[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 108 (Wednesday, June 21, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H3061-H3065]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
OUR NATIONAL DEBT, OUR SPENDING, AND OUR DEFICIT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the
[[Page H3062]]
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Buck) for 30 minutes.
General Leave
Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Colorado?
There was no objection.
Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I will take the next half hour to talk about
the national debt, our spending, and our deficit.
Somebody asked how big is our national debt?
Well, Federal debt is $32 trillion. The $32 trillion mark arrived 9
years sooner than pre-pandemic forecasts had projected, reflecting the
trillions of dollars of emergency spending to address COVID-19's impact
on our sluggish economy.
How much does each individual owe?
According to the U.S. Treasury's official figure for the debt, the
Federal Government is at $32 trillion in debt or, more precisely 32--
well, I am not even going to go into it. It is just a lot of money, and
it equates to $95,660 for every person living in the U.S., or $242,570
for every household in the U.S. This is an existential threat to our
country.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert),
my good friend, to talk more about the big picture of the debt, then we
are going to talk about some specific issues.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to focus more on
discretionary, just so people understand. The vast majority of our
spending is on autopilot, but a lot of us have no understanding of how
much the wheels have come off just this year, and this is so important
to start the process.
I am going to start with a board, and please understand, if this were
May 2022--you remember how long ago that was? Like a year. We expected
the U.S. deficit for this year to be $980 billion. Okay.
So where are we at today? One year later, we are functionally pushing
$1.18 trillion. We functionally have doubled the borrowing this year.
What happened? Healthcare costs went up dramatically. Interest is up
dramatically. Tax receipts are down.
What happens if some of the protections we have for the next couple
of years are off? Remember, that $1.8 trillion that we are projected to
borrow in this fiscal year, we weren't supposed to hit that for almost
8 more years.
The wheels are coming off, and if you are on the left and you care
about this program or that program, understand, there is no money. You
should help us go at every dollar here.
So we get into this game of saying, oh, but that is discretionary,
discretionary is fairly flat. It really is just not true. It is a lot
flatter than Medicare, Social Security, all of those. But those are
earned benefits that are about our aging population.
We need to walk through a sense of reality, and you are going to get
the punch line here in a moment.
This is just sort of the breakdown for this year's borrowing, this
year's spending and discretionary and what the 2018 baseline is. You
will notice the growth in spending.
Here is the punch line. We were only supposed to have borrowing of
about $1.8 trillion this year.
{time} 2100
Let me rephrase that. We were supposed to have spending equal to only
about $1.8 trillion for both defense and nondefense. Do you remember
the borrowing number? It is about $1.8 trillion.
Every dime of defense and what you think of as government is living
on borrowed money this year. You got to understand, when you get the
folks saying, well, let's just cut this program or that program. You
got to cut every dime of defense and what you think of as government,
whether that be the FBI, foreign aid, the park service, our salaries,
Congress, the White House. It is all on borrowed money now.
Here is the other thing we need to make part of our discussion: We
can't play this game of we are going to talk about discretionary and we
are only going to use the last 2 years as our baseline. We had a big
plus-up, substantially during COVID. So let's actually use a true
linear line. Let's go back to 1990, adjust the math for inflation.
Discretionary is up 154 percent. If you go from 1990 and do
inflation, all that growth of inflation, but now we are at 154 percent
growth. Defense is only up 35 percent since 1990 if you adjust for
inflation.
The wheels are coming off, Mr. Speaker. I am terrified because, at
this rate, if some of the predictions are true a decade from now, just
the interest on U.S. sovereign debt, if we stay at these interest
rates, could be approaching $2 trillion a year, more than all
discretionary, defense, nondefense included. That is the future we are
handing to America right now. It is time for great discipline.
Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr.
Schweikert) to ask some questions.
How much do we currently pay to service the debt?
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. The number has actually been going up fairly
dramatically. In the first 7 months just interest carry, just because
the increase in interest, went up $108 billion.
Mr. BUCK. On an annualized basis, what is that number, a ballpark?
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Actually, if 400, I think, was the baseline number,
with the higher interest rates and the amount of borrowing, you could
be approaching 600.
Mr. BUCK. So $600 billion?
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. There are also other things going on. People don't
realize, it is not just the $2 trillion of excess spending that has to
be borrowed, how much of the debt has to be refinanced all the time.
You actually have, let's say, $26 trillion of publicly borrowed debt.
There is something called a weighted daily average. Half of that has to
be refinanced functionally every 5 years. Basically that means every
year you are bringing $2 trillion and plus you are bringing a few
trillion additional to market, and now those new issued bonds are at
the new much higher interest rates.
Mr. BUCK. My question is this: How many jet fighters do we get for
that money?
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Interest is killing us.
Mr. BUCK. Let me ask another one: How many submarines, nuclear
submarines, do we get for that money? How many people get help, food
for pregnant moms? How many do we feed with that money?
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Congressman Buck, one of the best ways to think about
this--the budget window we are working on in functionally about 9
budget years, interest is going to be more than all of defense. That is
already baked into the cake.
Mr. BUCK. All right. We are going to start talking about what we can
do about that. I thank my friend from Arizona for joining us tonight
and giving us that advice.
Folks, you may have heard of Dave Ramsey. He has helped millions of
Americans get out of debt, turn the corner on their finances. May have
read one of his books or taken one of his classes.
The key to his get out of debt programs, he offers simple steps.
These are reasonable measures that anyone can take. The first step he
often recommends is to make a list of your current debt and your
current spending. The actual first step is to decide that you are done
being in debt.
Our Nation's debt stands at, as we just heard, almost $32 trillion.
We need a Dave Ramsey program here in Washington, D.C. The United
States debt stands at $32 trillion. Every year, the Government
Accountability Office puts together reports on wasteful spending and
ineffective programs in the Federal Government. These reports, if read
and applied, would help us streamline government programs, reduce
waste, minimize fraudulent payments, create oversight, and greater
accountability to taxpayers.
As we head into the appropriation season, I am asking all of my
colleagues to join with me and others who have read these roadmaps from
the Government Accountability Office with recommendations for how we
can reduce Federal spending, save taxpayer funds, and most importantly,
start paying down the debt.
Here are some key findings from the General Accounting Office. In
2022, 18 Federal agencies reported an estimated $247 billion in
improper payments. Over the past two decades, the Federal Government
wasted $2.4 trillion on payment errors. Federal taxpayers pay $2
[[Page H3063]]
billion each year maintaining empty government buildings. GAO
identified $552.7 billion spent on duplicate and redundant programs in
2022.
If our Nation is ever going to dig its way out of this debt, we will
have to start tackling wasteful spending. That includes going after the
improper payments made in error.
What is an improper payment? First, fraud. An individual or business
willfully stealing from the government. Secondly, mistaken identity.
Payments going to the wrong person. Third, payments going to a deceased
person.
Here is just one example: More than 47 percent of the payments to the
Veterans Administration Department, particular program in the VA, made
in 2022 were improper. Let me say that again: More than 47 percent.
That is almost half of the payments in one program. The good news is
that is an improvement because 5 years ago that number was at 100
percent of that program's budget. One hundred percent went to the wrong
people and they are down to just 50 percent now. Maybe in 5 years, if
they keep going at this rate, they will be down to 25 percent. Maybe
not.
In 2022, just 18 Federal agencies reported wasting an estimated $247
billion on incorrect payments. That is just 18 agencies, not the entire
government.
Our government also holds thousands of vacant, unused properties. We
pay every year for lawn maintenance, electricity, security, energy
costs for these unused properties. The Government Accountability Office
estimates that we spend $2 billion each year just on maintaining these
empty buildings.
Another major area of concern is redundant programs. In 2022 alone,
the Federal Government wasted $552.7 billion on duplicate programs.
Taxpayers receive no benefit for these redundant programs that create
more inefficiencies and run up the costs needlessly.
Unauthorized programs are also an additional source of wasted funds.
If Congress hasn't authorized a program, why is the executive branch
spending taxpayer funds on it? There are over a thousand unauthorized
government programs that Congress continues to fund without
reauthorizing or reviewing these programs.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs) to
talk about that more in depth and to engage in a colloquy.
Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado for
holding this Special Order and talking about this very important
subject.
The reality is, as we are on that tank from ``Indiana Jones'' that is
going off the cliff, we are busy fighting on top of it, but the tank is
still going over the edge.
One of the problem areas that we have is this payment of a half a
trillion dollars a year--think about that--that we are giving to
unauthorized programs. You can go to the Congressional Research
Services and they will give you a full print out. You can get the full
display of all of them and when those programs expired.
One of the oldest ones--and I will just pull it up here. I have to
scroll through all of these programs, these hundreds and thousands of
programs. This is one where the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction,
Mr. Buck, and I mention that because Representative Buck and I both sit
on judiciary.
{time} 2110
It is the payment to the Legal Services Corporation. You know what
that is. That is the public defender's office. The expiration of their
authorization was in 1980, 42 years ago.
What is the amount of money that they were last authorized to spend?
Undefinite, an undefinite amount. There was no cap on it.
That is what we have. We have everything from EPA, State Department,
ATF. These are agencies and departments that haven't been authorized.
Then we have a whole list of additional programs that have not been
authorized, but we continue to fund them. Our own rule proscribes that.
The remedy for us immediately is, when those come up, at least under
previous terms of Congress, we have been able to actually raise a point
of order and get that pulled out, if we can.
Representative Buck, that gives you kind of a background and an idea
of what we are facing, which is part of our huge budgetary problem.
Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, let me ask my friend a question, if I may.
We talk about authorizing programs. How does Congress authorize a
program?
Mr. BIGGS. You would authorize a program--like the NDAA, the National
Defense Authorization Act. That is an authorizing program. It
authorizes us to spend money, and then we go ahead and appropriate to
that authorization.
Mr. BUCK. A committee would hold a hearing, would invite in
administration officials, executive branch officials, and would review
the effectiveness of the program. There may be an inspector general's
report about a wasteful part of the program. There may be newspaper
articles or other sources of information. You hold a hearing, and the
staff would be investigating this before the hearing. Then, we vote to
recommend to the whole House whether that program should be
reauthorized or not.
Mr. BIGGS. Yes. I am not sure that I knew that detail because I don't
think I have seen that happen since I have been in Congress.
Mr. BUCK. How long have you been in Congress?
Mr. BIGGS. I am in my seventh year. That is the point. If you want to
authorize something, like the Judiciary Committee, they should be
holding these types of hearings because it is just what you say.
The year that I got elected from Arizona, a famous national journal
did a study and estimated that the Department of Defense was wasting
$125 billion annually. Well, that is one of those things where you
probably would want to bring it in. Actually, in this instance, the
NDAA, those hearings on authorization, you would be talking about if
there is really that much waste there and what we do to recover that
waste and prevent it.
We just don't do enough of that in Congress. We are just so busy,
again, like I said, trimming around the edges. We are not getting at
the core of the problem.
Mr. BUCK. We have just identified the process for one agency or one
program to be reauthorized. We are talking about 1,100 unauthorized
programs that Congress needs to authorize before it appropriates money
to them. That is not even including the 325 programs that will need to
be reauthorized at the end of this year. We are going to be close to
1,500 programs, and over half of the discretionary budget will go to
unauthorized programs.
Mr. BIGGS. That is why I support what I call the Buck plan. The Buck
plan calls upon Congress, the majority in this case, in every committee
to have a subcommittee that is looking at the authorization
jurisdiction of that committee and then makes the recommendations, has
the hearings. Let's do this right.
Transparency is important, but beyond that, the process is broken. If
we are going to try to get a handle on our out-of-control spending, you
would think we would want to fix the process as much as anything.
I commend Representative Buck.
For those watching at home, both of you, Representative Buck has put
together this plan, has been championing this plan, and I am behind
that plan all the way. I think it is something we must do. It should be
part of any appropriations process going forward.
Mr. BUCK. I thank my friend for that compliment. I have really just
stolen a lot of ideas from a lot of people and tried to put them
together in one place.
One of the things that aggravates me the most about unauthorized
programs--and I am so happy that you raised it and are talking about
it--is that it really was a fraud on Members of Congress.
For example, with the Endangered Species Act, it was a problem with
eagles and this chemical called DDT. It was thinning the eagles' eggs,
and the eagles weren't reproducing, so we had a declining bald eagle
population in the United States.
We passed the Endangered Species Act, but the promise to the Members
of Congress is: We will review this every 5 years. This isn't going to
go on forever, folks. When we take care of this bald eagle problem and
a few other critters, we are going to be done with this program.
[[Page H3064]]
I think Ronald Reagan said that the closest thing to eternal life on
this planet is a Federal program, and that is what we have seen.
Congress doesn't bother reauthorizing these programs, so they just go
on and on because we would have to actually make a tough decision if we
were going to reauthorize these programs, amend these programs, or cut
these programs. Nobody wants to make a tough decision. It is much
easier just to make our grandchildren pay a huge debt because we are
too lazy, too unfocused, to actually do our job.
Mr. BIGGS. We are too fearful because every program that gets created
creates a constituency, and you have to look somebody in the eye and
say that program is no longer necessary.
The ESA is a perfect example of that. It has basically run amuck. It
is why California doesn't build storage facilities for water, which
impacts the entire western half of the United States. It is why we had
someone who wanted to stop any building in Arizona. They tried to get
the Sonoran Desert tortoise to be declared an endangered species, but
they had to stop counting when they got over 3 million of them. They
said, well, that is not really an endangered species. That would have
impacted the entire State because they are found everywhere in Arizona.
It is an example of one of those eternal programs that you and
President Reagan talked about.
Mr. BUCK. The Endangered Species Act is no longer used as a shield.
It is now used as a sword, yet we don't authorize it. We don't hold
hearings, and we don't examine the impact of the Endangered Species
Act. Parts of it undoubtedly are good, but a large part of it is a
program that needs to either be cut, amended, or certainly examined.
Mr. Speaker, I invite our good friend from Virginia, who has a wealth
of information for Americans, to join us and tell us what he knows.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, that won't take very long.
I thank my good friend from Colorado, Mr. Buck, for his leadership on
this Special Order on this critical issue tonight.
One of the key responsibilities, if not the number one
responsibility, of the House of Representatives is to protect the
fiscal and economic health of the country and the government, at least
our ability to meet our obligations, our ability to fund our
priorities, our ability to borrow when necessary--not to the degree
that we do today--in times of crisis.
I want to make a couple of key points, if I may. Before the pandemic
hit, before the China virus reached our shores, our annual spending was
about $4.4 trillion. Spending this year is projected to be about $6.2
trillion, so an increase of $1.8 trillion, or about 40 percent, over 4
years.
The most ambitious of the somewhat serious proposals in this majority
Conference to deal with the spending or to cut spending this year in
this Congress is to cut about $130 billion. That is the most ambitious
of what I would say is serious that is getting any traction in this
Congress--in other words, to cut from a projected $1.6 trillion of
nonmandatory, discretionary spending to $1.47 trillion.
{time} 2120
Think about that $130 billion, which is the ambitious plan. That is
the stretch goal. It represents less than 10 percent of the increase in
spending from pre-COVID to today over 4 years.
We have grown our spending in the discretionary spending by $1.8
trillion in 4 years, and yet we are only projecting to cut it or even
suggesting to cut it by $130 billion.
Said another way, we are on track to have a deficit this year of
somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion. Revenues are down,
spending is up. Again, the most ambitious, the stretch goal of the
somewhat serious plans in this Congress is to cut spending by $130
billion. Less than 10 percent of the projected deficit.
If we got through the $1.47, we would retain 90 percent of the
projected deficit this year. In addition to it crushing us from a
fiscal future standpoint, it is unsustainable. As you know better than
I, we are on track to hit some $53 trillion in national debt in 10
years, if we don't have any new emergency exceptional special spending,
but just on the current track--unsustainable.
Our friend from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) talked about the interest on
the debt and how that is growing, and it is just unsustainable. Even in
the immediacy, the American people are getting crushed today by this
spending.
The massive inflation we haven't seen in 40 years, a diminishing
purchasing power by some 15-16 percent on average over the last 2
years. In other words, $1,000 2 years ago is worth $850 today. It is
even worse in the essentials. Groceries are up much higher. Everybody
needs to buy groceries. Utility costs are much higher. Energy costs in
terms of gasoline at the pump, which is probably the biggest factor
that impacts senior citizens, low-income, fixed-income, middle-income
Americans, or anybody else. Housing costs are through the roof.
We have inflation crushing the American people. How have we responded
to the inflationary costs?
We are crushing them with the massive increase in interest rates
historically utilized to combat a hot economy to try to head off
inflation, to cool the economy--that is the theory. I never really
agreed with that theory, but that is the theory.
Instead, what we are doing, we caused the inflation, not from a hot
economy, but we caused the inflation from the massive spending. What we
are doing is this futile attempt to combat inflation by raising
interest rates. We went from an average mortgage rate being about 3
percent a year ago to now 7 percent. That extra 4 percent--figure an
average mortgage is $300,000 in today's prices. So, 4 percent of
$300,000 is $12,000, divide that by monthly. The average mortgage is
$1,000 a month more than it was a year ago. That doesn't even account
for the higher costs in housing, utility costs, and the grocery costs.
All of that is primarily a result of the massive spending that is just
crushing the American people. It is crushing their purchasing power. It
is crushing their ability for their kids or their grandkids to make a
start, buy a home, establish themselves in their young career. It is a
result of the disastrous policies by this administration.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Buck for his leadership on this all
important issue and keeping the attention where it belongs.
Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I would love to ask Mr. Good a couple
questions.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. No tough ones.
Mr. BUCK. As a fellow deficit hawk, you heard about the vacant
buildings that the Federal Government owns. I think the most accurate
number I have heard is 77,000 vacant or underutilized buildings that
the Federal Government owns. There have been some estimates that it is
a little bit lower than that, but anywhere in that range is absolutely
incredible to me.
It costs approximately $2 billion a year to just keep those vacant
buildings up to speed, whether it is the electricity, the security, the
lawn maintenance, all those things--$2 billion a year. We also spend
billions of dollars to house Federal employees in office buildings that
are privately owned.
This has been going on for 10 years. The GAO has been reporting this
to Congress. My question to my good friend--and I am not accusing my
good friend at all--why doesn't Congress--this is the worst part of
it--the GAO, the Government Accounting Office, is a congressional
office. Why do we pay for reports to find out about the waste and then
ignore the reports that we are paying for about how the executive
branch wastes money? What is the answer?
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, we work for the American people,
the GAO works for us, and by extension the American people. So 77,000
buildings approximately, as you mentioned, it costs a couple billion
dollars a year to sustain those buildings, the maintenance of those
buildings, operate those buildings, maintain them, staff them, whatever
it might be.
What about the value of the 77,000 buildings?
Why wouldn't we sell those buildings and realize the revenue to the
Treasury?
Not just the $2 billion a year of not having to maintain those
buildings. Let's just say that the average value of that building is
$100,000. Let's be real conservative, let's say it is a million
dollars--77,000. What is that?
[[Page H3065]]
That is $77 billion worth of assets if the average building was worth
a million dollars. If it is only worth $100,000 on average, that is
$7.7 billion. That would be not much more than a rounding error, the
way that we spend money in the trillions here. When you take that over
time, it ends up to be a few billion here, a few billion there, and
before long you are talking about real money.
Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, wouldn't it be a great idea to tell the
executive branch that when they get done selling 10 percent of these
buildings or 20 percent of these buildings they will start seeing
funding again?
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to direct their remarks
to the Chair and not a perceived viewing audience.
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