[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 20 (Wednesday, February 3, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H318-H321]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1845
                     HELPING WORKING MEN AND WOMEN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, as we get ourselves sort of organized, 
one of the hazards of being someone that almost can't speak without a 
chart with them, I wanted to do a couple of things in this time this 
evening. Some of it is the continuation of the debate that happened on 
the floor earlier today.
  I will just try to add a little more meat, a little more detail on 
what some of us are seeing from the Joint Economic Committee and our 
economists there looking at the data, what is going on in our country; 
and also, the Ways and Means Committee and what we see and what we 
think we can do to truly help working men and women in this country, 
the working poor, and where the policy is going, and it is some of our 
angst as the legislation moved out of the House today on sort of a 
blank-check budget document.
  Here is $1.9 trillion in immediate funding, ultimately costing about 
a trillion and half in the 10-year window because of interest and those 
things because it is not paid for.
  And where does that money go? And is it designed to truly maximize 
helping our brothers and sisters around this country and their economic 
vitality, dealing with the shutdowns and the

[[Page H319]]

economic devastation that we have seen in so many of our communities?
  But some of the other side is where we have seen around the country, 
even with the headwinds of the pandemic, where are we seeing the 
economy moving in the right direction? Where are we seeing communities 
that have, we used to use the term, green shoots. That is sort of 
overused anymore.
  And there is also a substantial difference from what we see in some 
of the coastal economies to much of the rest of the Nation.
  I am blessed to represent the Scottsdale, Phoenix, Carefree, Cave 
Creek, Fountain Hills area, so Phoenix and some of its suburbs. And we 
have some folks that have just been crushed, whether they be in the 
hospitality business and tourism-related businesses, some of the 
restaurants.
  But yet, we have been shocked at also how healthy our economy has 
been because of the creativity of some of these very same people 
finding other ways to survive. And that is actually one of the 
secondary things we want to try to talk about this evening is, as the 
Democrats who run this place, they are in charge, will they actually be 
creative enough? Will they be forward-thinking enough to say, as we are 
looking at tax policy, where we are going to do stimulus policy, 
regulatory policy, are we building it for what the future of the 
economy looks like, for the future of opportunity, and will it be 
designed to actually help all Americans?
  So some simple examples, and I am going to then use some of the 
display boards. We know there is already $1 trillion sitting in bank 
accounts at the Treasury right now that are supposed to be helping 
schools, States, others who are in need right now. And instead, today, 
we spent all day debating $1.9 trillion of new spending over the next 
year. Instead of saying, hey, there is $1 trillion sitting in these 
accounts. What can we do to help the Biden administration get it out 
the door, get it to those schools, to healthcare workers, to the places 
that are already designated?
  That is part of the problem around this place is we engage sort of in 
the theatrics, but the really assisting and providing the resources for 
the management to actually get to where the need is, that is secondary 
because, in some ways, that doesn't give you the same television time 
opportunity.
  So a couple of things I wanted to walk through is, if I come to you 
and tell you there is $1 trillion already sitting in accounts right 
now--it turns out, CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, just did some 
projections, and we want this better. But this is as if the additional 
$1.9 trillion of spending were not to happen; we would just stay where 
we are at with the dollars that are already appropriated, with the 
budget that is already sort of modeled out.
  If you actually look here, 2020, miserable fall in the size of our 
economy. But our projections are functionally, by the end of the year, 
we expect growth to actually be substantially positive. We are looking 
at a year with just under 4 percent GDP growth. That is terrific. I 
would like to see it more, and we could see it more if we would 
actually target some of the resources, instead of doing what is often 
referred to around here as a peanut butter spread, where we are going 
to spend lots of money so we make sure we don't annoy any constituent 
groups; or particularly let's put money where, you know, we made these 
public employee unions happy. We made this group happy.
  I think this needs to be less about making our politics happy and 
making this line go up even further. And that is actually what, if we 
would actually draft the legislation, I think you would see Republicans 
line up with Democrats and probably, not for $1.9 trillion because we 
know that is just almost absurd. But there are some real opportunities 
to make this GDP growth substantially, substantially better.
  As we sort of walk through some of the ideas that I am trying to 
promote, and I am trying to find some of my friends on the other side, 
particularly the Joint Economic Committee Democrats and some of the 
Ways and Means Democrats, there is something very special going on 
right now and we need to seize this as an opportunity.
  In a time that has been so difficult for so many small businesses in 
America, small entrepreneurs, microentrepreneurs, something has 
happened. Do you know this last year was the biggest year ever in this 
country for people starting new little businesses? Filing for new LLCs, 
just starting new businesses. And you can see it here in the chart.
  That is a pretty big spike when you consider 2019 was one of the 
greatest economic expansion years in modern history. 2018, 2019 were 
remarkable years economically, and yet, 2020, in the middle of such 
difficulties, we are seeing people becoming entrepreneurial, taking 
risks.

  If we are going to work on public policy, where we want to build a 
more egalitarian, a more robust economy next year, this year, future 
years, how about a conversation where we get the Democrats to actually 
talk to us as Republicans, instead of just run us over policy-wise. How 
do you provide access to capital to some of these microbusinesses, 
these businesses that are being started in people's back bedrooms?
  How do you actually provide them a cleaner path through the 
regulatory bodies, the licensing, the permitting?
  Are we willing to be creative enough that, if you are poor and you 
happen to be willing to start a microbusiness and you live in public 
housing, you are actually allowed to run that business in the public 
housing, instead of being threatened with losing your lease?
  If you actually care about people, this is the time we say there is 
something going on in our society and our economy; is this one of the 
great disruptions a lot of the economists have been talking about, that 
when we have gone through this upheaval of this last year, what the 
future is going to look like?
  And does Congress actually provide assistance in a way that makes 
this economic change happen in a positive way? Or do we do what we are 
seeing in today's budget document, which was functionally, $1.9 
trillion, and most of it just going to fund either legacy economics, 
States and municipalities, where the numbers were stunningly out of 
whack? Or are we functionally funding the last decade's economy and not 
moving to the future economy?
  Now, I can try to explain this. If you will take a look at the bottom 
chart here--I put two charts on one board--you will actually see 
spending per government job lost. And the only point I am trying to 
make with this board is there is about $350 billion set aside in the 
Democrats' budget reconciliation bill.
  There have been about 350,000 jobs lost in the government sector. But 
let's first just do it by States. If that money were used for States, 
that is $1 million a job. If it is all of them, it is still $350,000 a 
job.
  This is actually how--if you actually say, here is the problem, here 
is the math of how much money is in that bill, you start to realize 
something is not lining up. And I desperately hope we can actually have 
an intellectually honest conversation saying, you want to help States 
and municipalities? We know from the Census Bureau--and it was as of 
the end of the third quarter because that is the last number we had--
State revenues were up. State and local revenues were up over 17 
percent last year, which is remarkable to think about, because it is 
unlike everything we have been told.
  Yes, there are municipalities around this country where their 
revenues have been crushed. They are also the very municipalities that 
have been most aggressive in their shutdowns. Maybe those are places we 
need to look at and figure out how we help them.
  But the math is the math, and State and local revenues are up, if you 
take the entire country, they are up rather dramatically.
  The top part is part of the argument of targeting. If you are going 
to have impact in the country while spending lots of money, do you 
spend it in a way where you actually put the money in places that--
let's be honest--don't need it? Or do you put the money to those who 
are truly hurting?
  And we can actually tell, because we can see it just in the 
aggregate. This is actually about commercial bank deposits, and this is 
telling us big businesses that got access to capital, wealthier people 
that actually got certain types of stimulus; stunning, stunning, 
stunning rise of cash sitting in banks right now.

[[Page H320]]

  Did the Democrats actually intend to hand these same people that much 
more money?
  So part of what we are arguing for is, please, could we actually take 
a step back and understand the data? It is not slowing things down. It 
is actually not sticking money into the very pockets that actually 
don't need it.
  The brutal political part is the folks that actually have these huge 
deposits, they are also the ones that often finance those campaigns.
  So let's actually walk through--and this one is a little tougher, and 
I probably will do more on the floor on it in the future because I want 
to go into some depth--$15 minimum wage. Okay. I am one of those who 
genuinely, desperately wants to find ways to help the working poor.
  Understand what was accomplished in 2018 and 2019. There seems to be 
this fear of actually acknowledging that there was an economic miracle 
going on. It was the fastest rise of wealth and income for the working 
poor in modern history. It was the first, not one, but 2 years in 
modern economic history where income inequality in this country 
actually shrank.
  If you say you end up with a society that becomes dangerously 
fractured as income inequality splits and splits and splits apart, 
there should have been joy in this body in 2018 and 2019 when that very 
income inequality shrank.
  The left can make whatever reason, excuse, but they need to at least 
acknowledge it happened. The working poor's wages went up dramatically.
  Nutrition, if you care about hunger, it was the first time in modern 
years where, what do they call it, food fragility, food stress, 
actually shrank. These are good things. Maybe we need to take a step 
back and say what did we do for 2018? What did we do, as a body, for 
2019 that created such prosperity, where revenues--so tax receipts is 
the proper way to call it, ways and means, tax receipts actually went 
up?
  If you actually did inflation-adjusted dollars, I think we had the 
number two and number three best years in U.S. history post-tax reform.
  We need to have an honest dialogue, and I know this is really 
difficult for the left. There are things for us on the right that are 
really difficult. But the fact of the matter is; whether things have 
changed in regulation; whether it is the things that changed in our tax 
code, whether it was the adoption of technology, there were lots of 
things moving in those couple of years there. But the fact of the 
matter is, U.S. society got much healthier, and not at cost to the 
Treasury.

                              {time}  1900

  If the truth here is that we care about where we are going 
economically, that we care about the economic stress, that we care 
about the working poor, a $1.9 trillion spending stimulus while 
ignoring the fact that we had a couple of years where we actually had 
success in shrinking income inequality, maybe we need to understand 
what we did there and do more of it.
  There is a reality here. If you want the working poor to have a 
better life, we can raise their wages to $15 an hour. But you also have 
to accept there is--I think one of these charts says it is like 3.2 
million American workers in that working poor category who are going to 
become much poorer because they will lose their employment.
  We will spend some more time on a couple of these boards in the near 
future to try to understand: Do you do what happened in 2018 and 2019, 
where what we saw is wages, almost everywhere in the country, were 
substantially above the minimum wage because of the scarcity of labor? 
Labor became valuable.
  There is also another controversial subject we are going to have to 
have an honest discussion on: immigration issues in regard to the 
importation of low-skilled labor. It was somewhat restricted in that 
time. Competition for labor shrank; therefore, the value of that labor 
went up.
  There is a combination of a robust economy, a tax code that is 
working, earned income tax credit, and things of that nature being 
expanded, and also not flooding the market with others with similar 
skill sets.
  A couple of others we want to just sort of walk through. This one is 
sort of difficult to get our heads around, but it is the math: total 
monthly spending effects of first and second stimulus payments by 
household income. What you find is, when you get up into the higher 
income, almost none of the money was really getting spent. It 
functionally went to make people's bank accounts more robust. When you 
went down, you saw more of the money actually getting spent.
  All we are trying to argue here is, if you are going to do direct 
stimulus to individuals, great, but make sure it is not going into 
populations that aren't going to spend it because you don't get any 
multiplier in the economy. Lots of good data exist on this, and you saw 
it in a previous chart when you saw how much is just sitting in bank 
accounts right now.
  Back to trying to make a point. This indicates income by households. 
I want to make sure I say this the right way. If you take a look at 
what I often refer to as sort of the miracle of 2018 and 2019, you 
started seeing populations that were in the lower percentiles. All of a 
sudden, their curve was much steeper than those who had typically 
benefited.
  There are series of data like this that we will show you, if you care 
about the working poor, that mimic what the Republicans accomplished in 
the tax reform and in the regulatory reform. If you are on the left, 
put it under a different name. But the fact of the matter is, the data 
is the data. There were some really wonderful things happening for the 
poor and the working poor in this country.
  Instead of going through the next couple of boards, I will save those 
for when we do a concentrated conversation.
  Madam Speaker, in sort of building a closing here, it has been a 
crappy month for a lot of us here in Congress. We have gone through 
some things I really thought I would never see.
  But I always thought, even outside, when many of us are standing in 
front of microphones and being a bit hyperbolic, thinking that the only 
way voters will actually hear our words is when we tell stories because 
math is too difficult, there have always been those moments in the 
back--or the joy of being in the Ways and Means Committee where we 
share a common back room, unlike so many other committees where you go 
off separately.
  In this time of COVID, we don't have those conversations right now. 
We don't hear each other's arguments and, hopefully, build policy that 
is good for the country.
  What we saw on the floor earlier today, I think, is somewhat 
shameful, a $1.9 trillion budget box, which is designed basically to be 
able to run through the process, get through the Senate with 51 votes, 
so they don't have to negotiate with any Republicans.
  But what was also sort of heartbreaking is so many of the things that 
were said just weren't true. They weren't mathematically true. They 
weren't policy true. They weren't historically true.
  The Speaker got up and said, I think, 83 percent of the benefits of 
tax reform went to the top 1 percent. That just isn't true. We have 
lots of papers and other things that say it isn't. I am sure the smart 
people around her know it is not true. But around here, if you say 
something enough times, it becomes part of, sort of, congressional 
folklore.

  To be correct, it is 25 percent of the benefits went to the top 1 
percent, but they pay just a stunning percentage of Federal income tax.
  How do we ever build policy, particularly for economic growth, for 
opportunity for everyone, and build a much more, shall we say, fair and 
egalitarian society when in the debates we have, so much of the 
discussion is make-believe? The math isn't true. Yet, if we say it 
enough times, you will hear it resaid over and over. I will argue that 
is where a lot of the crisis is around here.
  My family joke that Daddy works in a place that is a math-free zone 
was meant to be funny. It wasn't supposed to be true. The problem is, 
it is true.
  How do you make public policy in times of difficulty, when you want 
to have an economic future that is good for everyone, but when so much 
of the debate has so little to do with the truth?
  I double my commitment. Leading the Joint Economic Committee, our 
economists, our team, I know we have all committed to working with our

[[Page H321]]

Democrat colleagues on finding the things that look like they work and 
do more of it.
  I desperately hope we can find some Democrats who are less bathing in 
partisan rage, or whatever the proper term would be, and are willing to 
look at the math that would be good for all of us, good for the 
country, good for someone like myself who has a 5-year-old. I want her 
future to be amazing.
  I truly believe our society is at the moment of an economic 
disruption that, if we can get policy right, the next couple of years 
can be pretty darn amazing. The next decade could be just awesome. But 
right now, our regulatory policy and our reimbursement policies aren't 
there.
  How do we get the conversation to move back to things that will make 
this future amazing instead of just burying my 5-year-old daughter in 
more debt?
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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