[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 30 (Thursday, February 13, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H1151-H1154]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE PENDING DEBT TSUNAMI

  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, as I get set up, in past years, when I 
used to have to sit up there, it was because the Speaker was annoyed 
with me. I am sure that would never happen in your case. You don't have 
to say anything.
  Madam Speaker, I try to come to the floor every week and sort of talk 
about what we see actually happening in the economy, what is happening 
in jobs, and those things. But it is more of a global discussion. And 
part of that discussion is we see the stories, we know the facts; we 
are about to be buried in a debt tsunami. And it is not Republicans and 
Democrats. It is demographics.
  There are 74 million of us who are baby boomers; 74 million. We are 
halfway through turning 65, moving into our earned benefits. And it is 
such a difficult subject around here because, the fact of the matter 
is, as soon as you use the word Medicare or Social Security in any type 
of discussion, even when you are passionately trying to protect those 
programs, in our modern politics of rage, you just wrote an attack ad 
saying, well, he talked about Medicare; he must be meaning to do 
something. That is absurd. If we are not talking about it, we are not 
going to save them.
  Here is the thought experiment. Next 5 years, just the growth of 
Social Security, Medicare, healthcare entitlements, but mostly 
Medicare, just the growth, equals the entire Defense Department.
  Last week, I was here with some boards walking you through, showing

[[Page H1152]]

that almost all the 30-year debt, almost every dime of it, is just 
Social Security and Medicare. It is demographics. And my passion is, I 
believe there is a way we keep our promises, by using a calculator, by 
using, actually, economic modeling, using the tools we have around us.
  The problem is, in this body, it is complex. Our ability to do simple 
things the last year has been just incredibly heartbreaking because 
everything is right now about political gamesmanship, one-upmanship, 
trying to get the lead, instead of dealing with the reality. It is 
complex.
  So I put up this slide almost every time I come speak, trying to make 
the point that if you can grow the economy through tax policy, through 
trade policy, through smart regulations, population stability, getting 
the immigration system correct, family formation, the adoption of 
disruptive technology in healthcare--and we are going to talk about 
that a little bit today--incentives to stay in the labor force.

  We are having a miracle right now, mathematically, of the number of 
our brothers and sisters who are in the labor force and moving into the 
labor force.
  Last Friday, the number of folks who moved from not even looking that 
entered the labor force was stunning. I know that is geeky, but it is 
really, really, really important.
  I have sat on the Joint Economic Committee now for years, and it was 
only 3 or 4 years ago we would have these really smart economists come 
and tell us that labor force participation was going to crash; this 
type of full employment economy was impossible.
  It is here. These types of wage gains, as you know, we just had to 
recalculate. The productivity numbers turned out to be much higher in 
2019 than we thought they were.
  How do we take what is working right now, expand those concepts so we 
hit a level of economic stability and growth that gives us a fighting 
chance not to be buried in debt? And how does that become partisan rage 
around here?
  I accept my brothers and sisters on the left live in an economic 
folklore of, well, we will tax rich people, and that will take care of 
it. And my brothers and sisters with me on the Republican side, we 
often will get behind microphones and say things like, well, it is 
waste and fraud. None of those are true.
  Let's just, for once, try to tell the truth about the math. The math 
is stunningly ugly. Simple concepts.
  And even last week, I think I brought this board here. If you take 
the next 30 years, and you pull Social Security and Medicare out, that 
next 30 years--and I have a 4-year old; I would really like her to have 
the same type of future I got to experience in my life. But if I strip 
Social Security and Medicare out of the next 30 years, we have $23 
trillion in the bank. We are $23 trillion positive. Not inflation 
adjusted; that is the raw number.
  If I pull Social Security and Medicare back into that 30-year window, 
we are $103 trillion in debt. And if you want to do constant dollars 
removed, then drop the number by a third.

                              {time}  1300

  You cannot be intellectually credible, honest walking behind these 
microphones saying you are going to protect Social Security, you are 
going to protect Medicare, and then not be willing to talk about the 
actual math. Because I think there is a way that we keep our promises; 
it just means we have to do everything.
  So one of the first things I want to walk through today is a concept, 
and I am desperately trying to sell and have this sort of become 
intellectually sort of socialized.
  The ACA, ObamaCare, if you really strip it down, what was it? It was 
a financing bill. Take it down to its most basic. This is hard for a 
lot of us to accept, but it was who got subsidized and who had to pay.
  Our Republican alternative, if you really strip it down, what was it? 
It was a financing bill. It is who got to pay and who got subsidized.
  We almost never have an honest argument around here of what to do to 
crash the price of healthcare. We have lots of discussions of little 
incremental changes, and all those incremental changes are important, 
whether it be HSAs, whether it be disclosures of cost and these things. 
Wonderful. But they are dishonest when you start to understand the 
scale--the scale--of what is coming at us.
  Back to that 5 years; make it 10 years. Just the growth of Social 
Security, mostly Medicare, healthcare entitlements, equals the entire 
discretionary budget. Just the growth portion.
  So what do you do to disrupt the cost of healthcare? And my argument 
is we need to legalize technology.
  I am not going to show it today, but in the past, I have come here 
and shown that we now have the technology; it is in its final stages of 
hopefully being perfected. It looks like a big kazoo. You blow into it 
and it instantly tells you you have the flu. It instantly could bang 
off your medical records on your phone, instantly order your 
antivirals.
  The algorithm we know right now is incredibly accurate, except that 
technology is illegal in today's conscript. Think of that.
  So how do you disrupt healthcare prices? Well, one, I am going to 
take us to something a little bit different.
  Did you know that almost a half a trillion a year--actually, over 
half a trillion a year, 16 percent of our entire healthcare cost, is 
just people not following the rules for their pharmaceuticals. They 
don't take their hypertension medicine. They take too much of this. 
They don't take this. That is an adherence problem.
  Sixteen percent of our entire healthcare cost is the failure to 
follow your pharmaceutical protocols. That is not drug pricing; that is 
not prescription pricing; that is not a PBM; that is not a benefit. 
That is just you and I, as Americans, we are not following the rules 
for the pharmaceuticals we have.
  Well, it turns out the fastest thing you and I could do to actually 
have an immediate pop-down on the price of healthcare is actually 
change pharmaceutical adherence.
  Well, it turns out we have technology for that, and here is the 
thought experiment. We have pill bottle tops that tell you when you 
open it up or if you didn't open it up, and it will ping you.
  So we know right now the adherence of taking your hypertension 
medicine is one of the most powerful things we can do to actually crash 
the price of healthcare, but you have got to take it. How many of us 
forget?
  Well, the fact of the matter is, for a few dollars, we could issue 
that pill bottle with a cap that starts pinging your phone, pinging 
your family, pinging whoever the hell you want to ping that you didn't 
follow the rules.
  We have actually brought the display here before. It looks like a 
little dome. It actually distributes pharmaceuticals into a cup.
  So, if you are my grandmother, rest her soul, and you have a couple 
pills you take in the morning, one for digestion at lunch, and a couple 
before you go to bed, it actually will distribute those at the proper 
time, in the proper amounts, and then tell you, reminds you, reminds 
the family if that little cup with the pharmaceuticals hasn't been 
touched.
  It turns out it is a technology solution, and it is a half-a-
trillion-a-year issue. Yeah, it is a little hard to explain, but 16 
percent of our healthcare cost is just not taking our pharmaceuticals 
properly.
  Is this Republican or Democrat? It is just what we are. And the fact 
of the matter is a bunch of really creative entrepreneurs, these small, 
disruptive tech companies, are coming up with a solution.
  How do we make that part of what we are trying to move forward? How 
do you make it reimbursable? How do you actually take Medicare part D 
and say, instead of the rules right now where someone is supposed to be 
trying to call, actually, widen up that definition so they could also 
be providing the technology to make sure someone is taking those 
pharmaceuticals in the proper fashion?
  I am begging this place to open up our minds and think a bit more 
creatively about what do we do to disrupt the price of healthcare, 
because, remember, that 30-year debt curve, it is mostly healthcare. 
And, guess what. Technology is about to help us disrupt it if we could 
just make that technology legal, reimbursable, part of our plan. We can 
do some amazing things.

[[Page H1153]]

  And, actually, in this hyperpartisan environment, this technology 
hasn't been made Republican or Democrat yet. I am sure we will find a 
way. What will happen is one of the corporate executives will write 
someone a check, and we will decide they are all left and right, and we 
will beat the crap out of each other, but right now, this is an actual 
solution.
  There are other really amazing disruptions coming, and I think this 
one may have been shown at the consumer electronics show. I am not even 
sure I understand all the things it does, but this, in many ways, is a 
doctor visit in your pocket. It does about a dozen different things 
where it can actually do a number of different tests, and it is in your 
medicine cabinet.

  How do we encourage this type of technology? Because, day after day, 
we will have individuals coming to us and saying: We have a crisis in 
the United States. We don't have enough primary care physicians.
  They are absolutely right.
  So, how do we help those primary care professionals? By saying we can 
have some technology where it is the type of thing where you can blow 
into it, you can prick your finger, or it can do this, this, this, 
this, and it is incredibly accurate. And it is available to you 
instantly because it is in your own home medicine cabinet.
  Let me give you one. What would happen if you could have a major, 
highly accurate disease detention technology, and it doesn't have to be 
in your medicine cabinet, but it could be at your local CVS Pharmacy? 
It turns out this technology looks like it has been perfected.
  Your lungs throw off--forgive me, I am going to try to get my 
technology right. Your lungs actually become part of your body that 
your blood circulates completely through, I think, every couple 
minutes. Your breath actually has thrown off proteins and other things 
that can be detected.
  I showed this a couple months ago. Some researchers, I think, are 
actually working on it, an extension of that flu kazoo that can pick up 
20 different types of dead cancer proteins and let you know you have 
them.
  Well, it turns out this technology, actually, now exists today, and 
the ability of it to actually look for dozens of different types of 
ailments, a number of different types of cancers. What you do is you 
just breathe into it for a couple minutes.
  Why aren't we running as fast as we can to make this part of our 
community?
  We talk about access to care. The fact of the matter is that 
supercomputer you hold in your pocket you call your phone, its 
algorithm, tied in with these types of sensors, whether it be the 
oxygen sensor I played with last year--I am a severe asthmatic, and we 
just played with it, and it was helping me dial up and, for the most 
part, dial down my inhaled steroids. Now, technically, it was illegal 
because it is prescribing to me, and it hadn't been approved.
  From that flu kazoo I just described to you that is unreimbursable 
and, ultimately, illegal because the algorithm is writing a 
prescription to something like this that can do a stunning number of 
diagnostics if you are just willing to breathe into it for 10 minutes, 
the miracle is here.
  Is this Republican or Democrat? It is neither. It is the future. But, 
in so many ways, Congress has become the barrier, stopping, holding 
back the technology disruptions that actually could help us crash the 
price. And, instead, we seem so much more comfortable having debates 
about, ``Well, who should get subsidized?'' ``Who should we finance?'' 
``Who should be regulated?'' ``Who should be controlled?'' instead of, 
``Let's set people free.''
  We have technology that can help you manage yourself, know what is 
going on, detect blood cancers through breathing. Why aren't we running 
as fast as we can to get these things to market to disrupt the price of 
healthcare?
  And, look, it is not a complex premise. We can make the economy grow 
like crazy. We have seen the expansive effects of the tax reform and 
some of the regulatory reforms. We have to get the immigration system 
correct, moving more to a talent-based system. We have to do the 
incentives for labor force participation. There is a whole bunch of 
things we need to do, and we just know the economics there.
  The hardest part is, as a society, none of that is going to matter 
unless we have a disruption in the price curve of healthcare delivery. 
And I am going to argue there is a path, and it is here.
  Can I give you sort of a thought experiment? Should Congress have 
slowed down the internet a decade ago to protect Blockbuster Video?
  Think about it. If Blockbuster Video had gone out and hired an army 
of lobbyists walking around the hallways here, Congress is somewhat in 
the protection bracket, should we have slowed down the internet to keep 
that Netflix from putting them out of business?
  Of course not. That is absurd, isn't it? Yet Congress does that with 
all sorts of rules, whether it be reimbursement, the cynicism toward 
algorithmic health and sensors and these things that can help our 
medical community, because we will often get certain lobby groups and 
others who will come in the door and say: This will be really 
disruptive to our business model. Can you slow it down?
  And every day we slow these things down, you are crushing my little 
girl's future, but you are also crushing the rest of this country 
because the debt curve is crashing down on us if you actually look at 
the debt that is going to come out this year.
  There was a 4-month report from Treasury yesterday that basically 
said, hey, receipts--and I am blessed to be on the Ways and Means 
Committee--receipts. We don't call them, actually, revenues, but 
receipts and tax are really healthy.
  Last year, we grew over 4 percent, but we spent over 8 percent, and 
then we will beat up each other, saying: ``Well, you wanted to expand 
this program,'' or, ``You wanted to expand that program.''
  The fact of the matter is the expansion defense, the expansion of 
other programs is a fraction of that growth. Almost all that growth in 
spending is demographics. It is the reality. Those of us who are baby 
boomers are moving into our earned benefits and we never set aside the 
money for it, so, if you can keep the promises.
  Are you willing to do the combination of things--and you have got to 
do them all because, it turns out, if you do the labor participation 
incentives to enter and stay and get involved in the labor force, to do 
that well, you actually need to be doing things over here in technology 
that make it available for those who may have certain barriers.

  Over here, for certain people with barriers, you have to have 
regulations that actually work rationally with our brothers and sisters 
who may have those barriers. It all has to come together.
  Can Congress do something that is complex, because it turns out there 
is no simple solution. There is a complex one, and there is a path.
  And the scary part--understand, when we do the math, and this is 
something I have been doing for a couple years, we still think we hit 
about 95 percent of debt to GDP. My goal is just to hold us there and 
not blow through that. It is possible. Can Congress become creative?
  So the next one I want to go through, and this is actually sort of 
fun for me. This is actually one of my older displays. It is from a 
year or so ago, because I have this fascination with something they 
call carbon capture.
  So a couple years ago, they finally built an electric facility 
outside Texas, La Porte, Texas, wherever that is. I am sure it is a 
lovely place. But imagine--and there are two of them. There is a 
natural gas and a coal-fired power plant, and they don't have 
smokestacks.
  On the natural gas one, they came up with this crazy idea. I think it 
is called the Allam cycle. You blow up the natural gas, and you 
actually use the carbon, the burnt, and slam that through the turbines, 
and then at the other side, you cool it and capture it.

                              {time}  1315

  You go, oh, God, we haven't been doing that?
  We, last year, in the Ways and Means Committee, perfected, and now we 
are going to try to do it more, something they call 45Q, which is the 
incentive to capture and then, over here, to sequester that 
CO2. Great.

[[Page H1154]]

  You get some of those who are cynical saying, well, it can't work, or 
it is going to be too expensive. We are going to have a little fun with 
the ``too expensive.''
  The best technology we had last year was a facility, I believe, that 
is going up in Canada. The Gates Foundation and others are investing in 
it. Their best number was about $100 a ton. It is $100 a ton for 
substantially pure carbon.
  Everybody who geeks out on carbon change and those things, you know 
you can do lots of things with it. You can, through a chemical process, 
turn it back into clean-burning fuel. You can do what they do in Texas 
and other places, which is to pump it in the ground and use it for 
enhanced oil recovery. But $100 a ton was sort of our best bet.
  I beg of you, if you are someone who is interested in the technology 
of carbon capture, I want you to go grab your phone and look up the 
news stories from last October. I want you to put this into your search 
engine: MIT ambient carbon capture.
  Some researchers at MIT last year had just this wonderfully elegant 
breakthrough. They have a really nice video, if you are not 
particularly technical, sort of showing how they did nanotubes and 
electric plates, where they can power them up, power them down, power 
them up, power them down. They can do this in an ambient environment, 
so on the roof of your home or on top of a smokestack.
  In part of the articles, if I am reading it properly, it wasn't $100 
or $150 a ton. It is down to $50 a ton. Their model says it is down to 
$50 a ton. You do realize that is almost the market price today?
  It turns out, if you are someone who cares about the issue of 
CO2 in the environment, we have just had a major 
breakthrough. And how much discussion does it get? This has been since 
October. How much joy have you seen in newspapers and articles, talking 
about a revolutionary breakthrough? And we can be doing mining, because 
we have to deal with this reality.
  The United States has gotten dramatically cleaner in the last 15 
years. Good. But a whole bunch of the rest of the world hasn't. Unless 
we are arrogant enough that we think we are going to turn around 
carbon-use policies in a bunch of the rest of the world, we are out of 
our minds.
  It turns out we can grow our economy; we can continue to use 
hydrocarbons; and we have a technology that not only would mine our own 
CO2 but would help us on everything else that is being 
generated in other places in the world.
  I am going to digress for just a second. This isn't that same sort of 
theme. I have come here behind the microphone before and talked about 
plastic in the ocean.
  Before I got this crazy job, I used to love to scuba dive, and we 
talk all the time about plastic in the ocean. Here in Washington, D.C., 
we do lots of virtue signaling. We made paper straws. Of course, how 
much U.S. and North American plastic actually ends up in the ocean? 
Substantially none. Ninety percent of the plastic in the ocean comes 
from 10 rivers, 8 in Asia, 2 in Africa.
  If you cared about plastic in the ocean, you would go to the 10 
rivers that are 90 percent of the plastic--8 in Asia, 2 in Africa--and 
you would do something. You would create a value for the plastic.
  As Republicans, we are trying to do that. But it blows up some of the 
folklore around here of, well, if we do paper straws in Washington, 
D.C., we make an effect. Come on.
  Look, I understand we live in a world where everything is political, 
and the virtue signaling makes us feel better. Wouldn't you really 
prefer to do something that makes a difference?
  Back to this concept, a major breakthrough in how you capture carbon, 
you can do it right out of the air. Now, that is one of the amazing 
things in this article. It works in ambient air. It doesn't have to be 
on top of a smokestack.
  A couple of days ago, there is an article--one of my personal 
fascinations, as those of you who claim to pay attention to this know, 
is the math on methane. As you all know, a couple of years ago, we had 
to recalculate methane's half-life, so a lot of the old formulas were 
all wrong. Now, we think methane is about 9 years. But the accepted 
ratio right now is 1 ton of methane equals 84 tons of carbon.
  Okay, so the picture alongside me, because it was the best picture I 
had, is a flare in remote Texas. They are doing their best to burn off 
that methane. Someone just came up with the idea: Why don't we just 
back up a truck, chill it, super-chill it like we do with liquefied 
gas? We get a valuable commodity, and we capture all of it. And 
remember the ratio 84-to-1? Well, we incentivize this.
  We are already doing the 45Q to create a tax incentive to capture 
carbon and sequester it or use it in some other things. Wouldn't it 
make sense to do that same sort of model with methane?
  We came behind these mikes a year or 2 ago and showed just the math 
possibility that a major pipeline to capture methane from oil country, 
just that single pipeline functioning, it got you just to the Paris 
accords, slightly below.
  The blowback I got was crazy. ``Oh, I don't like pipelines.'' You are 
saying: ``But did you see the math that just this one thing actually 
had this huge''--``but I don't like pipelines.'' We need to stop 
dealing in absurdity.
  It turns out, we may be able to do it without the pipeline. Now it is 
a truck, backing up, chilling it, capturing it. We need to understand 
things like this. If a portable LNG truck capturing the methane is a 
solution, is that Republican or Democrat?
  Well, in this environment right now, maybe it is Republican, because 
some of my brothers and sisters on the left hate these technologies. 
Sorry, that is unfair. A number of them are skeptical of technologies 
that allow us to keep using hydrocarbons.
  My argument is, embrace, love the science, love the technology. It 
will set you free. Because these things make a difference.
  We live in the time of miracles, whether it be healthcare technology 
or whether it be the single-shot cure for hemophilia. You all saw the 
article a couple of days ago that we think we might also have a cure 
for hemophilia, not only A, but B also.
  The cures, whether it be for curing people in the chronic population, 
technology for our environment, or technology to crash the price of 
healthcare, they are here.
  You know, one of the biggest barriers to the disruption that could 
help us continue to grow the economy, could help us have enough 
robustness in that economy so we can keep our promises and at the same 
time get a cleaner environment and healthier economy is this body and 
its inability to stop the arrogance and thinking that we are so smart, 
that we think we know what tomorrow's technology is.
  When I first got elected, we had a family joke. ``When are the two 
times in life you think you know everything?'' ``When you are 13 years 
old and the day after you get elected to Congress.'' And the family 
would laugh and then make fun of me.
  Now that I have been here a few years, I worry. We have lots of good 
people, lots of really smart people. And all day long, we are pounded 
by folks who are trying to protect their business models or their 
bureaucracy models.
  I am begging us, we need to understand the tsunami of debt that is on 
the horizon, and it turns out, technology is about to provide us 
solutions that don't bankrupt us and actually provide the solution and 
don't put government in charge of every aspect of our lives.
  This should be a story of incredible hope and excitement. But can we 
break through the politics of arrogance that we have around here and 
start being willing to push the envelope of the actual solutions?
  Madam Speaker, thank you for tolerating me. I appreciate it. I yield 
back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________