[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 17 (Thursday, January 26, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H422-H424]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2140
                         SOCIAL SECURITY CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) until 10 p.m. as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker pro-tem, we are going to do a couple 
things tonight, but first, just every once in a while, when we get 
behind these mics, and you have got to get something sort of off your 
chest because it really annoys you.
  If I see one more headline from the scribes who are basically the 
Democrat propagandas--and I am sorry to be that mean. I have tried to 
treat the press respectfully over these years, but, you know, the 
Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare.
  Okay. Up until a few hours ago, I was the senior Republican over 
Social Security in Ways and Means Committee. No one has asked me.
  I talk about Social Security every single day when I am here. I have 
never met a Republican Member ever, ever, talk about cutting Social 
Security.
  So yesterday, I grabbed one of the reporters out here who had it in 
their story but had no names. I walked up and said, okay, tell me who 
this is because I really need to talk to them.
  I can't tell you. It is a reporter thing. I can't explain that to 
you. No, no. You need to tell me who is telling you to write stories 
that the Republicans intend to cut Social Security.
  I am the ranking Republican--I was up until a few hours ago--over 
Social Security. I have spent the last year of my life working on it. 
No, no. I can't tell you who.
  If you are going to make crap up, stop doing it in a way that you 
hurt people.
  You know, for my Democrat colleagues, I know power. I know you 
desperately want to be back in charge, but the fact of the matter is, 
the math is the math.
  You all saw the CBO numbers from a couple days ago. Social Security 
runs out of money in 10 years.
  Do you care?
  The fact that CBO is saying there is going to be a 23 percent cut in 
Social Security recipients' checks in 10 years, we will double senior 
poverty. Do you care, or is the politics of weaponizing it more 
important than saving retirement security? This is perverse.
  This is called reporting around here? If you want to weaponize 
something, weaponize something that doesn't crush people.
  I feel better getting that off my chest.
  All right. I want to do a little something I consider a bit amusing 
and maybe a little sadistic.
  A week ago or so when we were here, I did a presentation on 
structural deficit. I was trying to talk to the new Members of 
Congress, you know, my friend from Oklahoma, others. What is actually 
going on? Where does the debt come from?
  The fact that 10 years from now, you have almost a $2 trillion 
structural deficit. That $2 trillion is functionally interest, a 
trillion bucks, and the growth in Medicare and a little bit of 
Medicaid.
  I did something I almost never do. I actually read the comments. 
Look, I am appreciative. Almost 600-some-thousand people watched the 
YouTube video.
  You get these comments like, well, cut foreign aid. That will balance 
the budget. Just don't pay Members of Congress and Senate, and that 
will balance the budget.
  So we had a conversation in our office. How do I explain the scale?
  Look, if you are not used to 12 zeros, or in this case, the current 
deficit, 14--if we are at 31 trillion, that is 14 zeros.
  If you are not comfortable with the math, maybe I can find an easy 
way to discuss this. If this comes across a bit sarcastic, I mean it 
to.
  So we actually built a little calendar, and we thought this would be 
sort of fun because we have too many people out there--they hear the 
political class get behind the microphone and say, we have a spending 
problem.
  Then they come up with stupid--excuse me--ideas that really don't 
save us. So let's actually walk through these.

[[Page H423]]

  Let's start with the one I consider most amusing. A number of the 
comments were, just don't pay Members of Congress and the Senate. Okay. 
Great.
  So this is a calendar of the year; 12 months, 365 days. If I said 
this is just the borrowing, so this is a calendar every day we borrow 
the equal amount, and we are going to base it on last year's borrowing, 
so it is a real number.
  If you didn't pay any Member of Congress--and maybe we shouldn't get 
paid for the quality of our work; I am not going to argue about that--
how much of the debt deficit would it take care of?
  Well, it turns out it is this little, tiny sliver down here. We 
calculate it is about 28 minutes for an entire year. That is all. You 
got a whole 28 minutes.
  What would you like to do with the other 365 days, you know, 364 
days, 23 hours or 23 and a half hours? You get the point.
  I know it may make you feel better. I lashed out. I was mad. But you 
have a country that structurally is going to be buried in a scale of 
debt where you are starting to flirt with a debt crisis and a failed 
bond option in a decade or so. This is not a game. This level of debt 
takes down a republic.
  So let's do a couple of the others here just for the fun of it. I 
will explain with these colors.
  So whatever color that is--I guess that is like a turquoise--foreign 
aid. Every dime of foreign aid, if you removed it, hey, functionally, 
you just got rid of maybe 17 days, and we threw everything into it.
  So you got rid of 17 days of borrowing. What would you like to do 
with the rest of the year? Well, if we got rid of the 2017 tax reform 
and played the fake scoring that every dime would come in, and you 
didn't lose the growth effects that we got from the tax reform and all 
those other things, you basically get 2 weeks of borrowing. Okay. Well, 
this obviously isn't working.

  So if we went to a marginal 50 percent tax rate, a 50 percent tax 
rate, which some of the Democrats have actually proposed, you basically 
take care of 6 weeks of borrowing. Now, you slow down the economy, but 
let's just pretend the money keeps coming in.
  You walk through, hey, how about a 35 percent marginal tax rate on 
corporations? Well, you got rid of maybe--you maybe could get another 
month and a half of borrowing, just borrowing coverage. That is 
assuming that you get all the revenues in, and you haven't slowed down 
the economy, slowed down GDP, which is pretend.
  Okay. Let's do one of my others. You know, you take out itemized 
deductions. Okay. You got rid of a week.
  To understand almost all the ideas that are out there, really, on the 
scale of it, if you threw them all in, you can't even get rid of half 
the year's borrowing, and that is for last year.
  Understand, this year, we are going to probably borrow a little less 
than a trillion dollars. In 10 years, we have doubled it.
  I beg of our brothers and sisters here. If the Democrats don't want 
to help, don't want to play, don't want to tell truth about the math--
and the math will always win--I beg my Republican brothers and sisters: 
Let's be the truth tellers.
  Yes, there is waste and fraud. As of a couple hours ago, I just 
became the chairman of the Oversight Committee in Ways and Means, and 
there is waste and fraud we are going to grind into.
  There is a chance unemployment fraud and some of the pandemic fraud 
may be the largest fraud in human history. We are going to find out 
what happened.
  But I need you to think of our world and our government. We 
functionally have become an insurance company with an Army.
  So I want to walk through a couple of the other comments you get just 
so I can get them off my chest.
  When you look around the House here, you notice there are no people 
here. These are what we call the special orders. It is a chance for 
Members to come to the mic and walk through something, tell a story.
  We are on probably a thousand televisions around Capitol Hill. So 
sometimes when I do this, I am not actually talking to my constituents 
at home in Arizona.
  I am actually talking to the staff. I am talking to the new Members 
of Congress to help them understand here are the numbers I see.

                              {time}  2150

  I am the senior Republican in the House on something called the Joint 
Economic Committee, so I have a handful of economists who are just 
freaky smart who are in my office pounding information into my head 
every single day.
  I know it is not the shiny objects. We want to talk about a laptop 
with secret documents, and a Chinese spy and this and that. Those are 
shiny objects that you can see on cable television tonight. I will 
argue, these numbers are what take out the Republic.
  So let's actually go over some of the other comments I get over and 
over and over, particularly when I have talked about Social Security; 
and this is back to the cruelty the Democrats and the press have been 
doing this last 2 weeks, trying to light people's hair on fire with 
basically, what's the proper term, oh, yeah, lies.
  For the average American who is going into Social Security today--
remember, I keep seeing these comments: If I could just get all my 
money back. Okay. If you are willing to make a deal with the Republic 
saying if I gave you back all your money on Social Security and 
Medicare, would you sign up for that deal? Because we would take it in 
a moment because when you see what you get back, you realize this is 
actually where much of the structural deficit comes from.
  When people say, well, the money--there is no lock box. You don't 
want it in a lock box. You want it in T bills so you get interest back.
  Social Security for years ran a surplus. That was building the trust 
fund because we had this demographic bubble coming called baby boomers. 
We saved and saved and saved.
  Then, a couple of years ago, we started having more people move into 
retirement than functionally what they were paying, workers were 
paying. So every month, when the check goes out, you take the FICA 
income that is associated with the old-age, survivor's system, the 
Social Security system, send that out. But we needed a little bit more, 
so Social Security would take its Treasury bill, present it to the 
Treasury; Treasury would give them cash plus some interest.
  For many years the interest rate was actually a spiff over--higher 
what you would get on the market T bill. The money wasn't stolen. It 
was put into T bills, just like you might do with your extra savings. 
Stop making stuff up.
  So the average American, the typical retiring couple--let's do it 
that way because it is easier math, will receive--well, let's not do 
the Medicare number. Let's first do the Social Security.
  That couple, the average, over a lifetime of work--so this is 35-plus 
quarters, sometimes 40 quarters--will put in $625,000 in FICA on the 
Social Security portion of that tax, and they are going to get back a 
little under $700,000. So they make a little bit of money.
  Now the reality, if you had put that money in your IRA or something 
like that, it would have been multiples of this.
  If you remember, George Bush tried to have the conversation of taking 
particularly young people, allowing them to take a sliver and put it in 
private accounts because it would have a much higher rate of return, 
and the Democrats and the unions went berserk on that. But now we can 
look back 25, 30 years and it would have been a hell of a lot better 
today for Americans if we had done it. But the politics of it is the 
control freaks wanting control of your money.
  This in inflation-adjusted dollars, so it is like for like. You get 
your money back, plus a small spiff on Social Security. You could have 
had a lot more if you put it in markets and in other places, but you 
get your money back, inflation adjusted. Okay.
  That is not what drives the debt. Our problem with Social Security is 
our number of workers. It is Medicare, and this is hard to talk about, 
but math is math.
  I know many people will come up to me, Schweikert you can't talk 
about that. You are going to get unelected.
  I am in one of the most competitive districts in America, but at 
least I am in one of the best-educated, smarter districts in America, 
and understand whether you like me or not, I am telling you the truth 
on the math.

[[Page H424]]

  Here is the substantial portion that drives about three-quarters of 
all U.S. sovereign debt. The average couple, in their lifetime of 
working, will put in $161,000 into Medicare.
  Remember, the Medicare tax you pay as part of your FICA, your payroll 
tax, is just for the part A, the hospital portion. The rest of the 
healthcare spending you get when you become 65 and are on Medicare 
comes out of the general fund.
  The average taxpaying couple put in that $161,000, and they are going 
to get back $522,000. This number is based on sort of before the 
inflation cycle.
  We are working on some math but I wasn't able to vet it; that the 
amount of money we expect in medical costs for our brothers and sisters 
on Medicare actually has gone up rather substantially which, that means 
when you say 161, 500 plus, that gap, now multiply that toward how 
many; 70 million Americans 65 and up, and the number grows with baby 
boomers because, what, just the baby boom population is what, 76 
million?
  You see the driver of U.S. sovereign debt. The solution is not 
cutting. The solution is having a revolution of the cost.
  ObamaCare was a financing bill. It is who had to pay and who got 
subsidized. Actually, it was mostly about subsidizing. The Republican 
alternative actually spread out the actual numbers so you got some 
efficiency but it was still about who had to pay and who got 
subsidized.
  Medicare for all is all about subsidies. But those are financing 
bills. They don't touch the problem.
  The real problem is the cost of delivering healthcare services.
  For people who might say, well, he is not giving us a solution; go 
look at the probably 70 hours I have over the last few years on the 
floor here. Half those were bringing solutions. Most of my solutions 
are uncomfortable because they require disruption. It is technology. It 
is a thing you can blow into that knows you have the flu and allowing 
it to prescribe. Taking on the big things, curing diseases.

  It turns out cures are remarkable at crashing the price of healthcare 
and just the basic morality of it. If diabetes is 33 percent of all 
healthcare spending, and there is a chance out there that there is 
being some success in curing Type 1 with a CRISPR-altered stem cell 
treatment, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but the literature right 
now says there are about six people who have been cured of Type 1. We 
need to know this. We need to find out over the next decade could it be 
for Type 2.
  What do we do on the farm bill, on nutrition support and everything 
else. Is that a possibility? Because if you could disrupt that cost--do 
you realize if you could disrupt half, just half of the diabetics' cost 
in this country, you would actually wipe out the substantial portion of 
the next 30 years debt.
  These are moral, but they are also financial ideas, and we run away 
from them. It is almost easier for Members of Congress to talk about 
cuts than it is competition to disrupt business models.
  So understand, the next time you have someone saying well, if I could 
just get all my money I paid back in FICA taxes, we will make that 
deal, because you are getting--that couple is getting hundreds and 
hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they put in.
  It is the math. Whether you feel that way or not, it is the math, and 
that is the primary driver of U.S. sovereign debt.
  Now, we made this deal. This is a societal contract. People worked 
their hearts out. They paid into FICA. We made a deal as a society.
  Our job, as the brain trust here, as Members of Congress, we have got 
to figure out how to make this work.
  You start to look at how fast these numbers are eroding. I have 
already said this a couple of times; maybe seeing it on a board makes 
it easier; and I am trying--one of the criticisms was too many of my 
boards had too many numbers on them. I am trying to make them easier to 
read. Let me know if I am succeeding, but I am trying.
  This is a really simple chart. It basically says, here is where we 
are today. In a decade, structurally, just functionally, Medicare and 
Medicaid, and then if I add in interest, then there is another, 
functionally, just my cost there I am heading toward a trillion-plus 
dollars just from my Medicare.
  Medicaid adds another quarter trillion dollars of borrowing; and then 
somewhere in there I have almost $1 trillion of interest. That is what 
I look like a decade from now.
  So people run around here and say, I am going to cut and give you a 
10-year balanced budget. Okay. Tell me what part of paying our bonds 
you are going to cut. That is $1 trillion of the deficit 10 years from 
now. You have got to do that.
  All the people--you are going to default if you don't raise the debt 
ceiling. No, you are not, and I will do another presentation in the 
coming weeks on, stop making crap up.
  The United States has plenty of cash flow to cover our sovereign 
debts and the majority of our earned entitlements. It is a lot of the 
discretionary we don't have enough cash for.
  These are big, complicated, and then to have, as I started with, the 
trite Democrats and wanting an edge in the press, making it really hard 
to do something that has got to happen bipartisan.
  Mr. Speaker, I know we are up against time.

                              {time}  2200

  The last one I am going to show very quickly. This is your 10-year 
chart. It is very simple. This is Social Security. This is the 
healthcare entitlements. This is everything else. This is what we are 
up against.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the tolerance from everyone. If I hurt your 
feelings, I am sorry. It may be too much caffeine and just being too 
damn cranky around here.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________