and sisters are working? How many of our brothers and sisters 
are seeing the value of their homes, the value of their paychecks--the 
best they have been in decades.
  I don't know how we come here to the floor, we claim we care about 
working men and women in the country, and then don't take joy in the 
fact that the math is actually stunningly positive, and how we don't 
engage in a debate and discussion on how we keep it going.

  But politics, as you know, in D.C., have become absolutely perverse, 
where the weaponization of everything--the rage is now a business plan 
of certain media outlets to, God forbid, you say something positive 
about the economy, because you will lose viewership. But the math is 
the math.
  So let's even take it a bit farther: Because we live in a society 
that is so honest about what is actually happening in the economy, you 
all saw industrial production numbers a couple days ago. I know I am 
geeking out a bit, but, remember, wasn't it on this very floor just a 
couple months ago we were all talking--well, one side was talking about 
we are going into recession, things are crashing, you know, the sugar 
high is over. Except for the fact that industrial production last month 
had a .6, which is a nice, big spike and revision of previous months. 
It is working. The United States is working. Our economy is working, 
and compare it to the rest of the world.
  Where is the joy? Where is the excitement?
  If you say you care about people, these are people not only working, 
but

[[Page H7828]]

why do we fixate on industrial production? What are the two factors 
that allow a business concern to pay their workers more? Well, it is 
traditionally inflation, which doesn't mean a bigger paycheck buys you 
anything more. It is productivity.
  When productivity goes up, people get paid more. And the purchasing 
power is more. Industrial production is linked to productivity. It 
means this is part of the reason our brothers and sisters out there, 
who are out there working their hearts out, are getting paid more, and 
their purchasing power is better.
  I know this is geeky. I know I come behind this microphone and 
sometimes sound like an accountant on steroids, but these things are 
important because it is real. It is not some emotional blaring of, you 
know, we hate this person, we like this person.
  We made the math work. And we are seeing the results of good things 
for hardworking Americans. Growth is moral.
  And where I want to take that is my experience in Phoenix of visiting 
the homeless campus, and St. Joseph the Worker there having jobs 
because we are so desperate for workers in our market that employers 
are trying to recruit workers from the homeless campus.

                              {time}  1930

  And we actually brought someone last year to testify in front of the 
Ways and Means Committee. We are so desperate for carpenters and 
plumbers and electricians, they brought a young man to come testify in 
front of the Ways and Means Committee who wasn't like our typical 
witness. He wasn't wearing a suit. He had a number of facial tattoos. 
As a matter of fact, he had a number of facial piercings.
  He opened up his testimony to the Ways and Means Committee saying: I 
am a three-time convicted felon. I am an addict.
  But because of a private group that was so desperate for workers, 
they took a chance. They were doing training--in his case, electrical 
training--in the prison before he got probation, and they guaranteed 
him a job when he got out. It didn't mean they were going to keep him.
  He had Republicans and Democrats and everyone in the room, as well as 
the staff, crying because he told the story: I am a three-time 
convicted felon.
  He was an addict, and he was saying he had not touched drugs or 
alcohol for a year. He gets to see his family again. He gets to see his 
child again. And he is now up to $22 an hour, and he is so busy working 
that he hasn't had the chance to relapse.
  It is stories like that that need to be part of our lexicon. It is 
part of the joy that economic growth is moral because it helps and 
solves so many problems, and particularly in our earlier slides where I 
had this absolute fixation on retirement security and our discussion of 
growing the economy and labor force participation and technology and 
incentives, bringing that package all together so we keep our promises 
around Social Security and Medicare.
  But we have the first pillar that we are living in right now, and 
that is a proof that policy--policy--can work, whether it be the tax 
policy we did a couple of years ago or whether it be some of the 
regulatory changes we have embraced.
  Madam Speaker, could you imagine if we could actually get that extra 
half a point of GDP growth by finishing the NAFTA replacement, the 
USMCA?
  How many of our brothers and sisters in this place will drop their 
politics or their terror of giving this White House a victory and 
actually do what is good for the workers in this country--actually, the 
workers for all of North America, because, as supply chains are moving 
away from China, wouldn't we like to have them here in our hemisphere? 
Or do politics blind people to the point that basic economics in math 
and opportunity don't count?
  So, back to one of the other things, and I put up this slide. 
Partially, it is one of my Democrat friends here who brought this to my 
attention, because we have been working on this concept that there is a 
disruptive revolution coming in healthcare.
  We have done the presentations here on the floor many times of the 
thing you can blow into and it instantly tells you you have the flu, 
and the algorithm, if we could just legalize it, could actually order 
your antivirals, except for the fact that that technology is illegal 
under current law.
  But, also, the concept of, in just a few months, there is going to be 
a drug that cures hemophilia. It is going to be really expensive, but, 
for our brothers and sisters who have one of the most expensive 
diseases in our society, they are cured.
  So what would happen to those numbers I was showing you on Medicare 
if I came to you and said: Hey, there is one disease group that is 30 
percent of Medicare spending in the model for the next three decades? 
It turns out it is diabetes.
  It is one of the reasons this body has been investing in things like 
the Cures Act and other miracles that are now happening in what we call 
synthetic biology, in the new types of biological drugs--you have all 
seen the stories, and it is still a bit of optimism--that we may be 
able to start growing pancreatic cells again.
  Could you imagine if we cured just diabetes? It is not only the noble 
thing of curing a disease that is part of our chronic population; we 
often don't think about what is the economic cascade that it has to, 
actually, retirement security.
  It turns out, if 30 percent of Medicare future costs are just somehow 
related to first-degree or second-degree or third-degree effects of 
diabetes, it is part of the reason so many of us in this body have 
worked so hard to say: Put the money in. Let's invest in the 
disruptions.
  Because I do believe, if we could buy a calculator for our Members 
here and help them understand the technology disruptions that are going 
to make the environment and healthcare and so many other things just 
amazing--and, then, if we could legalize many of the technologies that, 
oddly enough, are illegal under our reimbursements and under our rules 
today, there are some really amazing things.
  These next few decades could be just amazing, particularly for my 
little 4-year-old girl. But these amazing things don't happen when 
everything is political and everything is weaponized and, if it is not 
a melodrama, we don't do it.
  So we typically start with this, but I am going to close with it this 
time.
  We have been trying to help our brothers and sisters in here 
understand, the old discussions of, well, we can do this little bit of 
entitlement reform or raise taxes over here or do this and that fixes 
the fragility that is the future of, particularly, Medicare, but those 
days are over. We lost that mathematical opportunity a decade and a 
half ago.
  But there is a way to survive the debt bomb that is coming at us if 
we do the things that are necessary for economic expansion, do the 
things that are necessary to encourage our brothers and sisters to be 
in the labor force, actually embrace the disruptive technologies 
instead of being fearful of them and being fearful of sort of telling 
many of our incumbent business models that they are going to have to 
adopt.
  And we are going to have to tell the truth that, within the benefits, 
we need incentives for you to think about, if you are healthy and can 
do it, staying in the labor force.

  And the other thing is we are going to have to actually talk about, 
just as Mr. Yoho before me, things we do in immigration and population 
stability, of an immigration system that maximizes economic vitality, 
sort of the talent-based system the President talks about.
  But, even in a country where our birthrates have collapsed, how we 
encourage family formation, if you mix all these things together and 
with a couple good lucks, like with the technology we are talking about 
that cures diabetes, we can make the math work that the $103 trillion 
of debt that we expect over the next 30 years, substantially because of 
our demographics, does not have to destroy this country, because we can 
cut that in half. If we do that, we have some amazing decades ahead of 
us.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________