[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 182 (Thursday, November 14, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H8870-H8873]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THOUGHT EXPERIMENT IN GLOBAL WARMING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rouda). 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, this is something we try to do every 
couple of weeks is come here and actually, typically, our opening board 
here is we are talking about what are the headwinds to our society, 
what are the headwinds to our country, particularly over the next 30 
years.
  The reality of it is--and we will get to that. We have it on some of 
the boards that come a little bit later. They talk about our economic 
promises: Social Security, Medicare, certain healthcare entitlements. 
The fact of the matter is they consume every incremental dollar. We 
will get to that.
  But one of the reasons I am actually starting with this board here 
is, this week, I believe the Democrats actually held what they call a 
Member Day with the global warming or environmental change committee. 
Forgive me for getting the name wrong.
  We weren't able to be there because we had Jay Powell and other 
people here this week. But we wanted to come here and actually start to 
share with our brothers and sisters in this body some of the amazing 
technology that is here that I don't know how to get individuals in 
this body who care about the environment to start to understand.
  We are living in the time of miracles. We all saw last week, MIT had 
a major breakthrough in ambient carbon capture; right? Okay. So the 
frustration is that I will hear people get behind these microphones and 
talk about how much they care about global warming, how much they care 
about greenhouse gases, how much they care, and then they don't spend 
time reading miracles that are happening in the technology.
  This is technology that just came out in a paper from MIT. They 
crashed the cost of yanking carbon directly out of the air.

                              {time}  1700

  It is negative carbon capture. It is ambient. It is basically, if you 
have a generation source, let's say you are a concrete plant, a power 
generation--this and that--you could actually be using this. It uses 
shockingly little electricity.
  They basically came up with this concept of: Let's run these plates. 
Let's actually put nanotubes on it. We will run a certain low voltage 
through these plates, and it will catch the carbon in the air.
  And it doesn't matter. The technology doesn't care whether you are at 
1 part per 400 million or heavy carbon. It is just an example of how 
technology is about to provide us a revolution on how we protect our 
environment. And it is here.
  How do we actually, as policymakers, incentivize these technology 
breakthroughs to happen, and how do we get these technology 
breakthroughs to become part of our society?
  It is not enough to come up here and virtue signal, coming up behind 
these microphones, telling us all how much you care and then not to 
understand.
  The revolution of technology is here, that if you actually care about 
carbon in the environment and its effects on global warming, guess 
what? You have just had a major, major breakthrough, because can the 
U.S. stop China from building its--what?--33 coal-fired plants that are 
going up right now that basically have no carbon capture? This type of 
technology becomes part of the solution.
  I wish I could get our brothers and sisters here to stop being sort 
of, shall we say, antiscience and be willing to keep up with the 
incredible progress we are making in environmental science.
  So this is a big deal for anyone who is watching, anyone who is 
listening, anyone who actually cares. Please, grab your phone. Let's 
Google ``MIT ambient carbon capture.'' Look at the graphics. They have 
a great little video of how it works, a simple explanation of how it 
works. This is a big deal.

[[Page H8871]]

  What a lot of folks here don't remember is, a year ago, the 
Republicans actually did something we call the Q45 tax credit. And we 
have been waiting for the Treasury Department to finish all the rules 
and the regs, but the concept was: You are an energy producer. If you 
would capture your carbon, we will give you a tax credit. If you take 
that carbon and then sequester it someplace or turned it into other 
uses, we will give you another credit.
  Now, all of a sudden, we have the cost breakthrough of capturing that 
carbon. It is from a pure math standpoint. This isn't Republican or 
Democrat. This should be hope and optimism that, once again, sort of 
the Malthusians in this place who thought the only way we could ever 
accomplish these things is crashing, just crashing our economy, the end 
of use of hydrocarbons. They are wrong.
  We are going to walk through some more of this, and you will see how 
this will ultimately tie together, at least, I hope you will.
  So this is an example of the facility in the current state of 
technology. This is a facility that I believe is going up in Canada 
right now. I believe the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others are 
investing in it. This is sort of an active type of carbon capture. They 
thought they could get down to $100 a ton, and we were all giddy about 
this. The previous board may cut this price in half.
  This is a big deal, when we just had not an incremental improvement, 
but a major, major, major improvement in what you call ambient air 
capture. It is functionally mining the air and pulling carbon out of 
it.
  So let's actually now think about facilities like this. This facility 
is up and running outside Houston. It is a natural gas power plant, and 
it doesn't have a smokestack. They created something--and I always 
screw this up. I believe it is the Allam cycle.
  This engineer had this idea for, apparently, decades, this concept 
saying: Okay. We burn the natural gas; we heat steam; we take the 
steam; we turn the turbines. Why not just blow up the natural gas, send 
the carbon from that, smash it into the turbines, spin the turbines, 
and then capture the CO2 on the other side?
  It works. It is up and running today, and, apparently, it is 
incredibly efficient. They are raising money. I think they are going to 
dramatically increase the size, but it is natural gas generation--no 
smokestack--and it works.
  And guess what happens? On the other end, they capture all the 
CO2, and they use it for enhanced oil recovery. They can 
sequester it in concrete and other places or just stick it back into 
the ground. But we know how to do this because it is not a theory. It 
is running today.
  How much discussion, how much praise, how much interest do we get on 
this from our brothers and sisters here who claim to care about the 
environment, the fact that we have had the engineering breakthrough? 
Because it doesn't sort of fit the commanding control craziness that 
has become our environmental discussion here that we must shut down any 
uses of these fossil fuels, of these hydrocarbons.
  Many of us are just trying to say: I need you to open up your hearts 
and your minds to science and the math. We can demonstrate we can 
actually use our energy and do it in a way where we capture the very 
thing you were most concerned about. It is here. It is not theory. It 
is here. Let's have just a little moment of joy that science, once 
again, ran faster than at least we thought it would.
  So the other thing, also, to walk through, and I do this one just 
because I am fascinated--and I have the microphone. Earlier this year, 
we had a major breakthrough in, I believe, technically, it is referred 
to as synthetic biology.
  Does everyone remember their high school biology class where we 
basically learned, hey, you are a plant cell? And since time 
immemorial, plant cells actually have an inherent inefficiency. They 
really, really want that carbon molecule so they can grow a sugar, and 
the plant can grow. And then sometimes the plant cell, though, doesn't 
end up getting that carbon molecule. It ends up grabbing an oxygen. And 
now it has to spend all this time and energy purging that.

  I believe it is the University of Illinois and a couple Federal 
agencies that have been playing with this for awhile. Because the 
original thought was: Could we do some tweaking of plant biology so it 
would create a greater carbon synch?
  Somewhere in that research, they hit the holy grail, and that holy 
grail is they can now make that plant always grab the carbon molecule, 
so the plant grows 40 percent more efficiently.
  Well, think about, first, what does that mean to society? What does 
that mean to the world? Well, it means we will probably feed the world 
for the next couple hundred years.
  It also means you need 40 percent less land, 40 percent less water, 
40 percent less food, 40 percent less fertilizer.
  It also means it is going to be disruptive to the value of farmland; 
it is going to be disruptive to agricultural pricing; it is probably 
going to be disruptive to agricultural credit.
  But it is here. It is technology. It is coming.
  It also means, all of a sudden, if you are someone who particularly 
likes biofuels, with this type of synthetic biology, did you just 
change the pricing structures?
  This is coming. The technology has already succeeded in tobacco 
crops. We use tobacco because that was the first one we knew the genome 
of, and I believe now they are experimenting in a number of row crops.
  But, once again, there is an incredible disruption coming to the 
world brought by U.S. scientists that actually change everything.
  And now I need you to think more creatively. First, just the thought 
experiment.
  World agriculture is said to produce 2.2 times the greenhouse gases 
of every car on Earth. Okay. If you are using crops that had this 
technology associated with it so they grew 40 percent more efficient, 
using these crops would equal removing every car off the face of the 
Earth and its greenhouse gases. You just have to be willing to eat 
something that technically is a GMO, but the math equals removing every 
car off the face of the Earth.
  So, once again, the science is here. We have had this amazing 
breakthrough. It is the United States leading the way.
  But also, this technology can be used for growing forests, changing 
the grass in your ball fields, these other things. It is here. We did 
it. And yet I see no one else coming behind these microphones to talk 
about the optimism.
  If you care about the environment, embrace, learn, listen, read, 
study, understand the scientific breakthroughs that are here that make 
a difference.
  I do this one just as a continuation of the thought experiment: How 
many of you live in a community? How many of those of us here in D.C. 
live in a community where you are not allowed to have a plastic straw? 
How many plastic straws are in the ocean from North America? 
Functionally, none. It is virtue signaling. It is theater. We do this 
to feel better that we care.
  But if you actually cared, it turns out the math will set you free. 
The math says 90 percent of the plastic in the ocean comes from 10 
rivers: 8 in Asia, 2 in Africa.
  If you actually care about plastic in the ocean, stop the virtue 
signaling about straws that are in D.C., that are never going to 
actually be in the ocean, and start caring about the 90 percent of the 
plastic that comes from 10 rivers. And we know where they are.
  Change foreign policy. Change our environmental age. Change our 
technical assistance. Go to those 10 rivers. Change it, and then remove 
90 percent of the plastic from the ocean instead of just talking about 
it or having this charity group or this NGO or raising money off the 
issues and having no actual effect.
  If you actually care, do something. Don't engage in the political 
theater that makes you puff up your chest and sound like you actually 
care. Help us. Those of us on the Republican side, we are working on 
trying to change those foreign aids, the technical aids, the technical 
assistance to do this. Help us do it.
  This shouldn't be Republican. It shouldn't be Democrat. It is 
technology. We know where the plastic in the ocean comes from. We have 
ideas on how to add a value to this plastic so it is collected, so it 
never ends up in those rivers. Go to the source where

[[Page H8872]]

the problem is. Stop the crazy virtue signaling about straws in your 
community and help us go where 90 percent of the plastic in the ocean 
comes from.
  And I know I may be sounding a bit sarcastic, but I am frustrated. We 
have been actually sort of demonstrating this one for a year, and I 
still can't get many of my brothers and sisters on the left to say: Oh, 
God, that is right. It is math. We know where it is. Let's go get it.
  It makes no sense to me. Is it we are going to take away a talking 
point, a theatrical point? Help us actually make--I love scuba diving. 
Before I got this job, I used to actually get to spend some time doing 
it.
  Help us. Take credit for it. We just want the right thing to happen, 
but it is not virtue signaling. It is actually going to where the 
problem actually is.
  So let's actually make a circle and see if I can tie this in to what 
it means to our future.
  This is one of the things I have come to this floor on for years, 
because we are having the wrong discussion here. We as a country are 
buried in debt, and the debt is going to get dramatically bigger.
  First, we need to pull out our calculators--for those who actually 
own calculators here on Capitol Hill--and have a moment of honesty.
  The debt is substantially driven by our demographics. It is not 
Republican or Democrat; it is just what we are.
  We have 74 million of us who are baby boomers. Congress did not pay 
attention that there were 74 million of us who were going to turn 65 
one day and step into our earned entitlements.

  So if you look at this chart right now, 1965, you see the red area, 
it is 34 percent. That is what mandatory spending was. That was 
everything from entitlements you get, you earned. You earned your 
Social Security. You earned your Medicare. You earned your veterans 
benefits.
  There are some you get because you are part of a Tribal group or some 
you get because you fell under a certain income.
  Today, it is now crossing over 70 percent of all of our spending is 
on formula. When we stand on this floor and vote for appropriations, we 
don't even vote on that red portion, that 70-plus percent of our 
spending. We don't even vote on it. It is a formula.
  And then what is remaining? Half of it is defense. You see that 
little blue area over there? That is the defense.
  You see there the green? That is all we really have.
  And if you actually look at what we call discretionary, nondefense 
discretionary, it has been substantially flat for the last 10 years. It 
is just math.
  So if I come to you and say Social Security, Medicare, healthcare 
entitlements, just the growth from those over the next 5 years, just 
the growth will equal the spending of the Defense Department. Let's 
double it. Hey, every 10 years, we will add two full Defense 
Departments. And that is just the growth of Social Security, Medicare, 
healthcare entitlements.
  We know where the problem is, but it is terrifying for elected 
officials to speak about it, talk about it, even think about it, 
because you have to explain something. It is hard, but it is manageable 
if we do everything.
  And the very last board I am going to show is, once again, our sort 
of holistic approach of, if we pull all the levers, we have done the 
math, we think we can keep it at 95 percent of debt to GDP, this isn't 
the absurd untruthful conversations that we are going to pay off the 
debt, because every day 10,300 of us turn 65. We need to deal with the 
truth about the math.
  And the math isn't Republican or Democrat. It is math.

                              {time}  1715

  So, first off, the number one pillar we have to engage in--because it 
makes everything else possible--is a robust, a powerful, strong 
economic growth, the robustness of the economy, the participation in 
the labor force.
  We must do everything possible, whether it be changes in the Tax 
Code, whether it be changes in trade, whether it be changes in going to 
smart, crowd-sourced type of technology-based regulation. We must grow. 
Growth is moral.
  Because, if we don't grow, you can't make any of the other math work. 
And this is the reality.
  So, how many of my brothers and sisters came behind these microphones 
when we did tax reform and told us the world was coming to an end--
except for the fact that we, just last month, got the revenues. Excuse 
me. They are called receipts. Total receipts into the Federal 
Government: turns out to be the highest ever. We grew over 5 percent in 
our receipts in a post tax reform world.
  We had a parade of economists from the left come and tell us this 
could not happen, but it happened. How about that parade of economists 
from the left who came to us and told us we were going to force 
ourselves into a recession? It didn't happen.
  How about those who said, hey, you guys can never get back into the 
60-plus, 61, 62, 63 percent labor force participation, but it has 
happened.
  You could never have a society with more jobs than available workers, 
but it has happened.
  You could never possibly see, like we did in 2018, unmarried women 
with no partner at home having a 7.6 percent rise in their incomes, but 
it happened.
  You could never cut the poverty rate a full half a percent in a 
single year, but we did it.
  You would think things like that would bring joy in this body, joy 
across the country. We have an economy that is working. We had Jay 
Powell here yesterday, the Federal Reserve chairman, talking about we 
are in a sweet spot. It is working. The most stable economy in modern 
times. The healthiest labor market in modern times. The best employment 
situation in modern times.
  The debates we should be having behind these microphones should be 
about how not to screw it up, how to understand what is working and do 
more of it.
  Because, you remember the previous slide that talked about the growth 
of debt, where our allocations go? If we grow the economy, it gives us 
a fighting chance. Now, we still have to do a bunch of other things.
  And this is back to the ultimate point. I have been trying to argue 
now for multiple years: There is a path where we don't have to be 
buried in a financial collapse as a society because we built up 
stunning amounts of debt. And I know some don't want to hear it, but it 
is the math.
  We believe we have built the math that we could kiss up against 95 
percent of debt to GDP and hold it through the baby boomers.
  I have a 4-year-old little girl. She deserves to live in an America 
that works, that grows, that provides opportunities. Remember, we are 
in a world right now where, if we can keep up this level of growth, 
about every 30, 35 years the standard of living doubles. Or we go back 
to the bad old days of just a couple of years ago where the GDP growth 
was so slow and so fat, the standard of living was only going to double 
about every 70 years.
  So, how do we do this? I just walked through, first, our financial 
levers that are solely responsible for us in this room. We own the 
levers. We own the levers of tax policy that grow the economy. We own 
the levers of immigration policy that goes to a talent-based system, 
that maximizes economic growth. We own the levers with the 
administration on smart regulations. We own the levers, ultimately, on 
trade agreements that are fair and grow our economy.
  But we have to do other things. We have to change many of our social 
entitlement structures to incentivize work. If you are on Social 
Security disability, don't create a cliff; create a glide path so you 
are incentivized to be in the labor force. Because, think about it. 
When the models were done after we did tax reform, the fragility--the 
smart economists kept coming to us saying: Our capital stock. Will 
there be enough money to finance the growth?
  It turns out, there is. We did it. Americans are saving. Some of that 
is demographics. Some of it is substantially because of tax reform.
  It turns out, repatriation, we had--what was the report?--$140 
billion more come back than we expected. And it turns out, because we 
have a healthy economy, capital is coming in from all over the world. 
So we have the capital to invest and grow.
  But the other fragility was labor, available workers. What a great 
problem to have, but we need to think of

[[Page H8873]]

every lever we have in society, everything from dealing with the opioid 
crisis to incentives to participate in the labor force.
  Come to Phoenix, Arizona. We have a homeless shelter. There is an 
organization there called St. Joseph The Worker. It is a 100-year-old-
plus Catholic charity. You walk in the door, and they will show you--
they have a stack of job opportunities for the most disaffected of our 
society, people who are trying to get on their program, trying to deal 
with mental health demons and substance abuse demons and those things. 
But they are there.
  There should be joy that there is such a labor shortage that our 
brothers and sisters in the business community are willing to take a 
risk on our brothers and sisters who are living in a homeless shelter. 
That part, we have proven, works.
  How do we expand participation in the labor force? How do we also, 
now, incentivize the other end? If you are healthy, if you are fit, if 
you are sharp, if you just want to, do we actually start to say: Well, 
you are 72 years old. You want to work. We are going to start adding 
certain levels of taxes. We are going to start taking away parts of 
your Social Security. We are going to tax these benefits because you 
are out there working.
  Just the opposite. We want as much of our society to stay in the 
labor force. And if you want to and you are older, let's redesign some 
of these incentives to stay in the labor force.
  Our millennial males that we still have a math problem entering the 
labor force and the other end of the age curve--let's fix it. Those are 
policies. Is that Republican or Democrat? It is just rational policy to 
keep the economy growing.
  The other one that I come to the floor constantly and speak about is 
the disruption of technology that is about to crash the price of 
healthcare. And this is one of those moments I seem to succeed in 
offending everyone, so maybe it is the right thing.
  The ACA, ObamaCare--let's have a moment of truth and reality about 
it. It was substantially a finance mechanism. It was about who got 
subsidized, who had to pay.
  Our Republican alternative, well-meaning, had a number of kickers, a 
number of incentives in it, but it wasn't about who got subsidized and 
who had to pay; it was substantially about who had to pay and who got 
subsidized.
  This body needs to stop having the absurd conversation about the 
financing part of healthcare and start thinking about what we do to 
crash the actual delivery price.
  It turns out there is a revolution of technology out there, the thing 
you can blow into that can actually tell you you have the flu. It can 
bounce off your phone, check your medical records, and then order 
antivirals. Except for, the problem is, that technology is illegal 
under the way our laws are written today.
  There is a revolution coming. The other side of the spectrum is drugs 
like the single-shot cure for hemophilia. You saw that we think we now 
have the cure for sickle cell anemia. On cystic fibrosis, it looks like 
we think we may have the drug that stabilizes it. We know we have the 
drug that stabilizes ALS.
  They are all going to be really expensive. These are miracles in the 
biologic pharmaceutical world. We need to now work on a financing 
mechanism for the distribution of these pharmaceuticals that cure our 
brothers and sisters with chronic conditions. Because, remember, 5 
percent of our population with chronic conditions is the majority of 
our healthcare spending.
  And we are about to start curing a number of them, because a few 
years ago the Republicans in this body, we passed the Cures Act, and it 
is working.
  And my terror is the left is moving a bill called H.R. 3. It made it 
through the Ways and Means Committee, and it breaks my heart because 
they are about to screw up the very incentives that have created these 
miracles, that are about to start curing individuals with these chronic 
conditions.
  Understand, if we could get our act together, if we could actually 
start to understand the technology disruption that is here, we can 
start to crash the price of healthcare, instead of having the absurd 
debate of who should get subsidized and who should have to pay.
  Is that Republican or Democrat? It is just technology.
  But when you work in an environment where rage is the actual 
commodity of exchange, how do you ever actually get to solutions?
  And then the last one, which will be the most difficult one, is we 
have to have an honest conversation of what to do in the actual 
incentives, are there things we could do in the incentives of staying 
healthy, of how you deliver Medicare and Medicare part A and B and D, 
the incentives there.
  Could we actually create some incentives for Social Security that, if 
you wanted to work longer, you get spiffs and those things?
  But, if we do those five things, we can make the math work that we as 
a society, we as a country do not have to fall off the debt cliff. And 
it is the hardest thing you can imagine for a body that is completely 
calcified in its inability to actually do anything of value. Because it 
would require owning a calculator; it would require thinking; it would 
require some creativity; and it would require doing everything at one 
time to make the math work.
  You can't just do one of these things, walk away, and pretend you did 
something. It all has a synergistic feed because the labor force 
participation needs the strong economy; the strong economy needs the 
investments for the technology; the technology disruption needs the 
strong labor force to grab those who may have been rotated in the 
economy. It all has to work together.
  My heartbreak as I come behind this microphone and the reason I am 
here is to save this country and save it from that huge monster that is 
our debt, because I have the world's greatest little 4-year-old girl, 
and I am going to find a way to fix this for my country, but also for 
my daughter.
  I have been coming behind this microphone now with this for over a 
year. We have meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting on the 
fact that there is a path. It requires being willing to accept 
disruption in technology. It requires being able to actually drop some 
of the crazy ideology and actually use a calculator on the math on the 
things that actually grow the economy.
  And the ideology of rage has blinded us from, I think, in many ways, 
doing the right thing for working men and women, for my little girl, 
for this country.
  And I don't care if you are on the right or the left; you should be 
having your soul ripped out because we are now--we have been here, 
what, 10-plus months, and we have squandered almost every day we have 
been here because we know the path we have to go down, yet, in many 
ways, all we have done is make it worse.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________