[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 87 (Tuesday, May 23, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H2534-H2540]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DOUBLING SENIOR POVERTY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I can see some of the faces going, oh,
God, they are going to let him speak for an hour. I saw those faces,
but there is a lot to share.
First, I tried to cut back on my coffee this evening, so, hopefully,
my shared annoyance will be somewhat under control.
First off, to my brothers and sisters on the left, please buy a
calculator. It is that simple.
Some basics I want to walk through here. Let's do Democrat math here
for a moment. I am sorry. I often try not to be a partisan this brutal,
but math is math.
If we have a world where you can't raise taxes on people who earn
$400,000 or less--the Democrat mantra, part of their platform, is no
tax hikes for $400,000 or less income earners, right? You do realize
that is 98 percent of taxpayers, meaning there are only 2 percent left
that make income over $400,000. That is how they are going to balance
the budget? The math is absurd.
Start to work through how this actually works. You can do a 100
percent tax rate on all of those $400,000 and over, and you get nowhere
near--a fraction of a fraction of a fraction--what is required to
handle the shortfalls, the requirement for Social Security and
Medicare.
That is the plan the left has given us. It is a great political
talking point. It gets you cheers at the neighborhood townhall, and you
are lying to them. The math will always win.
Let's walk through this a little bit more. Do you understand the
scale, the cruelty, and the immortality of this place and its
avoidance? In less than 9 years, the Social Security trust fund is
gone.
Many of us on the Republican side spent the previous year trying to
find a moral way, working with Democrats, to save Social Security.
Instead, the Democrat plan, right there from that podium, when
President Biden got up during the State of the Union, and said: Promise
me you won't talk about or touch Social Security or Medicare. The room
all applauded.
You just sentenced American seniors to the doubling of poverty. In 9
years, the United States doubles senior poverty because those seniors
take a 25 percent cut in their checks.
That is the plan. Does anyone see the cruelty?
{time} 1700
Mr. Speaker, is this what we have become?
It is an idea that is saying, well, this polls really well if we
blame Republicans for wanting to talk about it.
[[Page H2535]]
This polls really well. This gets us reelected.
In 9 years, we will double senior poverty, but it is okay because
most people will never hear that. They will never understand it, and
they will never know that.
Then, we will do some sort of a big tax hike in the future and crash
the economy, and it will still not come close to what is necessary.
If we don't have a revolution in the cost of healthcare, do
understand what is coming. The CBO's own numbers, if we do the
inflation adjustment on it, we are scheduled to borrow about $128
trillion over the next 30 years.
Mr. Speaker, 100 percent of that borrowing is the shortfall of Social
Security if we choose to backfill it. There is the big tax hike or the
incredible debt financing. The other 75 percent, so--what?--$86
trillion, $87 trillion when we add in the financing cost, is the
shortfall in Medicare.
This is what goes on around here. It is the lying to the American
people about the math.
Let's walk through this. Stabilizing the debt at about 95 to 97
percent, which is always what the economists told us we needed to do,
if you did that without spending restraints--remember, the fight right
now over the debt ceiling is we basically, as Republicans, are saying
that we have to communicate to the world debt markets that we take our
debt seriously. It is more than just raising our credit limit. We are
going to do something.
Mr. Speaker, I will show you the words from S&P. In 2011, we were
downgraded not because of the debt ceiling fight. We were downgraded
because we did not communicate to the world and the debt markets that
we were going to take debt seriously.
It is a decade later, and the debt is dramatically worse. The
demographic curve now is crushing us, and the proposal from the left is
to just spend more money. Don't worry about it. We will tax people over
$400,000, even though it is 2 percent of the population. We can take
every dime they have, and it doesn't do anything.
One more time, Mr. Speaker, if we are to stabilize U.S. sovereign
debt at 95 to 97 percent of GDP, if we don't do anything on the
spending side--remember, we are trying to do something on the spending
side. So, we do what Democrats have proposed, saying ``don't do
anything,'' then you have to go from our current sort of 15 percent
payroll tax--that is your FICA tax, paying into Social Security,
Medicare, and unemployment--you have to go to 24 percent. That is the
Democrat plan.
FICA taxes go up to 24 percent, and you have to do a national value-
added tax on top of everything else. So, everything just went up.
Remember a value-added tax is that, every step of production, you add
another 20 percent. This is not paying off any debt. This is just
stabilizing enough cash flow so that in order to hold that about 95, 97
percent of debt to the size of the economy, you need a 20 percent VAT
and a FICA tax that is actually at 24 percent.
That just provides stability. That doesn't pay anything off. That is
the plan.
Realize, Mr. Speaker, the absurdity of the speeches that come from
behind these microphones. It breaks my heart because there are things
going on in our society. We are getting old very fast. There is a
horrible article out today about seniors living on the street.
Think about what is going to happen in less than 9 years when those
seniors get a 25 percent cut in their Social Security checks.
That is the plan: Avoid it until the last moment, and maybe we will
just cut them.
Social Security over the 75 year is $202 trillion underfunded.
There is an unwillingness here to tell the truth to the American
people. We got old. We got 67 million baby boomers. The end of the baby
boom is calculated to be around 1964 births. So, we have a few more
years before they all are 65 and into their earned benefits.
What is this place doing to grow the economy and crash the price of
healthcare? Nothing. However, we are going to have theater around here
about talking about the debt ceiling, and Republicans will actually
want to bend a little bit of the spending, so we are scheduled to
borrow--what?--$20 trillion, $21 trillion over the next 10 years.
We are talking about dialing back $4 trillion, and that is the end of
the world? It shows you just how perverse this place is, Mr. Speaker.
Some of the other data shows that, between 2020 and 2022, there is
some $362 billion still left in the $5 trillion in stimulus.
Remember, Mr. Speaker, we went through that little thing called the
pandemic? We basically spent $5 trillion trying to mitigate its damage
and keep the economy stable. Fine. There is about $362 billion that is
unspent.
Our really difficult proposal in our debt ceiling that the Democrats
are screaming, ``Oh, how dare you?'' isn't after the $362 billion. We
are after $30 billion of it. Give us back $30 billion of that. It is 8
percent of the money, and it is the end of the world.
Mr. Speaker, have our politics become that perverse here that we are
willing to lie to the American people about the math, make up things,
and destroy my children's future? Remember, I have a 10-month-old and a
7-year-old. Do my children have the right to live as well as we do?
Right now, CBO's math says that, in 24 years, U.S. taxes double. If
any of you plan to be working 24 years from now, Mr. Speaker, at that
moment, your taxes will be double today's. Corporate taxes, tariffs,
and all types of income tax, everything will be doubled in the United
States just to maintain current services.
That is the math. The math will win, or we can just do what we do
around here and pretend that we will just tax rich people.
They don't have enough money. You can take every dime from every
billionaire in America, and you cover--what?--about 16 months of
borrowing, and then it is all gone. These are the ideas of the brain
trust here.
So, one more time, let's try to understand the reality. There are
actually some solutions that could be bipartisan if we look at the math
on what is going on in healthcare costs with our brothers and sisters
with diabetes and obesity in America.
Mr. Speaker, if you just took on those two things, you could actually
make a major impact on borrowing and spending and economic growth, and
just plain morality, for our brothers and sisters out there who are
dying at shockingly young ages.
I don't know if I brought the chart--we will see if I have it here--
of what is happening to prime-age working males and the fact that
longevity in America is going backward the last couple of years. When
you dial into it obesity, drugs, car accidents, suicides, and firearms,
we have a sick society.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to show you a board in a little bit that says
that in less than 18 years, the United States has more deaths than
births. Half the States today have more deaths than births.
It is math. Demographics drive the budget. The budget is on a
calculator, yet it is so much easier to lie. I am saying that word over
and over, if you have noticed, because we are not telling the truth.
Mr. Speaker, one more time, the math may be uncomfortable, but it is
real. If you look at this chart--and I often start with that one. Don't
look at 1965. Let's look at 2022. This is our spending pie chart. It is
just easy, and it is simple.
Do you see this part here, this green and this blue? This is defense,
and this is discretionary. Everything else is on autopilot.
According to CBO from 2 or 3 months ago, we can get rid of every dime
of discretionary. There is no more White House, no more EPA, and no
more anything, and you can get rid of every dime of defense. This is
according to CBO because I know we all sat and read it. In 9 years, we
get rid of all discretionary spending and still have to borrow a couple
hundred billion dollars, and that is without backfilling a dime into
Social Security.
Remember, then, CBO a couple of weeks later did an update on Social
Security, saying, oh, in 9 years, it is out. It is gone. A 25 percent
cut to our brothers and sisters who are 65 and older, double senior
poverty, and we already have to borrow a couple of hundred billion
dollars a year just to cover the mandatory in 9 years.
[[Page H2536]]
That is where we are going. It is the math. I know we all bathe in
the facts because we don't want to mislead our constituents on how much
trouble we are in.
One more time regarding the debt ceiling fight: Did anyone go pull up
their copy of the 2011 Standard and Poor's report? I have heard
multiple folks here refer to it. We got downgraded one tick from AAA to
AA+. Read the report. It was not about the debt ceiling fight. It
basically clearly says that it is because we provided no vision of what
we were going to do about U.S. sovereign debt.
We are a decade later, and the numbers are dramatically worse. Some
of that being worse is not Democrat and not Republican. It is COVID,
demographics, and the number of missing Americans in the labor force.
We have about 3\1/2\ million workers who have just disappeared.
Mr. Speaker, understand there is a number of us who believe that
tomorrow we can just say: ``A clean debt ceiling. Just keep borrowing
money.'' We get downgraded. It happened in 2011. The rating agency did
not believe we were serious.
Understand, Mr. Speaker, if two rating agencies did this exact same
rating, then the stress in U.S. sovereign markets is real because, all
of a sudden, lots of States, lots of governments, and lots of bond
funds can no longer hold U.S.--because we can have one of the three big
rating agencies downgrade us, but we can't have two.
Has anyone picked up the damn phone and called S&P, Moody's, and
said: Hey, can we just keep borrowing money and provide no vision?
Remember, Mr. Speaker, our brothers and sisters on the left said:
``Hey, we did that Inflation Reduction Act,'' which is an Orwellian
name, ``and we had some deficit reduction in there.''
Of course, now that it has been rescored, there is no deficit
reduction in there.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to show you the receipts coming in and the
additional actual costs of the grants and giveaways on green energy. It
doesn't reduce the deficit.
Once again, the only times this place almost--I think 1993 was the
last--or, excuse me--'83 was the last time this place actually did some
deficit management without being up against a debt ceiling.
Of course, also understand, at that time, Social Security was about
to go broke. We had these guys named Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill who
got together and said that we were going to do the moral thing, that we
were going to save Social Security.
They got together and did something on debt, deficit, and Social
Security. The problem was that was supposed to be a solution that took
it out for at least another 15, 20 years from now. Something has gone
horribly wrong.
We also saw with the COLA that just happened in Social Security,
where there is this 8-plus point COLA, we just lost an entire year of
actuarial life in Social Security. That is one of the reasons it is now
9 years.
If core inflation stays where it is at right now, then this next COLA
won't be 8. Could it be 4? Could it be 5? If it is, then be prepared to
lose almost another year of the actuarial life of Social Security.
{time} 1715
Let's actually walk through some of the things that have gone on. To
my brothers and sisters on the left, does anyone remember way, way
back--let's call it 2019.
Democrats controlled this body. You had a Republican in the White
House. Democrats would not agree to a clean debt ceiling hike.
2019. I know that is a long distance for us to try to remember, but
the requirement of the deal that finally was struck was $324 billion in
additional spending and the lifting of caps which also raised about
another $300 billion in spending.
Is that the left's version of a clean debt ceiling?
Come on. This was only how many years ago. This is what happened last
time. This is where they are.
The absolute disingenuous nature of this place to come behind these
microphones and say clean debt ceiling; how dare the Republicans try to
bend the spending curve and save the country.
Come on. Live by your own standards. Once again, look at all of the
debt ceiling deals.
Do I need to walk through Gramm-Rudman, the balanced budget
amendment, the omnibus?
How many of you remember some of the really popular ones: PAYGO and
all those things. This is a list. Every single one of these is because
of a stressor on the debt ceiling.
Some of these were when Republicans controlled the Congress. Some of
these were when Democrats controlled the Congress.
This fantasy here, we should just do a clean debt ceiling because
that is what we always do, that is an absolute lie. Look at some of the
big things that actually made a difference in this country. Go back to
Gramm-Rudman in 1985 and 1987. They were up against debt limits.
The deficit reduction authority. PAYGO. Remember, PAYGO basically got
renewed multiple times; in 1990, 1993, 1997, 2010. It basically had
multiple ways of managing. If you were going to spend more, it had to
end within a certain time, or it had to be offset.
The Budget Control Act, which is the big one from 2011. I am going to
show you it was wonderful up until we cheated on it because this place
couldn't actually live under its own constraints that it agreed to.
The debt limit increase. We raised it to $14 trillion, 700 billion.
Now public debt is what, $28 trillion?
Total debt, if you take the money we borrow functionally from
agencies or trust funds, those things, we are at what, 32? 32,4?
You have a little problem, though. This is the disingenuous thing
this place did. We had the Budget Control Act. It was going to be a
trillion, 700 billion. This was between 2013 and 2021.
There were discretionary savings under the Budget Control Act, except
the desire here--and this was Republicans, too. I would love to blame
Democrats only, but this was Republicans, too.
Mr. Speaker, 27 percent of those savings never happened. It never
happened because we couldn't live under sequestration.
When you walk down the hallways here in the Capitol, and there are
armies of people coming into your office all day long, what do they
want? They want more money. Understand, Washington, D.C., is about the
money.
January 2020 to present. Nondefense outlays are up 18.8 percent.
Defense outlays are basically flat.
What is going on?
Now, most of this is because of Democrat control. This is their
desire. They pumped up all sorts of new spending authorizations, but
now we have a little problem.
Let's go to right now, last month's number.
How many were paying attention to the CBO monthly updates and saw
that entitlement spending in the first 7 months of this year is up 11
percent?
Most of that is actually inflation adjustments and within Medicare.
Medicare went up about 16 percent in spending. Most of that is actually
driven by inflation calcs.
Did anyone pay attention to the receipts?
If you look into the tables in depth, there is a pretty substantial
fall in capital gains.
There is a 10 percent fall in tax receipts. They are not revenues;
they are tax receipts. I know we wrote revenues on the board, but
receipts is the proper term.
In the first 7 months of this fiscal year, we have an 11 percent
increase in the spending of entitlements and a 10 percent decrease in
our receipts, our revenues.
What is fascinating is some of the economists are saying that falling
receipts are going to continue because most of it is in the capital
gains category.
If you have had a big inflationary cycle--we have seen this before in
the United States--during times of inflation, most of the capital gains
you have are fake.
The value of your asset didn't go up. It just got more expensive. Say
you have a building. Oh, wow, it is worth a lot more money today. You
are going to go buy the exact same building.
Did your building do something special? Did it really go up in value,
or was it just inflation?
[[Page H2537]]
We are going to tax people like crazy on inflation.
Now, some things we are starting to index. We don't do it on capital
gains.
The other fragility we need to deal with--I have a chart. I did not
bring it tonight because I figured I had enough of them.
Go to your annual CBO scoring, and within there, there is a table
that basically says if you added 2 points, a 2-point increase in the
financing of U.S. sovereign debt, so a 2 percent increase over--I think
the number was, like, 25, 28 years from the previous decade--at the end
of that 25, 28 years, every single dime of receipts goes to pay
interest. There is no more money for anything.
A 2 percent increase in the baseline interest costs over the next
three decades consumes every dime of projected tax receipts. That is
the world we live in.
How many people come behind these mikes and tell the truth about the
math?
Let's take a look at what we have just experienced so far in the
first 7 months. You do understand just in the role we have right now,
here are our new issues and the portion of the refinance of U.S.
sovereign debt so far in the first 7 months, our interest costs are
already up 40 percent.
The first 7 months' carrying costs will be over $100 billion more
just because of interest. You don't think debt markets, even if we
raise the debt ceiling, aren't going to look and say, wow, you guys are
borrowing $51,000 every second. In 9 years, we are scheduled to borrow
over $90,000 a second.
You don't think debt markets are going to start requiring a premium?
There is some great literature. Actually, I think one was in The Wall
Street Journal yesterday or maybe over the weekend talking about long-
run interest rates looks like they are setting new baselines.
Be prepared for a future where dramatically more of our spending is
this. It is just the financing costs. Revenues, budget surpluses,
including adjustments for timing effects, Federal outlays, yada, yada,
yada.
Basically, our spending is up $274 billion. This is functionally from
baseline at the end of 2022, so functionally from April to April, much
of my baseline cost there is up 73 percent.
This board may explain it better. Year-to-date deficits. There were
discussions at the end of last fiscal year that the 2023 fiscal year
could be $1.4 to $1.5 trillion in borrowing.
A couple people were predicting, hey, when you kick in inflation, it
might get to 1.6. Right now, that board from April, if you take that
and line that out to the end of the fiscal year, you are going to get
close. You may not cross it, but you are going to get close to a $2
trillion borrow this year.
Think about some of the things we are fussing with each other about,
and yet, the wheels are coming off immediately around us.
How many people are paying attention to what is coming into the
Treasury right now and going out of the Treasury?
Does anyone care?
Are we so basically intent on I have got to push money out the door
to get my votes because that is how I buy my election?
You have to understand how fast the numbers are falling from us.
Year-to-date deficits look like they will be 236 percent more from the
baseline of 2022.
Here is the chart I ran ahead of, but sort of working out the math,
if I continue what happened in the April receipts and my April
spending, if you carry it out, you are getting close to $2 trillion
borrowed this year.
I wanted to do a bit of this. Government spending binges, not tax
reform, have been the primary driver of U.S. sovereign debt to GDP.
There is a concept out there--for anyone that geeks out on this
stuff, if you have an idiot who basically says it is tax reform, okay,
look at the long range.
Since the 16th Amendment, you start to look at what is sort of the
modern tax era after World War II, when we have had very high marginal
tax rates, very low marginal tax rates, combinations where we raise
corporate taxes, lower, all the combinations out there. We almost
always get within a band of about 18 to 20; 19, 20 percent revenue
receipts to the size of the economy. It is a magic number, but we
always--we have these charts when we have had these high margin rates,
low margin rates.
For some reason, the tax receipts that come in stay within that band.
If you want more money, grow the economy. That seems to be the only way
you get more tax receipts in the long run. You get a spike, and then
boom, it goes back to that mean.
That comes from liberal economists, conservative economists. There
just seems to be this nature that the economy comes back to: this is
what society, the nature of our economy is willing to send in Federal
tax receipts.
Here is part of the coming crisis. Just this decade--and remember,
this board is already a year or so out of date--in functionally nine
budget years, our spending will be over 24 percent of the size of the
economy; 24.3. Actually, I think that number may be light because this
board is about a year old. We are projecting our tax receipts to come
in--and I should explain this--about 18 or a little over 18 percent.
When you start talking these big numbers, particularly in a time of
inflation, the dollar amount is often distorted.
Really, as economists, if you are talking with them, they are going
to do percentage of the GDP, of the economy.
The reason you do that, you can have high inflation, low inflation,
so a percentage makes more sense. What happens in a world just like
this board says, this is what we are projected to do in 9 years.
Our spending will be--24.3 percent of the entire economy will be
being spent by the Federal Government, but we are only going to be
taking in 18.2.
You already have the other boards that talk about well, you can raise
taxes, but the amount of receipts you are going to get are going to
fall back into this mean.
That delta, that gap, is what will take down this Republic if you
carry that out for another 20 or 30 years.
Now, for the most uncomfortable board I am going to show tonight, and
this one--it is not Democrats, it is not Republicans, it is
demographics. It is what we are.
If I were to walk around the Capitol and knock on everyone's door,
from the most liberal Member to the most conservative to the most
libertarian to rural or urban and said: For the next 30 years, what is
the primary driver of U.S. debt?
How many would look you in the eye and say the debt for the next 30
years? 100 percent of borrowing. The new calculation is about $128
trillion over the next 30 years. 100 percent of that is borrowing, 75
percent is Medicare, 25 percent is if we backfill Social Security. The
rest of the budget actually has a positive balance.
This board upsets people because how many of us are willing to get in
front of our community townhall and say: If we don't have a revolution
in healthcare costs, we could consume--and understand, when you start
talking about the total numbers here, you are talking about approaching
200 percent of debt to GDP.
{time} 1730
How many of you think the world continues to want to buy U.S. bonds?
We are not Japan; we don't save every other dollar we earn. We can't
internally finance our own debt when we get to those levels, but that
is what is coming. It is not Democrat. It is not Republican. It is
demographics. We got old.
There are solutions here. There is a solution that we could have that
was moral to try to save Social Security, but as I started with,
Democrats decided it was a better campaign issue than a morality issue.
Fine, let's be a country that is heading toward doubling poverty for
seniors because that is the plan right now, ``I am not going to talk
about it.''
However, you can't make this go away. As healthcare inflation
continues to be more than double baseline inflation, this number is
running away from us.
Could we maybe have an attempt to have an honest sit-down with the
most liberal Members and the most conservative Members, and saying, do
you know that 33 percent of all U.S. healthcare spending is diabetes?
Would we be willing to have an honest conversation about obesity in
[[Page H2538]]
America and how we now have six States where over 40 percent of the
population now is obese, and it is killing young people?
The heart disease, the other cascaded diseases, 5 percent of the
population is over 50 percent of all healthcare spending.
Do we love and care for people? Why don't we understand the morality
of helping, doing the right thing and building a bunch of clinics to
help people manage their misery is not a solution.
Curing the damn disease is, and there are ways to do it.
We are doing a math project right now with some of the Joint Economic
Committee economists, trying to say what would happen if I took my
Medicare, Medicaid, Indian Health Service, my VA populations, took
those who are morbidly obese and said we are going to give you GLP-1's.
We have got to talk about it. It is real.
There was a time in this place it was uncomfortable to talk about
smoking. There was a time when they actually smoked here. Within three
decades, we had a cultural revolution of sorts that is much healthier.
It saved and extended lives, up until the last couple years now where
we see U.S. mortality going the wrong way.
This number is burying us. It is not Democrat. It is not Republican.
It is demographics. The solution also doesn't need to be Democrat or
Republican. It is moral. It is just hard to talk about because it
doesn't fit our typical rhetoric.
You will get people who will say: Well, I just want every dime I put
into Social Security and Medicare. All right, great, that would be a
great deal.
Do understand, the average couple in America, and this board is about
a year out of date, will have put in about $625,000 over a lifetime
into Social Security. They are going to get back $698,000. That is
about a $72,000 SPIF.
You would have done much better if you had been allowed to put a
small portion of that in the market. You would have done much better.
We all have our TSP here, our thrift savings account. Could you imagine
if Americans had been allowed to put just a portion of their Social
Security into that?
Do you remember the wars around here 20 years ago? ``You are talking
about privatizing Social Security.'' Instead, you made America poor.
Great. However, you won the politics. America is much poorer today.
Great. Good job.
Here is the primary driver, here is the punchline. This is the
primary driver of U.S. sovereign debt and almost no one is willing to
talk about it. That average couple will have put about $161,000 into
the Medicare trust fund. The Medicare trust fund, as everyone here
knows, only covers about 38 to 40 percent of Medicare spend. The rest
comes out of the general fund.
You put in $161,000, and you get out $522,000. We are recalculating
this number. We think this number may have now jumped all the way close
to $600,000. That delta, from this $522,000, from you putting in
$161,000, multiply that by just the baby boom population of--what?--67
million, you just found where most of the debt for the next 30 years
comes from.
It is not that hard. A couple batteries in a calculator, you would be
amazed what you can figure out.
The brain trust out there. I am sorry, I take that back. So many
people have been misled for so long with complete folklore about the
debt, so I have this one woman in Phoenix area that literally every
other day says: ``You know if we just got rid of your salaries and your
pension, we could balance the budget.'' I always say, ``We are probably
already overpaid for what we do or at least what we accomplish.''
However, you see the little sliver here? I tried to build a calendar,
what would happen on a calendar if I could say here are my days of
borrowing. Remember, we are borrowing $51,000 a second. If you got rid
of all of Congress' salaries and pensions, it is about 18 to 19 minutes
of borrowing for an entire year. That is all it is. If you get rid of
every dime of foreign aid, it is about 12 days of borrowing.
We need to stop misleading the public.
I have things on here where if you doubled the corporate tax, you
would get about 6 weeks of borrowing covered.
The scale that is here today and the scale in a decade is almost
double. Do we understand the scale that is coming? It is demographics.
We got old. It is just really hard to stand in front of an audience and
say that, but it is math.
Look, I can belabor this, but I have some of the charts to walk
through, and I am going to do another presentation when we get back on
the 2017 tax reform of here is what it is scored to have cost and here
is what we found in additional receipts and revenues. Even if you do
the baseline scoring from a few years ago, it is just a fraction
compared to even--the Inflation Reduction Act, the green spending in
there is now being scored by Goldman Sachs and those to be $1.2
trillion, and the reconciliation on tax reform was--what?--1.6? Do you
start to understand the scales? We make up numbers around here.
Look at the 2017, you see the little green slice here? That is using
the baseline score of $2.74 trillion without the offsetting dynamic
score added to it, and that is just saying, hey, if my brothers and
sisters on the left want to say: ``It was the tax reform.'' Huh? You
don't understand, just the green energy grants, giveaways, credits,
whatever the pop culture term is, it is functionally half of everything
that was in the tax reform if you use the base score without the
dynamic effects.
Back to demographics. End of the decade. How many of us have used
this chart? It basically says, 1960 we had 5.1 workers for everyone who
was 65 and older, basically receiving Social Security benefits. End of
the decade, you functionally have two workers. So you and your partner
have your own retiree.
Is anyone seeing the math problem?
There is something called a dependency ratio. This one is really
fascinating because if you want to even think globally, the United
States is actually in tough shape. We are much better off than much of
the rest of the world, though.
Let's take the world's three biggest economies. I only put this one
on because it interests me. You see this line here? The dependency
ratio is worker compared to those out of the economy, right? Do you see
this line crashing down? That is China. China is about to just roll
over. The numbers, there has never been a major society, anything like
this. It is going to be fascinating over the next couple decades what
happens. There is an economic argument that many of the bad acts that
you and I see that China engages in are the investments or those things
that they are desperate to build annuities because their available
worker population is crashing. Even more interesting, do you know that
youth unemployment in China is almost 20 percent? They are graduating
universities, and they don't want factory jobs. They want white-collar
jobs.
We should really understand what is going on with those who we
consider our competitors. The United States, we start to roll over
here. It is upon us. This is our future. We need to not be scared of
the things that bring disruption but productivity to our society.
If you are scared of AI, okay. Maybe read an article or two about it
but understand the potential productivity that brings to society. Get
used to the concept that you go to your favorite fast-food place and
there is a robot behind there flipping the burgers. We don't have the
available populations, and importing poverty doesn't work because the
way we do entitlements in the United States. The offset cost doesn't
work.
Remember, if I ask the room, what is U.S. fertility this last year?
We are down to 1.7, and that is actually a tick back up from the
pandemic. You remember how many people thought during the pandemic we
were going to have this baby boom? Just the opposite happened. We are
at a 1.7 fertility rate. You need--what?--2.1 just to stabilize
population.
Understand, today forward, the school districts in your neighborhood
will have fewer children. Are you prepared to understand that is our
future? Remember the data point before, in 18 years, more deaths than
births in the United States. Now sit down and fix Social Security with
me, and you understand the problem of the math.
This chart makes people upset, and it is math. If you take prime age
populations, 25 to 64, functionally in--that
[[Page H2539]]
looks like it is about 8 years, so functionally the end of the
retirement of baby boomers hitting 65, this chart basically says if you
take the prime age working population, 25 to 64, 40 percent of our
society will be over 64, they will be 65 and up.
There is a chart that basically says in a decade or so, if you do
from birth to the top end of the age scale, about 22 percent of the
population in total will be 65 and over. If you do prime age, it is 40
percent.
Is that Republican or Democrat? It is demographics. How much time do
we spend around here talking about that?
One or two more boards, Mr. Speaker, and we are done. Yes, I am
waiting for applause on that.
Median age of first marriage. Why would you put up median age of
first marriage? Remember how we just talked about fertility rates, we
are getting old as a society, more deaths than births? We actually have
some really interesting things going on in society, and no one here
really seems comfortable talking about it because you get attacked, but
there is something wrong going on in society. We have some charts I did
not bring today that talk about the number of males and females
entering university life, and we have some major universities where
males are graduating, not exactly but almost, half as much.
Okay, do you understand what that basically means, the
marriageability gap and those things? There is something horribly wrong
in our society. We need to have a conversation about it. It is not
Republican or Democrat. It is going on around us. We may not be able to
change it, but we need to understand what it means.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how many minutes I have remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Arizona has 14 minutes.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, my last board, and then I intend to
yield to my friend.
Look, this is the chart I was going to end with. Remember how we have
been talking about what is happening when we start to have more deaths
than births? Understand, that 18-year number, it doesn't just stop
there. You basically have a society, as you get into 2041, 2043, we
continue to fall more and more. We will have a population decline in
the United States.
Understand the responsibility for someone like me on Ways and Means,
the responsibility of all of us here, we have promises to keep. We made
promises about Medicare. We made promises about Social Security. If you
understand the demographics are ahead of us, you understand the
difficulty, and it is why so many of the proposals--``If we just raise
this tax''--and when we finally get the actual scoring on it, it
doesn't actually work. It doesn't stop us from hearing it quoted all
the time, but when you actually read the actuarial reports, the math
doesn't work.
This is us. This is our country. It is continuing. It doesn't have to
be dystopian. I come back, what is the single biggest thing you could
do that is both moral and incredibly great economics and a major bend
on the debt? All of us get together and decide we are going to take on
diabetes, we are going to have an honest conversation of disrupting
obesity, we are going to maybe look into should GLP-1's be available,
should we actually take on some issues within the farm bill, which is
always so difficult to talk about, of helping our brothers and sisters
manage because there is some amazing math out there that says if you
look at much of urban income inequality, is it racism? Is it education?
You actually dig into the datasets, it is health. The number of our
brothers and sisters who are sick or are taking care of grandma because
she has gone blind because of diabetes, is that Republican or Democrat
to be willing to dive into an issue like that? I will argue it is just
moral.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Austin
Scott).
{time} 1745
Mr. AUSTIN SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Schweikert for
yielding me the time as I rise to speak on some of the exact same
things that he talked about. They are boring and uncomfortable, but
they are necessary conversations that the country has to have, just
like family has to have these conversations when things maybe aren't
going so right.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak briefly about our national debt.
Our national debt, as it is called, is the sum of our country's
annual deficits over the course of time. Last year's deficit plus the
prior year's deficit plus interest, and so on, have accumulated to over
$30 trillion.
This is a staggering number that exceeds the GDP of our country. If
you simply put a 4 percent interest factor on that number, it is $1.2
trillion a year in interest alone.
Now, how did we get into this current situation?
Mr. Speaker, let me give you a couple of dates and numbers.
On December 29, 2022, the day President Biden signed the 4,000-page
omnibus bill increasing spending into law, the Daily Treasury Statement
showed that our country, the United States of America, was at 99.8
percent of the statutory debt limit.
I will say that again, Mr. Speaker: 99.8 percent of the statutory
debt limit the day that President Biden signed the omnibus bill,
December 29, 2022.
Any responsible person, Mr. Speaker, would have addressed the debt
limit before signing an omnibus bill to increase spending.
Let's just remember and talk about that omnibus bill for a second.
It was drafted without the input of House Republicans. Not a single
House Republican voted for the bill. It was drafted by Speaker Pelosi,
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and President Joe Biden. Unfortunately,
some Senate Republicans supported it, as well.
Mr. Speaker, I was 3 years old when President Biden was first elected
to public office. Together, all combined, President Biden, Speaker
Pelosi, Leader Schumer, they have over 100 years of combined time in
Washington, D.C.
Don't you think they discussed that we were at 99.8 percent of the
national debt limit when they passed the omnibus bill? Don't you think
they discussed that they could have put one sentence in the omnibus
bill, a sentence that simply read: The statutory debt limit of the
United States is increased by the amount of funds necessary to fund
this omnibus bill. One sentence in 4,000 pages--117 combined years of
political experience. One sentence and we would not be having the debt
limit discussions that we are having today.
I promise you, they discussed it. They made a conscious decision not
to include the debt limit on the omnibus bill because they wanted to
create the very situation that we are in right now, a conscious
decision to force the country to the edge of default so they could
blame House Republicans for the mess they created.
Over the past 28 months--that is, since President Biden was sworn
into office--Democrats spent over $3 trillion without a single
Republican vote, $3 trillion in a piece of legislation that they called
the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act without a
single Republican vote. This is outside and in addition to the normal
appropriations process. They did this under the guise of reducing
inflation and rescuing America.
Where are we after one-party rule and severe government overspending?
The debt on December 29, $31,326,000. The day that President Biden
signed the omnibus bill, that is what it was. The day he was sworn into
office, it was $27,751,000.
Are you $3.5 trillion better off than you were 2 years ago, America?
On April 26, House Republicans passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act, a
bill that would prevent default and rein in spending, and sent it to
the Senate. The Senate has done nothing.
On April 27, President Biden reiterated that he still would not
negotiate with House Republicans.
Now, finally, less than 10 days prior to the estimated X date of a
default, President Biden has agreed to negotiate.
Mr. Speaker, we have a spending problem, a spending problem that has
led to a deficit problem, a deficit problem that has led to a debt
problem. Make no mistake about it, the current created crisis that we
are facing with regard to the X date on the debt limit is a political
crisis created intentionally by people who had over 100 years of
political experience and knew exactly what they were doing when they
intentionally omitted language from the omnibus bill that would have
increased the debt limit to get us out of the current situation that we
are in.
[[Page H2540]]
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________