[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.

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