[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 199 (Tuesday, November 16, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H6307-H6311]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            ECONOMIC CRUELTY

  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. Madam Speaker, we are going to do a couple of things 
tonight. Most of it is going to be economic heavy. We are going to 
actually go over the Democrat's social spending bill and its economic 
effects.
  First, I wanted to touch on something that I am somewhat hopeful that 
the left and the right could embrace. I am thinking of what we have 
gone through for almost 2 years now, and that is the pandemic. If I 
came to you tomorrow and said: Okay. We have vaccinations, but we are 
about to have therapeutics.
  Think about this. You have all seen the news that we now have a 
second drug company. The Wall Street Journal today has an amazing, 
wonderful article on protease inhibitors and their effectiveness. The 
fact that Pfizer has publicly said their antiviral medication is up 
around 89 percent effective, it is a lot of pills that may need to be 
taken with a second pharmaceutical, but isn't this the holy grail?
  We have talked about this over and over, saying you now have home 
COVID tests. Now you can take your antiviral at home. And you start to 
understand the elegance of how this type of antiviral works in sort of 
snipping the proteins and making them so they don't grow or they can't 
attach to the cell walls.
  So if this exists technology-wise, and one of the antivirals is 
already in front of the FDA today. I think we saw a news clip this 
afternoon that the second one may be presented on Tuesday. The Pfizer 
pharmaceutical will be presented to the FDA, but it may take a month or 
so.
  If we are in a world now where we have multiple vaccines, we actually 
now have therapeutics and antiviral home testing kits--you can take the 
antiviral at home--it is time, once these are approved, to declare the 
pandemic over.
  Why is this really important? Think of the societal friction, the 
battles we have created by mask mandates, by vaccine mandates. We now 
see the data of how, in our labor supply, folks are saying: No, I 
believe in body autonomy. I am not taking the vaccine or doing this or 
doing that.
  The reality of it is, we have been so successful as a country, as a 
society, in believing in science. Remember, how many times did we hear 
that, believing in science?
  If the FDA approves, which we are hopeful maybe it happens in the 
next month, the antivirals--and the press releases from the 
pharmaceutical companies are that there will be a couple hundred 
thousand sets by the end of this year and apparently millions available 
starting in the new year--it is time to declare the pandemic over.
  Our office has put together a piece of legislation, and we are going 
to put it in circulation once we have sort of vetted it in the next 
couple of days. I would encourage any of my brothers and sisters on the 
left and the right that, if you believe in science and you really want 
a solution, it is time to embrace the fact of how far we have come and 
the solution is here.
  We are going to do a little bit of basic economics and try to tap 
some of the discussion that I think has been missed on the left's 
social spending bill.
  First, let's have an honest conversation on where we are economically 
right now and what our world looks like. If any of you are planning on 
having a retirement, if any of you have children or grandchildren and 
you actually give a darn about them, first understand how much trouble 
we are in immediately, right now, today.
  The CBO numbers, in 29 years, we are at $112 trillion of borrowed 
money. That is inflation adjusted, 112 trillion public dollars. This 
isn't borrowing where we take credit for borrowing from trust funds. 
This is publicly borrowed, inflation-adjusted. Functionally, in 29 
budget years, we are at $112 trillion. That is the CBO estimate.
  If you are a young person--and you want to be honest with them--your 
economic future is about to be brutalized.
  The reality of it is, I have done this on the floor multiple times. 
It is fascinating how many on the left, and

[[Page H6308]]

even the right, when you start to walk through what drives U.S. 
sovereign debt, it is a very uncomfortable conversation.
  The fact of the matter is, Medicare is the primary driver of U.S. 
sovereign debt. Social Security is second. The rest of the budget is in 
balance.
  At the end of the 30-year model, right now, according to the CBO, the 
rest of the budget, if you strip Medicare and if you strip Social 
Security out, the budget actually has a positive balance.
  If you believe it is a moral obligation for us to keep our promises 
that Medicare will be there, that Social Security will be there, why 
isn't this what we work on every day instead of discussions about how 
we can spend a whole bunch more money, take over a whole bunch more of 
the economy, slow the economy down and make this Nation poorer?
  What we are going to show is the economic models that show the 
Democrats' spending bill actually crushes poor people. It actually 
makes the working poor poorer. It makes society poor. I don't believe 
that is the intention, but it is the economics.
  Sometimes, when you get your math wrong, it is a level of cruelty.
  A simple thought experiment: What are the two things that you do to 
crush the working poor? Inflation.
  Well, we are doing a great job on that, aren't we? The fact of the 
matter is, what inflation does to the working poor is economic cruelty.
  The second thing, you open your borders up, adding millions of 
individuals with similar skill sets. Say you are that individual that 
didn't finish high school, but you are out there hanging drywall. You 
have a family. You are getting good at your profession. You are trying 
to learn how to move up. Then you flood the market with people with 
similar skill sets.
  There are great peer-reviewed papers out there that talk about just 
what we have done at the border. A decade from now, you made the 
working poor poorer and now overlay what all this spending has done 
inflation-wise.
  If we, as Members of Congress, give a darn about the working poor, 
the economic violence that is being committed right now by the policies 
coming out of this Congress, it is time to step up and deal with the 
reality.
  The problem is, the working poor aren't our contributors. They are 
not the ones showing up here lobbying us. They are the individuals we 
have a moral obligation to do good things for, and that is not what is 
happening.
  We are going to walk through some of where we are today. You have to 
understand that the national debt right now is projected to leap to 200 
percent in 2050, so, functionally, 29 budget cycles from now. If the 
Biden proposals--these are the ones that were proposed during the 
election, and I have to accept a bunch of that has been trimmed back in 
the debate, not as much as you might think. We are going to go over 
that.
  You go, functionally, from 200 percent of debt to GDP--meaning the 
borrowed money will be 200 times bigger than the GDP. If you add it all 
up, in 29 budget years, you are over 328 percent of debt to GDP.
  If any of you are thinking about having a retirement, if you are 
thinking about your kids, your grandkids, this is what wipes us out as 
a society. It is terrifying to talk about because it is hard. It 
requires lots of levers.
  You have to get immigration right. You have to get finance right. You 
have to get spending right. You have to get tax policy right. You have 
to do everything that maximizes economic expansion. Then the holy 
grail: You are going to have to crash the price of healthcare, not 
shift around who pays for it.
  Remember, the ACA, many of you know it as ObamaCare, the Republican 
alternative, Medicare for All, in many ways it is about who pays and 
who gets subsidized. It is not about what we pay.
  I cannot tell you how many times I have come to this floor and tried 
to drill that into the way we think. But instead, the scam here is we 
talk about: Well, you are going to get subsidized.
  But we did nothing to what we pay. The difference is we just borrow 
money--that is, the Federal Government--and pay for it that way.
  Even a 100 percent tax rate on small businesses, upper-class 
families--so a 100 percent tax rate and you are taking every single 
dollar, you can't even come close to balancing the budget and balancing 
it long term. The numbers are this ugly.

                              {time}  1730

  When you take a look, it is not that hard. The 2050 number, if you 
take every dime even of folks who make $1 million or $500,000, if you 
take every dime, you don't get close. The numbers are this ugly. The 
share of Federal tax revenue spent on interest in the national debt is 
projected to surge.
  But here is the number that terrifies me: If we move up 2 points--2 
points--functionally at the 2050, 2051 mark, 100 percent of revenues--
100 percent of revenues--in that 30-year budget window, move up 2 
points from where we are right now, our baseline, 100 percent of tax 
revenues will be just covering the interest costs.
  So is anyone familiar with a book that was called ``The Black Swan''? 
Okay, Taleb also wrote another book. And I understand, there are 
economists out there, Gilder and others, who disagree with parts of the 
model. But there was one concept of making yourself fragile. A simple 
example is you go to the airport 10 times; you know if you leave at 
exactly this moment you can get to the airport exactly as your flight 
is getting ready to board; and the first time there is a car accident, 
you miss your flight. We are doing that type of thing to our entire 
country, to my 6-year-old daughter, and to anyone else out there.
  We are living on a razor's edge.
  Madam Speaker, you saw that last slide, 2 points moving back to what 
would be closer to normality interest-rate wise. In the 30-year budget 
window, 100 percent of revenues, receipts if you want to use the 
technical term, will go just to cover the interest.
  Madam Speaker, do you understand how fragile we have made the 
economics of this country?
  And then the debate here is how to spend more money. I understand 
money gets you reelected, and promising things gets you reelected. It 
gets nice contributions, and it is absolutely perverse when you think 
about where we are at.
  So now let's talk about the budget gimmicks. Many of you are going to 
refer to this as the Build Back Better plan. In our office we are 
calling it the social spending plan because that is what it is. It is 
laced with gimmicks. It is going to be fascinating come Friday to see 
how CBO ultimately scores these. I'm a little disappointed on what we 
have seen from the Joint Committee on Taxation and some of the others. 
I don't think we are getting actual quality, dynamic scoring, but that 
is hard. It takes time. You have to lay it out, break it apart, and try 
to understand what the economic effects are.
  But you walk through the gimmicks, Madam Speaker, and a simple 
example is the White House has estimated $400 billion in some of the 
Joint Committee on Taxation scores from IRS collecting more money. But 
CBO came out and said: No, it is not $400 billion; it is 120.
  Then you start to realize, Madam Speaker, the debates you are hearing 
on the floor here are completely stacked with absolutely fraudulent 
numbers.
  I remember how hard--when we did tax reform--we had to work to 
justify dynamic scoring and make the math as honest as possible to 
work, and it was our brothers and sisters on the left who absolutely 
were insistent. Today they would never hold themselves to the same 
standard that they demanded from us just a couple of years ago.
  So let's walk through an example of one of the absolute frauds that 
the left is using. So President Trump had a drug rebate. This is a 
little geeky, but it is important to understand. Ultimately, the rebate 
was going to be to the consumer. So you are on Medicare, you are in 
line at the pharmacy, the rebate that would have gone into the backside 
of the provider, the acquirer, think of it as the wholesaler of the 
pharmaceutical, that rebate now comes to you at the counter. It means 
the consumer would get the value, but it would mean the costs of 
pharmaceuticals would go up for government because the government isn't 
ultimately getting that value.
  So here are sort of the steps of the Trump administration's rebate 
rule: it was estimated to cost about $150 billion over 10 years.
  Speaker Pelosi said: It will never happen.

[[Page H6309]]

  Democratic leadership here said: It will never happen.
  Democrat leadership in the Senate said: Unacceptable, it will never 
happen.
  This was never, ever, ever, ever going to happen.
  This was the whole system of how the consumer would have gotten the 
benefit of those rebates, but it would have cost the Federal Government 
$150 billion over 10 years, but it was never going to happen unless, of 
course, you are a Democrat looking for money to spend on their social 
entitlement bill, all of a sudden saying: Hey, this is never going to 
happen, but we can score it in, so we are going to use it.
  It is just another gimmick, it is a con, and it is a fraud. If we 
were doing this, we would be ashamed of ourselves and should be. But 
this is actually the scam that now is Democrat leadership.
  So you take a look at the budget gimmicks that are already built into 
here, Madam Speaker, and you start to realize the left's social 
spending bill is like a house of cards. Now, they may get some scoring. 
Like the last one I was just showing you, Madam Speaker, CBO will give 
them that $150 billion. There will be a nice little footnote saying 
that this was never really going to become policy but because it was a 
proposal and they are canceling the proposal, we are going to give them 
the 150 or maybe $145 billion worth of credit.
  But the public needs to understand those trillions and trillions and 
trillions--$112 trillion in the baseline as it is right now in 29 
budget years--that is how you get there.
  The left will say: This is paid for.
  No. It is not. And they know that. They are not dumb. They are 
manipulative, but they are not dumb. When you start to look at just the 
games being done, Madam Speaker, and then the spending--and that is the 
other thing we are going to work through here is how much of this 
spending do they really plan to cancel in year 2?
  So, Madam Speaker, you are seeing some spending scoring saying that 
we estimate this is $1\3/4\ trillion, wink, wink, nod, nod, but when it 
becomes a 10-year instead of disappearing in the second year, you are 
4\1/2\ plus trillion dollars of new obligations.
  Look up and down the different budget gimmicks. One of the reasons I 
did this slide is because it is a little more of an economically 
difficult concept. So you actually have in there an adjusted gross 
income surcharge on the top income earners.
  Madam Speaker, you know the Democrats' proposal is to do a very 
similar thing on corporations. The alternative minimum tax that is also 
being put on corporations; we are just now starting to model how much 
it actually will slow down the economy.
  Here is why: You have this thing we call expensing. It was one of the 
great economic drivers particularly in 2018 and 2019. Do you remember 
we far exceeded revenue projections, Madam Speaker, income inequality 
truly shrank, poverty shrank, and food insecurity shrank? The poor got 
dramatically less poor. They were 2 amazing years. It is a great model 
to demonstrate what supply-side economics really does.
  But a lot of the economic expansion was because of something called 
expensing. So you buy a piece of equipment, it makes your company more 
productive, and you are able to pay people more. It moves technology 
and moves business production forward into the next century.
  If you do a minimum alternative tax at a corporate level, then you no 
longer get the economic value of that expensing. I know this is really 
geeky, but it is really important to understand. We are just now 
starting to model this thing saying: Oh, heavens, so the Democrats are 
doing the wink, wink, nod, nod con of they are not taking away the 
expensing which is the primary driver that we saw in productivity from 
the last 2 years since tax reform, but by doing this alternative 
minimum tax calculation, you don't get the value of that depreciation. 
All of a sudden, the investment in capital products--capital goods and 
capital equipment--will disappear. It is another example of a really 
bad understanding of the most basic economics.
  I can understand why the left wants to do this. It is the number of 
new IRS agents, the number of agencies that will have potentially 
hundreds of thousands of new employees. Remember, one of the models was 
80,000 new IRS employees. Well, okay, maybe it makes sense if I was on 
the Democrat side or I represented northern Virginia or areas like that 
where I have lots of unionized government-working constituents. But we 
need to be honest about that, the build back better, the social 
spending bill on the left, massively increases the bureaucracy.
  You start to look at the hundreds of millions that are being put in 
to expand the size of the national bureaucracy. It is not like we are 
doing the leap of technology saying that with the investment it is 
going to make society more productive. It is like our argument of air 
quality and environmental quality, using technology is the way to make 
us healthier. Instead, the left designs it in ways where there are new 
armies of public employees.
  I have to congratulate the left. Madam Speaker, you are going to see 
some slides here. We are going to be number one. Yes. The United States 
will be absolutely number one in the highest tax rates on income in the 
entire industrialized world.
  But we are starting to see if you are a resident of California, you 
are going to be about 64.7 percent for top income earners and high 
income earners. Fine.
  If you are in Arizona you are going to be at 55.9.
  New York gets the prize. They are going to be over 66 percent for top 
income earners when you do the Federal, the surcharges, State, and 
local taxes.
  Don't we have lots of data already in the economic literature of what 
happens when we start to hit these confiscatory levels of tax on 
income?
  What do people do?
  You start to realize saying, okay, I can work and get this tax rate, 
or I can take my resources and put them in other types of things--
municipal bonds, other types of things--and reap the rewards from that 
because if more than half of the upper income now goes to government, 
then we have just created an incentive not to invest and not to take 
risks but just take the money, put it in safe places, and don't play 
anymore.
  I am frustrated because I know the Tax Foundation has been trying to 
model the taxes but we don't have good data yet on what does this mean 
in future GDP growth.
  Back to the very first board we held up: our society is heading 
towards a debt cliff. The baseline as it is today from CBO in 29 budget 
years, we are at $112 trillion in borrowed money in today's dollars, 
and that is where policy is today.
  When you start to do this, and economic growth slows, then you 
functionally bring the financial apocalypse a lot sooner.
  So let's actually also talk through a couple other duplicities that 
are in the Democrats' build back better social spending bill. They sure 
do like rich people.
  Two-thirds of the millionaires get a tax cut under the build back 
better, and if we take the folks getting over $1 million, 66 percent of 
them actually benefit. And this is one of the things we have come to 
the floor now for almost a year talking about instead of raising 
taxes--and the rhetoric that we hear over and over from the left where 
the rich need to pay their fair share--maybe we should just stop 
subsidizing them.
  We have come to the floor over and over and shown that almost $1.4 
trillion of subsidies go to the very top, top, top income earners. If 
you stop the subsidy, Madam Speaker, then you don't create the economic 
distortions.
  So this is the great scam: Democrats are saying, We are going to 
raise the taxes, these surcharges, but then we are going to turn 
around, and as long as these rich people do what we ask them to do--
they buy the right type of solar panels, the right type of electric 
car--then we are going to turn around and hand them cash.

                              {time}  1745

  Now that is something that the vast majority of Americans will never 
be able to afford, but you will be happy to know that the Democrats' 
plan is to subsidize the rich. And it gets even darker.
  So now the Democrats are going to put in SALT, State and Local Tax 
deduction. And the great thing is, if you make $1 million a year, it 
looks like you are going to get the vast majority,

[[Page H6310]]

you are going to get the highest amount of this money. But for the 
population that is $400,000 and up, they get the majority of the SALT. 
It is, once again, the Democrats subsidizing the rich and the really 
rich.
  And for everyone else who is functionally making $150,000 and less, 
you don't get anything. You don't get any value here. How can this be?
  I mean, am I living in a parallel universe where the rhetoric from 
the left is, tax rich people; wink, wink, nod, nod. Not only do we 
subsidize them when they buy the things we want them to buy; but then 
we are going to give them additional tax benefits. We are going to make 
additional things they spend money on deductible; and the rest of the 
population just be screwed.
  I grabbed this one, it substantially basically makes some other 
points. So think of this: In the Democrats' social spending bill, best 
as I can identify it, there is about $100 billion to finance amnesty. 
Okay. So it functionally gives a 5-year visa to millions of folks who 
are here undocumented illegally.
  But you remember our earlier discussion? What are the two things you 
do to create economic violence to the working poor? Inflation. Well, 
too many--remember our elementary school economics class? Too many 
dollars chasing too few goods.
  So the left put out lots and lots and lots of money to people's bank 
accounts because that is great politics; instead of using those 
resources to say we are going to make our society more efficient, more 
clean, more productive. And that productivity means you can pay people 
more, and you have a society that grows, and then maybe we can take on 
our debt problem.
  But we did it just backwards. So now you get to see what Keynesian 
economics looks like. And are you enjoying the inflation yet? Because 
it looks like it is going to continue to pop. And then, flooding 
society with lots of other low-skilled workers.
  Okay. Well, it will be interesting to see how long it is before the 
left actually has to come in here and say we need to do additional 
subsidies to the working poor because we stuck it to them.
  And look; if anyone has a question, we have multiple papers, 
university peer-reviewed papers talking about how the Democrats' plan 
actually will make the poor poorer by the end of the decade. University 
of Chicago, four Ph.D. economists published a paper a couple of weeks 
ago showing that the lowest quartile of income--and I despise the term 
quartiles, but that is what economists use--will be poorer at the end 
of the decade.
  Now, a lot of that is because of the Democrats' unwillingness to 
attach the benefits to learning job skills, to actually working. They 
have severed those. You would have thought we learned that during the 
Clinton years, when you rewarded work, rewarded going and gaining job 
skills--we are going back to the bad old days of saying, if you want to 
just not work, you will be happy. As long as you vote for the right 
party, we are going to send you a check.
  Does anyone see the cruelty here?
  Now, there are some things in this spending that look--endangered 
plants, okay, it is $4.9 million. Desert fish, okay, $4.9 million. 
Fresh water mussels, which are actually a real problem, but it is $19 
million. And everyone understands the difference between $1 million and 
billions.
  So $100 billion for amnesty, but $19 million for functionally--we 
will call it invasive species and protecting others. It is like the 
drop of a bucket in an ocean wave. But it gives you a sense where--so 
the Democrats get a nice talking point, but the math is absolutely 
perverse.
  Ultimately, over the next decade, you have got to deal with this one 
way or the other. Either what the left is doing is when--you are going 
to see the scoring this Friday of how many programs saying, well, we 
are going to spend all this money on a transfer payment, European style 
transfer payment, but it is only for 2 years; wink, wink, nod, nod. A 
future Congress won't continue it.
  You all remember the fraud of the last time we had--Speaker Pelosi a 
decade ago--and there were multiple spending bills, where the way they 
fit into something called PAYGO is, we are going to spend this much, 
this much, but on the fifth year we are going to just pretend the 
program no longer spends any money.
  Well, this is now the more modern version of that fraud that was 
committed financially, budgetarily, is we are going to spend the money 
for a year or two, and then we are going to pretend it stops; and that 
way we hit certain budget boxes to meet the reconciliation; wink, wink, 
nod, nod. Will the voters be paying attention to it?
  But let's say they are honest. It is not likely, but let's say that 
honestly that is not the scam; that they fully intend to spend all this 
money, get themselves through the next election, and then stop the 
spending.
  Well, in that case, the taxes are permanent because the taxes don't 
expire, even though, what we can tell best from the revenues, they 
don't come close to covering all the spending.
  And if the spending is made permanent, the social entitlement 
transfers, over the 10 years, this is trillions and trillions of 
dollars out of balance.
  I understand--and, look, this is one of my great sins, and I think a 
lot of us on the conservative side, we sound like accountants on 
steroids.
  You know, we come and talk about GDP and workforce, labor force 
participation. But the fact of the matter is, if you care for people, 
if you believe growth, economic growth is moral; that it provides 
opportunities; that that is how you save for retirement; that is how 
you help your child go to college; that is how you have a better house, 
a better life; it is the opportunities that growth creates. So when you 
see someone like me come behind the microphone and talk about GDP and 
the benefits it brings, it is a number. It is classical economics. It 
is also that poor family that is trying to be less poor.

  And the tax foundation has done a bunch of modeling that makes it 
pretty darn clear that the left social spending bill is going to make 
our entire society poorer. When you start to look at these numbers over 
the decade, and at the end of decade, we won't have grown as much.
  We are going to be missing--I mean, in a decade, we are missing a 
half a trillion dollars of economic growth, of GDP.
  You remember our very first board? What is--for my little girl, for 
everyone else out there, this is what wipes us out as a society. This 
is the thing that this body is terrified to talk about. And this is 
already the baseline.
  The baseline from CBO already says, in 29 budget years, we are $112 
trillion of borrowed money, and that is assuming really stable interest 
rates. That is assuming no more wars. It is assuming no more major 
recessions.
  We were doing one attempt to try to calculate these numbers. So the 
Penn Wharton model, that was published actually today, where they were 
trying to figure out how much more it would add to the debt. So the 
Penn Wharton model said, if the spending is continued, which is the 
obvious thing that is going to happen, it adds 24.4 percent to the 
debt. Okay. Now we didn't have enough time to break through all their 
tables, and we will work through that.
  But just off the top of your head, $112 trillion, if you added 24.4 
percent on it, that is close to $140 trillion of borrowed money; 139 
something.
  You have got to understand, this is what the left is leading us to, 
instead of coming in and saying, we are going to protect Medicare by 
investing in things that cure.
  Remember, this Medicare dollar? You know, $77 trillion plus of 
borrowing in the next 29 years, just to cover the Medicare portion 
shortfall? 31 percent of that is just diabetes.
  You could have a connection here between the left and the right 
saying, we are going to do an operation warp speed and go at diabetes 
because it turns out by curing the misery you also have a major effect 
on the debt. That is creativity, that is being rational. Instead of 
trying to buy your next election, and pretending to finance it with a 
whole bunch of gimmicks that don't really create revenues; that are 
going to create borrowed money.
  And it is not CBO, it is not me. It is the outside groups that play 
it straight. Tell Penn Wharton and others that they are lying, because 
they have done the--I think they underscore economic growth on some 
things.

[[Page H6311]]

  But the fact of the matter is, if the left is about to pass a piece 
of legislation at the end of this week that looks like it is likely to 
add another 24.4 percent to the debt, does anyone see the level of 
immorality in wiping out economic growth and the opportunity?
  And we had a couple of years there where it was working. The fact of 
the matter is 2018, 2019 were Goldilocks, and it was done because we 
invested in the things that create opportunity and growth, instead of 
the model right now, where the left is going to invest in things that 
functionally slow economic growth down; make individuals dependent on 
the Federal Government; disincentivize participating in the economy?
  And if any of you have ever read any of your textbooks from what the 
world looked like in the 70s, where the last time the left did 
something very similar to this, the societal breakdowns, the inflation, 
the misery. Once again, we are about to see the financing of misery 
instead of investing in the things that actually would create 
opportunity and growth. We are better than this.
  I know it would take someone on the Democrats' side. They would have 
to stand up to their base and explain basic economics. But there is a 
path that works. And if you give a darn about the poor, the working 
poor, the middle class, ultimately, the data says, at the end of the 
decade if the left passes their Build Back Better social entitlement 
spending bill, they are going to be poorer. That is what we are about 
to do to this country, and this place should be ashamed.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________