[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 26 (Wednesday, February 8, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H775-H777]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ECONOMIC FORECAST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, when I first got here, there was sort of 
a joke that there were two ways to get in trouble around here. One was 
to say something stupid, and one was to tell everyone the truth they 
don't want to hear. I am going to see if I can get myself in trouble 
tonight.
  I have come behind this microphone repeatedly over the last few years 
trying to do the math. If you are one of the people around this campus, 
because we are probably right now on a thousand televisions around this 
campus, and you care about the math, please give me a little bit of 
your time.
  I have never done a set of presentations that has made my stomach 
turn more than this. We have spent the last couple of weeks with my 
Joint Economic Committee economists. I am blessed to be on the Ways and 
Means Committee. I chair the Oversight Subcommittee. I also am the 
senior Republican on the Joint Economic Committee, meaning I have some 
freaky smart people who work for me, and we have been trying to figure 
out what the math looks like for this Nation a decade from now.
  Remember, we have lots of people who ran this last election cycle 
saying we are going to balance the budget in 10 years. Wonderful. Do 
you understand the math?
  We sat down and broke apart every document we could find, every 
projection from CBO, and I care a lot about this. I accept that I am an 
older dad. My wife and I spent years trying to adopt. We were able to 
adopt an amazing little girl. She is 7, and we are in the process of 
finishing up adopting her brother, who is 7 months old.
  So, my wife and I are 60 years old, and we have a 7-month-old. We are 
pathologically optimistic about this country, but please look at the 
math I am about to show you and then tell me what you are willing to 
advocate to save my little boy's and my daughter's future, your kids' 
future, your own retirement.
  CBO baseline, Congressional Budget Office baseline, if we just keep 
doing what we are doing and there is no recession, no war, no more 
pandemic, in 2034, that is 10 budget cycles from right now, the 
baseline number is we will be borrowing $2.6 trillion that single year. 
It gets worse from there because the next year, the Social Security 
trust fund is gone.
  We always made the assumption that when it blows up, you are not 
going to double senior poverty in this country. This is not a non 
sequitur. I was just so angry at the President's speech last night on 
the comments about promising him we are not going to cut Social 
Security or Medicare. We are not going to cut Social Security and 
Medicare, but are you promising you are going to work with us to save 
it?
  Where was the discussion saying all the data says that, in 10 years, 
the trust fund is gone, and there is a 23 percent cut out there? I am 
going to show you at the end of this slide deck that the pandering from 
my brothers and sisters on the left just raises the taxes. It doesn't 
fix the problem. It doesn't even come close.
  Instead of having a moral discussion from this podium over here 
saying we are going to not let doubling of senior poverty happen in 
this country, that we are going to work together--it was used for a 
campaign kickoff.
  This number here is the baseline. For all of us running around saying 
we are going to balance it in 10 years, great. You have a structural 
$2.6 trillion in 2034. That is 10 budget years from now. Where are you 
going to get it?
  Let's walk through the math even more. To understand where we are at 
in the fragility, let's say, over the next 10 years, there is 1 percent 
more interest on what CBO was projecting last year. What would 1 
percent do to us? It basically means on that 2034, that 10-year budget 
from now, you are sitting at a $3.1 trillion structural deficit. That 
is every year. That is the baseline deficit with just 1 point change in 
interest rates.
  You are going to balance in 10 years. I want to balance in 10 years. 
Find me $3.1 trillion that will be gone in 10 years. Do you understand 
how bad the math is?
  We are going to talk about the shiny objects around here. There is a 
balloon. The balloon is a problem. There is this; it is a problem.
  This is what will take down the Republic, and it is hard to talk 
about. It is math, and I don't know how to make math necessarily 
interesting, but it always wins.
  We produced this chart, and I know this one is geeky. We basically 
took all the CBO projections and partially stole this from others. Our 
economic team can't take all the credit for it.
  What it is basically telling you is that most of the projections, 
almost all the projections, from CBO have been far too optimistic. When 
I am showing you numbers, I am basing them on the CBO numbers, and by 
the way, historically, they have been far too optimistic.
  Do you get the punch line?

                              {time}  1900

  Now, the only other caveat I need to give you on the math is, because 
it is going to take 10 days or so to calculate it, we haven't done the 
interest adjustment. So I am going to show you in some of these what 
happens if we get rid of this portion of discretionary, get rid of all 
the discretionary, get rid of defense, and did this, you have interest 
savings. I have not done that calculation yet.
  There is a whole other concept I talked about here that if we could 
convince the debt markets here and around the world that buy all this 
U.S. sovereign debt that we might get lower interest rates because they 
realize we are starting to be serious about what the future looks like 
and that we are really serious that we are going to have the capacity 
to manage our future debt and that we are going to suppress it and over 
time the growth.
  Remember, there are two sides to this ledger. We need to find a way 
to grow like crazy, and we are going to have to discuss things that are 
uncomfortable. We are going to have to discuss how to fix the 
immigration system, how to fix the cost of healthcare, how to do a tax 
system that is all about growth, a trade system that is about growth, 
and blowing up the bureaucracy in this country using technology. Much 
of the regulatory state could be done through technology instead of 
armies of unionized employees. But we need to almost just be fixated on 
economic growth. Then we have to tell the truth about our demographics 
and what drives this debt.
  So, Mr. Speaker, remember my two things, my two caveats here. It is 
still going to take me a couple of weeks to do all the interest 
calculations, but these numbers are pretty darn accurate.
  So let's sort of walk through it. Let's do some of the budget 
discussions we are all having.
  What would happen if I came to you tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, and said: 
Hey, right now we are doing the 2024 budget, but we adopted the 2021 
baseline. So this means for all discretionary spending, the FBI, the 
Park Service, and the Defense Department--everything that is 
government, other than the earned entitlements, the entitlements, and 
the mandatory spending--we adopt a 2021 baseline, and we go from there 
and held constant--constant--the 2021 level.
  That basically means no inflation.
  So, Mr. Speaker, if you had two to three percent inflation, then at 
the end of a decade the purchasing power of that is 25, 28, 30 percent 
less.
  But if you held a constant, Mr. Speaker, there is no growth, you 
adopt a 2021 budget in this 2024 we are building on right now and 
saying that we are holding the discretionary, no defense increased 
spending, nothing, in 10 budget years you still have $1.9 trillion of 
borrowing.
  How many Members understand how ugly this is?
  Mr. Speaker, I will get people who will start emailing, texting me, 
and calling into our website: I don't like what he says.
  It is math. If you don't believe me, then go online. All of the 
congressional

[[Page H776]]

CBO reports are there, the OMB reports are there, and the Social 
Security actuarial report is there. That one is a little harder to 
read, but the CBO just did one a few days ago that is a really easy 
read.
  But, Mr. Speaker, you don't get to just look at the executive 
summary. You have to read the whole damn thing, not just the executive 
summary. Take out your highlighter, go through it, and then tell me 
what your ideas are.
  I came here from the last couple of weeks and said: Let's walk 
through some of the suggestions.
  Hey, we will get rid of all foreign aid.
  This coming year it takes care of a couple of weeks of borrowing.
  Get rid of congressional salaries.
  That took care of 28 minutes of borrowing for a whole year.
  The numbers actually get worse.
  So let's have a little fun here. So let's say that instead of using 
the 2021 baseline budget for discretionary--that is defense and that is 
everything that is not a mandatory spend--so we are only going to use 
2019, and we are not going to let it grow a dime. So every year due to 
inflation that purchasing power goes down. But we are not going to do 
it. We are going to hold defense, so the purchasing power of defense a 
decade from now is 28 to 30 percent less because of inflation.
  Mr. Speaker, you still have a $1.6 trillion borrow 10 years from now.
  How many Members are ready to vote for that because you promised, oh, 
we are going to balance in 10 years?
  But it is the math. I am going to say it over and over, Mr. Speaker. 
Unless you have a revolution in the costs of healthcare, we won't do it 
by cutting. We do it by cures, by innovation, and by competition. We 
have got to have a revolution, and then we will have that type of 
competition and disruption all through government. Unless there is a 
revolution in growth, then this is our future. This is my children's 
future.
  So let's go to the flip side.
  How bad is the number really?
  So 10 budget years from now, which is 2034, no discretionary. No 
discretionary spending on defense. We basically say, hey, we trust 
everyone. We cuddle everyone in the world. We are all buddies.
  Mr. Speaker, we just wiped out the Defense Department. We still have 
almost $1 trillion of borrowing in the 2034 budget.
  So let's do the opposite. If you actually look at the numbers where 
you had no discretionary at all, Mr. Speaker, no discretionary, 
government as you know it is gone. There is no defense, so all the 
constitutional obligations we have to provide for are just gone. We 
walk away from the Constitution.
  Now, my caveat again is that we still haven't done the interest 
savings calculation on the savings and would the bond markets treat us 
more kindly because we are taking debt more seriously because they will 
know we will have plenty of money to pay our obligations, but if 
you just do the straight-line number a decade from now you are still 
borrowing $300 billion.

  That is how big the mandatory spending is.
  Understand that most of the debt, three-quarters of it, comes from 
the growth in Medicare.
  We had President Biden in that podium last night, did he talk about 
the morality of us keeping our promises and the fact we are going to 
have to work together and do really hard things to make this economy 
grow and to actually add competitions in these things so we crash the 
price because we are going to keep our promises?
  Instead, it almost sounded like pandering for the next election.
  Does this place have a soul?
  You start to look at the reality of different scenarios. So, once 
again, Mr. Speaker, what we just did, CBO baseline, $2.6 trillion of 
borrowing in 10 years. If we have discretionary, we used the 2019 
discretionary and just held it. No growth. No growth. You are still 
borrowing $1.6 trillion in 10 years.
  If you come and say, oh, let's use the 2021 budget, and we will just 
take that discretionary budget on defense and everything else and we 
freeze it, then we are still borrowing $1.9 trillion in 10 years.
  How about we do this: there is no defense. We are still borrowing 
0.9, so almost $1 trillion.
  What if we had no defense so we do this and say, we will pay for 
defense, but we will get rid of all of the rest of government? Then we 
are still borrowing $1.4 trillion in 10 years.
  Mr. Speaker, if you get rid of all discretionary, with my caveat we 
haven't done the interest calculations, all the interest savings 
calculations, but if you do it in a straight line, we are still 
borrowing $300 billion.
  I have come here dozens and dozens of different times and have shown 
the little pie charts saying: Understand that 71 percent of all 
spending was mandatory, and much of these are earned benefits, da, da, 
da, da, and look at the shrinking part that is discretionary.
  Maybe doing it in reverse is how people will understand.
  If you are heading toward retirement, Mr. Speaker, do you understand 
what this means to you?
  If you are crazy like I am, Mr. Speaker--and I have a 7-month-old--
this is the moral question of our time.
  Instead, how many speeches were given behind any of these microphones 
today giving a damn about the country's future?
  Yes, but we were looking for a good political edge that will look 
good on my next campaign thing.
  To the people who keep trolling our attempts to find a way to save 
the Social Security Trust Fund, so we don't have Grandma having to have 
a 23 percent cut in 10 years, I have one that keeps--maybe it is a 
bot--sending in things to our office saying: Just increase the taxes.
  So take all income and make it subject to the Social Security tax.
  Okay, fine. Guess what, Mr. Speaker?
  We found it in the Social Security actuarial report. Go read the damn 
thing. If we take every dime of income in the country and do the 
original Social Security formula, so I am taking 90 percent of all 
income--and what is it? Forgive me. I am going to get this wrong. Last 
year it was $142,000 was subject to the Social Security 12.4 percent, 
and I know that is going up and it is taking a good pop because of 
inflation. But if we basically take every dime--every dime--of 
earnings, if you make $1 million a year, every dime of your earnings is 
subject to the 12.4 percent Social Security tax, then I only cover 31 
percent of the shortfall.
  For my brothers and sisters on the left, read the actuarial reports, 
not the political highlight talking points. If we are going to save it, 
then you have to actually buy a calculator, put batteries in it, and 
start sitting down with people like me who are passionate about 
protecting seniors. We are going to protect our promise, but I can't do 
it without you.
  I have a divided government here. I have a President who got up there 
and said things that were mathematically absurd.
  The family motto is: The Math Will Always Win.
  And it always does.
  Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time I have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Arizona has 12 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I have done this chart. There is an 
update on this chart coming in a couple of weeks, and I am told it is 
going to look substantially uglier. But this is the reality.
  Remember, this chart was built 2 years ago. Every dime of the $114 
trillion of borrowing in today's dollars that we expect to have 30 
years from now, 75 percent of it is functionally Medicare, 25 percent 
is if we actually reach into the general fund and backfill the collapse 
of the Social Security Trust Fund which happens in 10 years, oh, and 
the rest of the budget is actually calculated to be about $1.9 
positive.
  We got old. I am a baby boomer. I am a crazy baby boomer. I have a 7-
month-old. He is the greatest little boy you ever met, Mr. Speaker. I 
wanted to bring a big picture of him. He is so cute. I will do whatever 
is necessary to protect my kids.
  This is the truth: unless this is part of every conversation around 
here we are not telling the truth because this is going to drive every 
discussion on policy.
  I want to spend more on defense.
  Have you figured out this?
  I want to spend more on the environment.

[[Page H777]]

  Have you figured out this?
  I want to help other countries.
  Have you figured out this?
  Mr. Speaker, unless you are willing to work on the reality of here is 
what is about to happen to us because these are our demographics, are 
you going to adopt policies from immigration to the Tax Code to 
technology, everything that grows like crazy in this Nation and then 
are you going to take on the cartels that cost us so much money?

  Are you going to actually build a world where we crash the price of 
healthcare because we use technology and we cured diseases?
  Some of that maybe you tell him that we don't have a choice.
  For everyone else who says: I just want my money back, if you are 
someone out there who will say to Social Security and Medicare: Just 
give me my money back, then we will take that deal in a second.
  Now, people forget Social Security is progressive. If you are a 
lower-income worker and you work your 40 quarters, then you get 
actually quite a spiff on the taxes you paid.
  If you are a higher-income worker on Social Security and you had your 
40 quarters, then you actually get less than what you actually paid in.
  If you do the mean of the average couple on Social Security, you will 
have paid in about $625,000 in taxes over your 40 quarters, and you are 
going to get back $698,000.
  Mr. Speaker, you would have made a hell of a lot more money if you 
had been allowed to take a portion of that and put it in the markets. 
President Bush tried doing that. He got the crap kicked out of him by 
the left.
  So fine. You are poorer today, but for the average American you get 
your money back. You get a little spiff on Social Security.
  The primary driver of those debt numbers is this right here. That 
average couple would have put $161,000 over that lifetime of work into 
Medicare.
  Understand, the Medicare taxes you pay, Mr. Speaker, the Medicare 
Trust Fund is the part A. Three-quarters of Medicare actually comes 
right out of the general fund. We expect that number to go up fairly 
dramatically in the next set of calculations. It is this gap right here 
that is the primary driver of U.S. sovereign debt.
  Mr. Speaker, at some point here we find out that just telling the 
truth actually gets you in trouble because I can tell you, my brothers 
and sisters here are really smart. They are truly experts in different 
things. And I swear they run away from me in the hallway when they see 
me carrying my charts saying, David, I don't want to know, because if I 
tell my constituents that, then they get mad at me for telling them the 
truth.

                              {time}  1915

  Every day we wait, these numbers get worse; and yet, at the State of 
the Union they were saying, oh, everything is fine, we are doing great. 
At one level, that is immoral because this is coming. Remember, 10 
years from now is not long. These are lifetime charts. It is fixable.
  For people to say, well, just get rid of all that other stuff of 
mandatory spending except for my earned benefits. Okay, maybe we 
should. But the chart, this is Social Security, this is the other 
mandatory, this is mostly healthcare, parts of this is actually 
Medicaid.
  You start looking at, this is nutrition support, EITC, Social 
Security supplemental income, but you start to see everything else that 
is in mandatory is pretty darn small. Now, it doesn't mean some of 
these shouldn't be looked at and reformed or be put back on budget, but 
you see, it is these two programs. It is Social Security and healthcare 
that are almost everything.
  I am absolutely committed. I am going to keep my promises. I am going 
to have this country keep its promises; but the only way we will do 
that is this body, this campus, every smart staffer around here, every 
lobbyist who walks in our doors who has a soul, bathe in the math. 
Let's get creative, let's promote economic growth in every lever we 
can. Let's legalize technology, let's legalize disruption and disrupt 
the price of delivering healthcare. It can be done.
  Dear God, I have a 7-month-old. Doesn't he deserve a future?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________