[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 207 (Wednesday, December 1, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H6848-H6851]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REVIEWING THE FISCAL PICTURE OF AMERICA
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, tonight we are going to try to do sort
an of an extension of the last couple of times I have been behind this
microphone and have a discussion about what is actually going on with
the big fiscal picture of our country.
I am going to be a little mean to some of the Democratic policies,
but I am going to show factually how I think it actually hurts, but
there is actually something that happened this last week that we should
actually be almost giddy about if it ultimately proves out, a major
breakthrough on one of the things that creates misery around the world,
let alone our own country, but also has real fiscal impacts.
So, let's actually sort of start with some of the basics. How much do
you think we borrowed every single day last year? We were playing with
the math a little while ago. We were borrowing about $3.8 billion every
single day. Break that down, do that math, an it is $160 million an
hour.
I know every time I get behind this mic and start talking numbers,
people just glaze over, but it is important because if you are someone
who says I really care about investments in the environment, I really
care about investments in healthcare, I really care about investments
in education, where do you think the money is going to come from?
If we continue policywise the avoidance of the drivers of our debt,
we continue doing public policy by feelings. One of the things that
enrages me around here is we have entire conversations, entire speeches
behind these microphones, and then we make public policy by our
emotions, by our feelings, but not by a calculator.
{time} 1830
And I know the calculator sounds cold, and as Republicans, we sound
like accountants on steroids, but at some point the math is important.
But also, what happens when I can show you that getting the math right
means you don't hurt people?
We saw in the Democrat social spending bill, their Build Back Better,
multiple university papers coming out saying, Hey, we are looking at
this and we believe the working poor will be poorer at the end of the
decade. The disassociation of the value of your labors to money coming
in, the other social policies that were driven in that piece of
legislation, they may be great politics,
[[Page H6849]]
and they are really crappy for the society, and they are really crappy
for the very people that the left claims they care about.
So let's pull it back and just deal with where we are at right now.
Now, this board here is from math from a year ago. And once again, we
are not going to talk about 1965, but I start with this over and over
because I can't tell you how many people will come up to me at Costco,
and they will walk up and say, David, if you would just cut back on
that foreign aid. David, if you would just get rid of waste and fraud.
Or if they are liberals, Hey, if you cut back on defense spending.
Well, we have a reality problem. You see this red area? That is
mandatory spending. That is functionally, Social Security, Medicare--
the primary drivers.
The green area over here is what we get to vote on. The little blue
area, that is defense. The green is all domestic. It is down to 13
percent of what we, as Members of Congress, vote on is the non-defense
spending around here. And that is today. This gets dramatically worse.
And you know what makes it worse? We are getting old as a society.
Demographics. Demographics are actually what primarily drive the U.S.
sovereign debt. And yet, how many times--for anyone that is crazy
enough to watch C-SPAN, or even our fellow Members or staff--do we talk
about where we are going to be in just a few years.
And I thought I would also just sort of start with some of the
folklore. You will hear the speeches here of: Rich people need to pay
their fair share. They sure do.
A couple months ago we made a whole presentation here on the floor
begging our Democrat colleagues, saying instead of doing policy where
you are going to go--say, we are going to raise taxes on small
businesses. We are going to go raise taxes on individuals. How about
just stop subsidizing them?
We came in and showed almost $1.4 trillion over 10 years that the
policies of this place subsidize the rich. And I am talking the really
rich. So the Democrats did their build back better social spending
bill. If you look at it, it now substantially subsidizes the really
rich even more.
The other perversity in that piece of legislation, if you get to year
five, you do realize you have driven almost another $800 billion of
borrowing. Then we play this pretend game around here and say, Oh, then
we are going to make these programs disappear, and then we are going to
keep the taxes going for the rest of the decade. And that is how we
only end up with about $400 billion of borrowing.
I mean, no wonder those in the public who pay attention to Congress
in Washington, D.C., just realize we treat the public like fools. These
are people who are just trying to survive. They are trying to take care
of their kids. They are trying to get ready for retirement. And this
place is basically getting ready to destroy the next couple decades.
And the scale of debt is off the charts and it will drive every bit of
policy around here, instead of the fraud that is going on so far this
year where it looks more like trying to buy votes than save the future
of this country.
So let's take a quick look. Even 100 percent tax rate on small
businesses and upper-income families, if you took 100 percent of it,
you can't get close to covering where we are spending-wise. It is just
math. And I know this is a math-free zone, but at some point the math
will always win.
So take a look here. If you took every dime of people that make over
$500,000, and with that, every dime of the small business earnings, you
get about 5.5 percent of GDP. This is the most elegant way to do the
math. But in 2030, just the borrowing will be 6.3 percent of GDP. And
29 years from now, it is 15.1. You don't get close to it. You can take
every dime of $500,000 and up and every dime from small business, and
where are we 29 years from now? You hit a third of the revenues
necessary.
We are living in just an absolute economic fraud. The share of
Federal tax revenue spent on interest--and this is one of those that
scares me to death. Let's see if I can try to explain this.
What happens to a country when you have borrowed and borrowed and
borrowed and borrowed and borrowed, and you put yourself right up
against the edge. And then you have a new virus and all of a sudden you
need to stabilize the economy. Or God forbid, there is a military
conflict or some other tragedy in your country, you have made yourself
very, very fragile as a country.
It is the concept of, we all have this occasion where we live a
little too close to the fire and that one time there is a traffic
accident, that one time something happens and we miss our airplane. We
understand the consequences of what they call fragility. We are doing
that to this country.
This board here is really simple. If we had a 2 percent increase in
interest rates, by the time we get to that 29 years from now, 100
percent of all the tax revenues, 100 percent of the tax revenues go
just to pay the interest payments. You start to think about that, hell,
just a 1 percent rise in interest from the CBO's baseline is 70 percent
of all tax revenues will be consumed just making our interest payments.
Is this the future you plan for your children? I mean, is this the
future this place plans for your own retirement? You think you are
going to continue to still get all the benefits you have earned when
your government, 100 percent of its income is going just to cover the
borrowing interest? This is where we are at. And this is last year's
math. This is before the huge amount of borrowing that has already
happened this year.
So now the most difficult part of when you get behind this
conversation, for those who come behind these microphones, this is the
part that my brothers and sisters around here on the left--and even a
number on the right--don't want to have.
What is the primary driver of the U.S. sovereign debt? Two things:
Remember how I said demographics? It is the fact we are getting older.
You have got to understand, 29 years from now--and this was actually,
this math was done before the massive amount of spending this last
year--we will be at $112 trillion of borrowed money in 29 years. And
that is inflation-adjusted, so today's dollars, $112 trillion of
borrowed money, most of it is Medicare.
If you are like I am, and you believe Medicare is a societal promise
we made, how do you plan to keep paying for it? Social Security is the
rest of the balance. The rest of the budget is actually in balance. As
a matter of fact, the latest math actually says the rest of the budget
actually has a small positive balance in 29, 30 years.
How many times today behind my Democratic microphones--or even the
Republican microphones--did we tell the public the truth? That if we
don't get our act together and find a way to disrupt the cost of
healthcare, we have just--and it is a technical economic term for the
future--we have screwed our kids and our own retirements. I am sorry to
be crass, but I don't know how to get anyone here to listen.
It is math. It is demographics. It is not Republican or Democrats.
Getting older is not Republican or Democrat. It is not partisan. It is
math.
And the solution so far this year is, Well, let's just spend a hell
of a lot more money right now, let's pay for it with a bunch of fake
accounting. And maybe it is enough spending where we can buy enough
votes, we will survive another election, but the country will be in an
incredible amount of trouble.
So what is the solution? Well, let's first, what is the primary
driver? You just saw the slide. The primary driver of U.S. sovereign
debt is Medicare.
So let's break it down. Five percent of our Nation's population, our
brothers and sisters who have really tough lives--they have chronic
conditions, they have diabetes, they will have other comorbidities, as
you have heard over and over during the pandemic--well, they are a
majority of our healthcare spending. If you actually love and care for
people, why not go and do your very best to help these poor people that
are suffering? Oh, by the way, you also get an amazing economic value
for it.
Go help our brothers and sisters who are sick, who are suffering. It
is not putting up a bunch more clinics. It is investing in the
disruptive technologies that are around us right now that are curing
people.
I beg this place to think like disruptors. Because good politics are,
Oh, we are going to go spend a bunch of
[[Page H6850]]
money; we are going to put up a bunch more diabetes clinics in my
district, and I will look like a hero. Yeah, maybe that is great
politics, but you just functionally patched over the misery, the
suffering. Go put the resources in a cure.
I did a presentation back in March or April here, talking about a
cure for Type 1 diabetes and how it also means part of that will
translate to Type 2. I saved some of the really nasty emails I got
saying, Oh, that isn't true; it can't happen.
Wait until the last board here. Guess what? There are miracles
happening around us. Do you remember a couple weeks here I did a little
presentation on messenger RNA? We now have a vaccine.
Now, it is not 100 percent effective. It is only mildly effective. It
has to be used for malaria. It looks like we are about to have a
vaccine for so many other diseases that plague us. Why aren't we
putting our resources into something of that nature? Because if it is 5
percent of our brothers and sisters who are suffering, who are the
majority of our healthcare spending--and healthcare spending is what is
bankrupting the country--putting up a bunch more clinics doesn't solve
the problem.
Also the other absurdity, I will have liberal friends who will say,
Well, we did the ACA, known as Obamacare. That was a financing bill. It
basically just moved around who got subsidized and who had to pay. It
didn't change the price of healthcare. And I hate to say, the
Republican alternative did the same thing. We just moved around who got
subsidized, who had to pay. I think we did some more things to create
some creativity and competitiveness, but that bill died in the Senate.
We did pass it out of the House.
But then you will get some that say, Well, how about Medicare for
all. Medicare for all doesn't save a dime. Model after model after
model says it doesn't save a dime unless you begin rationing--and even
then it really doesn't save much.
So what do you do? What are the actual drivers?
You remember that Medicare number that is the primary driver of our
debt? Remember on that chart, it was $77 trillion over the next 29
years. And after this year's binge spending, God knows what the new
numbers are. Thirty-one percent of Medicare spending is just diabetes,
so almost a third of overall healthcare spending is just diabetes.
Take a step and think about it. For someone like myself, who is
terrified of that failed bond auction because we have built up so much
more debt, and the public--and internationally--they just don't have an
appetite for our debt anymore, that becomes the cascade of hell.
{time} 1845
If I came to you, and said, Why don't we focus on how to help people
not have such misery, and also it would have incredible effects on our
fiscal situation.
Madam Speaker, 31 percent of just Medicare is diabetes. So why aren't
we doing something like an operation warp speed on diabetes, instead of
social spending where we can buy another election with taxpayers' money
and then borrow and borrow and borrow, and then use absolute fraud as
the pretense of how it is going to be paid for? Or we could do
something where we end people's misery, and the future looks brighter
and optimistic.
This slide here, I think I brought to the floor in April, and I did a
whole little thing about the concept of the technology being developed,
and it is really impressive. They have worked on it for years, taking
stem cells and adjusting the DNA there to make it--and forgive me if I
mispronounce these things--an islet cell and their ability to produce
insulin.
I showed this slide--and I still have a few of those emails of folks
saying, Stop making things up. This technology can't work. You can't
cure diabetes. Well, a couple great articles this weekend--and this is
where the optimism is. This is a place of optimism. We live in an
amazing country. We have suffered and done great things, and yet we
seem to roll in misery these days instead of the fact that we are on
the cusp of ending so many individuals' misery, sickness, and maybe
even changing the world.
I only did this just so people could visualize. Imagine the concept
of grabbing some stem cells. You can grab them now from skin--we have
learned all sorts of things. The ability to program them, and then
functionally you can teach them to grow into what you need.
If we have that technology, just imagine the diseases, the illnesses,
the misery--so you have messenger RNA that now we are about to know how
to take on so many viruses, so many other types of diseases. We are now
about to have the technology--we actually now do have the technology--
to actually take on other types of diseases where it is failures of
certain organs.
Now, I am going to give you one other one, just as part of the
thought experiment, before we do the closing board that I am most
excited about.
If Congress wanted to have an impact on healthcare costs, what is
something we could do in 1 year? What is something we could do--
Republicans and Democrats could do in 1 year? If I came to you right
now, and said, In 1 year, you are not going to get all of it, but 16
percent of healthcare spending turns out to be people not taking their
pharmaceuticals as they should. You realize that is well over a half a
trillion dollars a year.
A half a trillion dollars a year in spending because someone didn't
take their high blood pressure pill and they have their stroke. They
had trouble and they didn't take their insulin; they didn't do this and
that. What if I came to you right now, and said, Instead of
nationalizing healthcare and doing this and that, why don't we promote
subsidized--make it part of CMS--the technology where the pill bottle
cap beeps at grandma when she didn't take her meds?
For someone like myself with high blood pressure--I take my pill
religiously--but if I didn't, my phone would beep at me, and say:
David, we don't want you to have a stroke. Please take your medicine
because we know it works. We know the same thing. How many people do we
know who have had clogged arteries, and if they had just taken their
statins?
Madam Speaker, 16 percent of all healthcare spending relates back to
people not taking their meds. That is $528 billion a year.
There are disruptions. If you take that and then put it into what we
already know about the messenger RNA and the fact that there are so
many illnesses and diseases--if you read anything, you have to have
seen the articles that believe that we are close to a vaccine for HIV,
close to a vaccine for herpes. Now you see the vaccine out there for
malaria. There are so many amazing things happening, you saw it two
boards back.
When I came to this mike back last March and we talked about, Hey,
there is maybe this stem cell therapy that is going to turn how to make
islet cells that actually could be injected back into someone, and it
could be at least the cure for type 1 diabetes.
How many of you saw the articles this weekend? It was only one
person; it was the first person they tried it on. Guess what? It works.
They have successfully cured someone with type 1 diabetes. That is a
million and a half of our brothers and sisters in this Nation.
What are we willing to do to find a way to almost put that type of
technology--let's have it be proofed. Are we willing to put it on a
production line, just like we have done, messenger RNA on a production
line? And now can we also make the really tough policy decisions, are
we willing to change the farm bill, nutrition, some of the inputs into
type 2 diabetes? And if we can fix those, the articles and papers are
saying the same ability to fix the body's ability to make insulin again
may be a path to cure type 2 diabetes. If that is true, think about it.
You just saw, the primary driver of U.S. sovereign debt is healthcare
costs, Medicare.
Madam Speaker, 31 percent of Medicare spending is just diabetes. Why
wouldn't this place take on something that is that obvious, that is
loving and compassionate, and also really makes a big difference to our
future, both economically and just from a moral health standpoint of
loving and caring for our brothers and sisters?
The last thing I will throw out--we are working on a little project
in my
[[Page H6851]]
office and the math is really hard. If you care about things like
income inequality and you look at the differentials of our brothers and
sisters, like Tribal communities out West, other people that may have
urban minority communities that are suffering from type 2 diabetes, we
are trying to figure out what would the math look like if those
populations had this disease cured?
What would their economics be? Would we actually see so many others
able to come back into society, back into the economy, back into trying
to develop a life in the middle class?
The crazy thing is our preliminary math--it may turn out that curing
a big portion of our population where we see the huge income inequality
and helping them get back into society and the economy may be one of
the most powerful things, if not maybe the single largest thing, we
could do to actually take on income inequality in this country.
Who would have ever thought? It is the math. I want to make the
argument that people here who want to make policy by their feelings are
crushing individuals, crushing families, crushing the country. People
are willing to see love and compassion through actual facts or how we
do what is moral and do what is right and also do what makes this
country as great as can be.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________