[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 44 (Tuesday, March 9, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H1180-H1182]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        DEMOCRATS' SPENDING BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee 
(Mr. Kustoff), my friend, who had someone that was very special in his 
life that he wanted to talk about.


              Honoring the Life and Legacy of Drew Daniel

  Mr. KUSTOFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from 
Arizona for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I stand here tonight saddened because a little over a 
year ago, I took to the House floor to pay tribute to a dear friend, 
Peggy Daniel of west Tennessee, who had recently passed away.
  Today, we honor the life of her son and my friend, Drew Daniel, who 
left us way too soon. Drew passed away last week. He was a native of 
west Tennessee, the son of my friends, Peggy and Jimmy Daniel.
  Drew moved to Shelby County in the early 1990s for college, and he 
received his bachelor's degree in political science from the University 
of Memphis, where he then later achieved a master's degree in public 
administration. Drew interned in the House of Representatives for then-
Congressman Don Sundquist, who also was a close and dear friend of 
Drew's parents.

  Drew loved to volunteer for his community, and he was an active 
member of the Boy Scouts of America, the Midtown Rotary Club, and 
Memphis City Beautiful Commission.
  Drew was also extremely active in the Shelby County Republican Party 
and the Tennessee Republican Party. He had served as the Shelby County 
Young Republican chair and was an elected member of the Tennessee State 
executive committee of the Tennessee Republican Party. In 2019, Drew 
was selected as a Tennessee Republican Party Statesman of the year.
  Drew was also a longtime valued employee for David Lenoir in the 
Shelby County Trustee's Office and then an agent for New York Life.
  Without a doubt, Drew was a dedicated leader with a heart for public 
service and also for volunteerism. I really don't know many people who 
were more passionate about politics or their community than Drew 
Daniel.
  I have so many memories, seeing Drew and Peggy cheering on the 
Memphis Tigers in the Liberty Bowl and the FedEx Forum. Truly, as good 
of a person as Drew was, he was a great son to his parents and a 
terrific brother to Mike and Melanie.
  We are all better because of Drew, and he will be deeply missed by 
everyone. Roberta and I extend our deepest sympathies to his brother, 
Mike, and his sister, Melanie. Rest in peace, Drew.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, when we have someone special in our 
districts like that, sometimes with the chaos around here, it is hard 
finding time.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the things I wanted to do this evening is to 
start to build on a theme that I have done in the past, and I hope to 
be able to do over the coming months. But it is a little difficult 
right now because, let's be honest, the House is spending money at a 
pace where it is really hard for the Joint Economic Committee and even 
my own staff to try to keep up.
  We are going to talk about what is going on, a couple of things I 
really want us to start to put in the Record, talk about, and get our 
heads around.
  I have an absolute fixation of a moral obligation to the working poor 
in this country and an understanding of what happened in 2018 and 2019 
when the working poor, the value of their labor--and understand, for 
many of us who have graduate degrees and those things, who can work 
behind a computer, great. Our skill set is what we are selling.
  For much of the workforce, if you didn't finish high school or you 
have moderate skill sets, your labor is your value. What is going on 
here right now is almost a type of economic violence to that labor 
value.
  Yet, I am not sure my brothers and sisters on the other side even see 
it. So, let's first delve into a little bit of what is going on at the 
border. Do understand, one of the things we see in the math from 2018 
and 2019, when the working poor got dramatically less poor, the first 2 
years in modern times where income inequality shrank--not because rich 
people got less rich, but because poor people made money--the value of 
their labor increased because they weren't competing with armies of 
other unskilled labor.
  Mr. Speaker, if we are going to be honest around here and say we care 
about the poor, that we care about the working poor, don't you see the 
economic violence we are allowing to happen at the border, making our 
folks have to compete with floods of moderate- to low-skilled 
immigrants? I know it is an uncomfortable conversation, but we need to 
see it in the totality of the people we claim we care about.
  Then, the other day, I made a mistake on one of the hard-left-leaning 
cable television shows. They were trying to compare what we did in tax 
reform to the Democrats' $1.9 trillion spending bill and said: Well, 
they are both $1.9 trillion. But look here, this went to tax cuts, 
where this goes to spending. Isn't the spending so much more wonderful?

                              {time}  2115

  Once again, I need my brothers and sisters on the left to go back to 
school and spend a moment paying attention in their economics class. 
The elegance of the tax reform was that it made the value of workers' 
labor more valuable because the economy grew. We specifically made it 
so businesses would take part of that tax reform and put it into things 
that made their businesses more productive, making it so you can pay 
people more.
  Remember, individuals' wages go up on two things, inflation and 
productivity. It is one of the reasons in 2018 and 2019 we had the 
fastest wage growth of workers, particularly the working poor in modern 
history.
  So what is the Democrat solution to help these populations?
  We are going to send them a check. And maybe part of that is good. 
There are people out there who are really suffering and hurting.
  But what do we do next year?
  The elegance of when you have someone's labor become more valuable is

[[Page H1181]]

that value sets; and then the next year, it builds on it; and the next 
year, it builds on it; and after a little while, they are no longer in 
the working poor.
  We are going to do a patch that is going to load another $1.9 
trillion of debt. And over the decade, the amount of interest we are 
going to pay on that is not $1.9 trillion, but it is probably $1.6 
trillion. That is one of the things we are going to talk about just 
real quickly here.
  I cannot produce these boards fast enough to keep up with the 
Democrats' spending agenda right now. The CBO can't produce the data 
fast enough. The Joint Economic Committee can't produce the data fast 
enough to even get our heads around it.
  So this slide here is from September. Understand, the numbers are 
much uglier today. It was a simple point in functioning 8 budget years. 
In September, we were saying each family would have $230,000 of Federal 
debt applied to their household, the amount of debt. So that is every 
household. That is not tax-paying households; that is every household. 
Today, my back-of-the-napkin math is about a quarter of a million 
dollars in 8 years for every family in America. We are spending that 
fast.
  Being the father of a 5-year-old, I see the economic violence being 
done by the left here to her future, to the kids' futures. I am looking 
for the day I have to sit her down and apologize that she is not going 
to live as well as I have lived because of what we allowed to happen 
here today.
  Let's have a quick education. Let's walk through real quick where the 
money goes. Social Security, about $1 trillion. Remember, this is based 
on last year's numbers. Today, these numbers have ballooned again. 
Defense, 724. Medicare, right now, I believe this year has now 
surpassed defense. So my last bit of math was Medicare was now starting 
to pass defense in total spending. Health, that is ObamaCare, that is 
all the other entitlements.
  But if you actually look at the slide, Social Security, Medicare, the 
other health entitlements, income security, interest, veterans. It is 
the vast majority of spending. Yet you look at these tiny little 
slices, like, this little slice over here is foreign aid.
  Yet how often do the politicians get behind these microphones and 
say, well, if we would cut foreign aid?
  If this were a clock, I think foreign aid would cover about 14 
minutes of spending in an entire day, in a 24-hour day.
  If we don't get our heads around the fact that the Medicare, the 
health entitlements, the net interest are the things now which will 
drive our debt, I am terrified of what is coming. Because, understand, 
it is really hard to say, but our demographics, we are getting older 
very quickly as a society. If you look at the 30-year curve, we are a 
country that doesn't make it. We are so buried in debt.
  And the economic violence the Democrats are committing tomorrow by 
adding another $1.9 trillion on top of the trillion that is already 
sitting in the bank and hasn't been expended, that we have done this 
last year, are we thinking about anything other than our next 
reelection?
  How about thinking about my 5-year-old daughter and what her economic 
future is. How about everyone else's economic future.
  I am going to try to do a couple of these quickly. We were trying to 
use CBO's numbers. The problem is, they haven't updated them yet on how 
fast we are spending. But what is so important here in functionally 8 
budget years--now, this slide looks a little different than your 
typical debt slide because we calculate it on debt that is sold to the 
public, not internal debt.
  Remember, when you look at U.S. sovereign debts, there are, sort of, 
two pies. There is stuff where we reach into the Social Security fund, 
grab that money, and borrow it, and put IOUs in it.
  The other debt that is economically dangerous--because when interest 
rates move, it causes a problem--we are going to talk about that real 
quickly. This is debt sold to the public. It might be China; it might 
be Japan; it might be your grandma's pension. In about 8 years, debt 
held by the public will double from where we were last year. Understand 
how fast.
  Now, a lot of this, believe it or not, even though some of the crazy 
spending we are doing right now is the demographics, demographics 
aren't Republican and Democrat. It is just math that we don't like to 
talk about. But the fact of the matter is that we have made promises, 
and the money that we collected for those promises, we have already 
spent and we are going to have to borrow.
  So understand the fragility--I love that word, fragility--we have 
given ourselves. Interest rates in January were under 1 percent. They 
were actually at .91. Today, when the market closed, I think it was, 
1.54, something in that nature. Most of us go, big deal, this still is 
historically really, really, really cheap. Except, think about it. Just 
that little movement in the last 2 months is about $600 billion over 
the next 10 years. Just that little movement, $600 billion of interest.

  What are we buying with that interest?
  Nothing.
  And there are a lot of economists out there who think, because we are 
spending at such a fast rate, we are going to start to chase our tail. 
Part of that may be because the economy actually is getting healthier. 
One of the great intense ironies is we are about to spend $1.9 
trillion, pretend it is a stimulus--even though a bunch of that money 
doesn't get spent for a year, 2 years, a little bit, 3 years from now--
claim it is a stimulus, pile it on as debt that is going to cost $2.6 
trillion with financing costs added to it. Only a sliver of it is 
actually economic stimulus. And because we are going to the markets to 
finance every dime of it, we are helping drive up our own interest 
rates. Meaning, we are going to chase our tail economically.
  Do you understand?
  Remember the pie chart from before, that interest right now. We 
expect, within about a decade, interest may be the second most 
expensive thing in our budget. You will be seeing Social Security, 
Medicare, and then interest right up there, and that is going to 
consume everything. There functionally will be no more money left.
  I know I am getting a little thick, but to try to drive this home, 
the changes in debt that happen from where the CBO was projecting back 
in January to some of the numbers we are seeing right now.
  So just for the fun of it--I know this is hard to read. We just did a 
calculation and said, hey--the CBO basically said, hey, interest rates 
are going to go up a quarter percent. Think of it as 25 basis points. 
But if we went up 100 basis points in interest, over the 10 years of 
financing that, we are basically looking at--what is that--another $3.5 
trillion of financing costs.
  So, yes, you get to say we are spending that $1.9 trillion today, but 
do you understand the total cost of that?
  So it is not just the cost of the legislation. It is the cascade 
effect that you are creating to the economy; where that family who 
wants to buy their first home, you just raised their mortgage interest 
rates.
  But on a national basis, this year we will finance probably about $10 
trillion. My quick estimate is about $7 trillion on just our bonds that 
are rolling off, that we have to refinance because we have no cash to 
pay for them. So they get reset at the new interest rates.
  Then we have our typical spending. So there goes another trillion 
dollars, plus the trillion we authorized back in December and last 
year, and now another couple trillion dollars. So another four on top 
of that seven, and you start to look at over $10 trillion of new issue 
or refinancing coming to market of U.S. sovereign debt.
  What did we just do to our interest rates, the world interest rates, 
the value of money?
  And this comes back to my earlier point. We talk about what is 
happening in income inequality, the working poor. Those of us who have 
stocks or have a house or have assets, when you do this type of 
monetization of debt, when it requires the Federal Reserve to keep 
pumping in--today, we have 20 percent more cash floating around in our 
economy than we had a year ago.
  People who are wealthy own things. They make a lot of money because 
their assets get more and more valuable.
  The working poor who don't own a house, they don't own stocks, they 
don't have a bond, they don't have a

[[Page H1182]]

pension. What they have, they get crushed. That is what we are doing to 
the working poor here.
  Please, someone, buy an economic book for my Democrat brothers and 
sisters to understand. There is going to be a lot of singing and happy 
in a couple months when they get the check. And next year, when they 
realize they are being crushed, who will step up and actually take 
blame, saying, we could have done things that would have grown the 
economy, grown your future income, made so the working poor actually 
had a future?
  Instead, we are going to flood the market with competing labor. We 
are going to devalue any asset you have, and we are going to make it so 
you can never afford to get out of the quartile where you are trapped. 
And this is what leftist policies do to poor people.
  So, look, this is a theme. We are going to build on it and we are 
going to bring in more and more data and facts and see if we can turn 
around some of the heads here to say it is not enough to talk that we 
care. It is when you actually can stand up and say Republican policies 
in 2018 and 2019, before the virus, we actually made a difference. We 
are the party that actually closed income inequality. We are the party 
that actually made the working poor less poor.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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