[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 159 (Friday, September 29, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H4901-H4907]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                THE MATH

  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 yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Grothman) for a memorial.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, this week I introduced legislation to 
rename the post office in Kiel, Wisconsin, after Wisconsin State 
trooper, Trevor Casper.
  Now, I know many in this body may not have heard of Trevor, but back 
in Wisconsin he is not just the son of our State, he is a shining 
example of dedication and service. Trevor Casper was born in Sheboygan 
on May 21, 1993, to parents Kevin and Deborah.
  He graduated from Kiel High School with the class of 2011 where he 
was active in wrestling, soccer, and coaching youth sports.
  After high school, Trevor pursued a degree in criminal justice at 
Lakeshore Technical College, graduating in May of 2014.
  During Trevor's time there, he was active in color guard and served 
as president of the LTC student government.
  It was clear that Trevor was not just interested in a career but 
passionate about making a difference in his entire community.
  Trevor's dream was to continue his education at the State Patrol 
Academy, which he did, successfully graduating on December 18, 2014.
  Following his graduation, Trooper Casper was stationed at the State 
trooper base in Fond du Lac where he continued to serve his community 
with honor and dedication.
  Tragically, on his first assignment, he made the ultimate sacrifice. 
On March 24, 2015, he was shot in Fond du Lac while apprehending a bank 
robbery and murder suspect. Though mortally wounded, Trooper Casper 
returned fire on the suspect, killing him, and protecting those in the 
nearby vicinity.
  Trevor Casper was the youngest law enforcement officer to ever make 
the ultimate sacrifice in the State of Wisconsin. His bravery in the 
face of danger, his commitment to upholding the law, and his 
willingness to protect our community were unwavering.
  Trooper Casper is a true hero, and he deserves to be remembered and 
honored for his selfless sacrifice. Renaming the Kiel Post Office in 
his honor is a small but meaningful gesture and will ensure that future 
generations see the name Trevor Casper and will hear about his great 
sacrifice and what a great human being he was.

  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I apologize to everyone as we are sort 
of organizing the slides here.
  Mr. Speaker and anyone that is listening, okay, so the House is in a 
fairly cantankerous spot right now. Part of my frustration and part of 
the reason for actually grabbing this hour is--what is a more elegant 
way to use the words ``I need to stop the lying.'' Actually, I don't 
think we are supposed to say that on the floor--the people just making 
crap up.
  Let's actually have an educational discussion here. If you don't like 
math, please just turn off your television and stop watching because 
this is becoming a math-free zone around here.
  Why is there fighting here on the House floor? What is the fussing? 
You do understand every dime a Member of Congress votes on now is all 
borrowed money. There is a very good chance--we will know actually next 
week when the final Treasury data is posted that for this fiscal year, 
the 2023 fiscal year which ends this weekend, we will borrow--and I am 
sorry, but this is how you need to think about it--we will borrow, 
functionally, 9 percent of GDP.
  So 9 percent of the entire economy will be just the borrowed money. 
Not the spent money, the borrowed money. We are hitting numbers that 
should be terrifying. I don't know why they are not terrifying to the 
folks on the left. You just saw it. They just came to the microphones 
saying we want more money. Where does it come from?
  Let's actually walk through some basic facts. This isn't Republican 
or Democrat math, it is just math. My family motto is ``math will 
always win.'' It may take a while, but the math will always win.
  The reason for this chart, Mr. Speaker, is--one more time try to 
visualize--this is the 2023 budget. In that 2023 budget here is what we 
call discretionary spending. This is defense and nondefense.
  We have 1.7 on this chart. It is actually closer to $1.8 trillion. 
This wedge over here is actually--let's just call it Medicare. Social 
Security still has its own trust fund, which is out in 9 years. When 
you hear Democrats saying, well, we don't borrow anything for Social 
Security, you shouldn't be talking about it. Well, the trust fund is 
gone in 9 years, and the recapitalization of it is brutal.
  Once again, my brothers and sisters on the left don't want to 
actually deal with the math because it is such a great campaign hit on 
anyone that actually cares about not doubling senior poverty in 9 
years.
  Back to this chart. When you look at this, you have to understand, 
this blue wedge is all we get to vote on. All the red, the 72 percent 
of spending we call mandatory is on autopilot. You get that benefit 
because you worked your 40 quarters. You earned your Social Security 
benefit. You worked a certain amount. You have paid into your Medicare. 
You turned 65. You get that benefit when you hit a certain age. That is 
the vast majority of the spending, and it is also--if you go from today 
through the next 30 years, it is 100 percent of the future debt.
  It is demographics. I say this over and over and over and over. The 
idiot

[[Page H4902]]

class around here who wants to say, no, it is Republicans not willing 
to tax people more, stop it.
  I am going to walk you through all the Democrat tax proposals and 
show you how little of GDP it creates even at tax maximization. There 
is this concept of at this rate you maximize tax receipts without 
rolling over the economy and rolling over the fall of receiving less 
tax receipts.
  I am going to show you the math on maximizing. It is nowhere near 
what the Democrats keep telling you, and it is really crappy economics.
  One more time, this board is incredibly important. You want to know 
why there is fussing around here? It is all borrowed now. And what has 
happened in the last couple of months interest rate-wise? Think of this 
as just a thought experiment. August 1 until today, the movement in 
interest rates--just that movement in interest rates is about $50 
billion of interest next year.
  We are borrowing over $6 billion a day. That is functionally--let's 
take a look here. If you take a look at our borrowing over the last 12 
months, it is $72,932 a second. $72,000 a second. That is why the 
idiocy here of people who say, well, I am going to save a million 
dollars here. That is real money, great. But let's see, if you're 
borrowing $72,000 a second, that is how many seconds did you just 
cover?
  The $300 million that was stripped out of one of the bills, okay, 
fine, but it is 57 minutes of borrowing over an entire year. There is 
this delusion--every dime, I believe, of foreign aid is--I used to say 
12 days of borrowing. Someone pointed out it is actually closer to 9 
days of borrowing.
  For us in the political class, math is hard. Our audience often 
doesn't want to hear it because it doesn't satiate the feelings. We 
make public policy now by feelings, not a calculator. So you have a 
world now where you get up and say, hey, it is demographics.
  We got old. Healthcare costs are the primary driver of debt, and they 
look at you and say, no, it is waste and fraud and foreign aid. You 
show them the little chart that says, okay, I can get maybe a couple 
weeks of borrowing eliminated, what would you like to do with the rest 
of the year, and people look at you with daggers.

                              {time}  1430

  Then you have the left who just makes crap up. I don't think it is 
meant to be evil. I think it is just that you get something in your 
head and you repeat it over and over and over, and the math is 
delusional.
  I am going to walk through some boards here. When we get to them, 
some of these are really complex, but I am going to do my best so they 
make sense.
  How do you save this republic if you have a bunch of people who can't 
even agree on the most baseline? This was on the CBO, Joint Tax, 
basically their datasets. No one reads their reports.
  The Joint Economic Committee, which I chair the Republican side, we 
did a brilliant report 2 months ago. We gave actually options where you 
could save this country. It is crazy stuff. If you could actually 
eliminate, moderate, take on, do the moral thing with our brothers and 
sisters and talk about diabetes and obesity, it is a few trillion 
dollars over 10 years. It would require complex policies and decisions 
to do things that are difficult.
  The only reason I hold that board up, this board is from 3 weeks ago 
and it is already out of date. What does this board say? It basically 
says next year, interest will pretty much equal the defense budget. 
Interest will equal the defense budget. The reason it is out of date is 
just the movement of interest rates in the last 3 weeks. On the U.S. 
10-year sovereign, interest will be more than the entire defense budget 
next year. If it continues, if the trend line continues, there is a 
very good chance that interest isn't going to be $800 billion, $830 
billion; it could be starting to approach a trillion dollars next year.
  Why is that a big deal? Well, let's do something else interesting. 
For people who have never really thought about it, how does the United 
States finance itself? Remember, 30 cents out of every dollar we spend 
is borrowed. Where does that 30 cents come from? We issue bonds. Every 
couple weeks, like 3 days ago, Treasury issued $30-plus billion of 5-
year instruments. It went out at the very top of the range price-wise.
  You sit there and have to calculate. Coverage was a little 
disturbing. It was only like 2\1/2\ coverage. I know that doesn't mean 
anything. It basically means the huge lines to buy U.S. bonds weren't 
there. The line is getting shorter and shorter, interest to buy our 
debt, which often means the interest rates are going to go up.
  What happens to bonds that were sold in previous years? Because the 
last three Treasury Secretaries, Republicans and Democrats, did 
something stupid and we couldn't get them to change it because it 
benefited them politically that week, is they went very short-term on 
the bonds. I am going issue 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, when interest 
rates were almost basically free.
  Guess where we are at right now? Those bonds are coming due. In the 
next fiscal year, if we bring $2 trillion of new virgin issue--that is 
the borrowing for next fiscal year. Remember, this year we are going to 
borrow 2.3, 2.4, but let's just pretend next year is about 2. We have a 
little problem. There is about $9.6 trillion of borrowing coming either 
as virgin issues or refinance next year, and it is all at these higher 
interest rates.
  Your government is functionally an insurance company with an army and 
a budget problem. What do we look like at the end of 2024 when we have 
just refinanced a little bit under $10 trillion at these higher 
interest rates?
  It basically means that dystopian number you use to go into the 2025 
budget cycle of a trillion dollars interest coverage, if you are into 
the military, interest buys you how many new weapons? If you are into a 
social justice agenda, interest buys you what? This is what we are 
doing to ourselves, and it is the reality, and the interest rates keep 
moving away from us.
  Let's continue on some of the more difficult stuff. Just simple math. 
We are going to spend some time talking about how do you fix things 
when you can't even get the other side that you need--we have to do 
this together. It is complex. It is hard. It is politically brutal 
because this place has functionally lied to the public for decades.
  Let's use the most optimistic--and I believe at least one side of 
these numbers is absolutely wrong. It is basically saying next year, 
the projection months ago was the 2024 budget year was only going to 
borrow about $1.7 trillion. I think that is wrong. I think we are going 
to 2, but let's say it is 1.7.
  Let's say we did the most confiscatory tax ever. We basically took 
every American, if you make $500,000, every dime you make above that, 
we take all of it. Every dime belongs to the government and people keep 
working. The basketball player, the scientist, the entrepreneur just 
keeps working. They say, well, I made my $500,000; the government is 
going to take every other dime; I am just going to keep working and 
paying it all into the government, which is a fantasy. That is not how 
economics work. Just for a math experiment, let's say we are going to 
confiscate every dime of people over $500,000. You raise about $1\1/2\ 
trillion.
  Did I mention the borrowing from CBO months ago was projected to be 
$1.7 trillion? You can't even cover the deficit if you had a fantasy 
number of taking every dime of those high-income earners.
  Yet, I will show slides like this at certain townhalls where I have a 
number of Democrat activists, and they look at you and go, well, that 
is Republican math. No, actually, I think this one came from Cato, but 
I have some that are from OMB, CBO, progressive budget priorities. It 
is all the same. We are living in a mathematical fantasy world.
  I am going to go out of sequence here, because I am angry that I saw 
a California Member on CNN a little while ago basically holding a 
little white board and completely lying to the press, because it is 
such good politics: Republicans shouldn't talk about Social Security. 
It doesn't add anything to the deficit. Absolutely true, because there 
is a trust fund that has cash in it for 9 more years.
  What happens in 9 years? Here is the reason we want to talk about it, 
to save it. In 9 years, the average couple on Social Security gets a 
$17,400 cut. You double the poverty of seniors in America in 9 years. 
It is absolutely immoral. The recapitalization of this is going to be 
complex, because that first

[[Page H4903]]

year--so 9 years from now, the first year shortfall is $616 billion. 
Okay. Do this with me. You don't have to be good at math for this. This 
isn't that hard. Nine years from now, boom, the trust fund is gone. You 
have got a $616 billion shortfall in 2033. Okay. Big deal. You don't 
care. It is 9 years from now.

  Here is the Democrats' policy. We are just going to raise taxes on 
those who make $400,000 and up. The Democrats' piece of legislation is 
$400,000 and up, you are going to pay the 12.4 percent FICA tax, all of 
it. Great, okay. Raise the taxes, every dime, you get no benefit from 
it.
  Let me slow down and let me explain. Today, you pay your FICA tax up 
to, what is it, $160,200, and then it stops. You don't pay the Social 
Security tax above that because you don't get any benefit for it.
  You create this doughnut hole under Democrat policy and then you 
start paying the tax again when you hit $400,000. That produces $86.3 
billion in 2033, 2034. Let's use 2033, because that is the year that 
Social Security is gone.
  Can anyone do the math with me? $86 billion of new taxes, $616 
billion shortfall. Anyone notice a math problem? You are covering one-
seventh of the shortfall. That is the Democrat solution.
  Let's actually do the grander one. I will get people who say: Well, 
David, we will be just fine. Just eliminate that cap and make people 
pay the full 12.4 percent Social Security tax on every dime. If a 
person makes a billion dollars, they pay it on that. They get no 
benefit, no benefit for those higher taxes. People say that solves the 
problem.
  Then you show them this. Remember, the first year is a $616 billion 
shortfall. Eliminating the Social Security cap produces 164,700. You 
are basically covering 20 percent of the shortfall. This is the 
Democrats' grand solution.
  This is why, for those who own a calculator around here and have a 
soul of not wanting to double senior poverty, we are willing to get the 
crap kicked out of us by the activist left saying: But you are talking 
about social security; you are not allowed to do that.
  We are trying to save it. We are trying to save it, because you have 
people manipulating you and lying to you about the math. This is 
immoral. In 9 years, you double senior poverty in America, and their 
solution only covers one-seventh or 20 percent. This is what you have 
been given.
  Then you wonder why there is friction. What if you have friction 
because some people want to tell great stories and some people would 
actually like to save the country?
  Let's walk through a few more of these.
    Mike Kelly, Congressman from Pennsylvania, is my senior so he sits 
to my left in the Ways and Means Committee, which annoys me. I need to 
explain part of the inside joke. In Congress, there is only one 
committee that is solely by seniority. It is called the Ways and Means 
Committee. When people to your left retire, quit, go away, you move up. 
If they are on this side, that makes no difference to your life. He is 
senior to me.   Mike Kelly also chairs the Tax Subcommittee.
  No one else has been willing to do this math. Our brothers and 
sisters on the left keep saying we will tax our way out of the crisis.
  The first chart, I was trying to be somewhat brutal, saying, okay, 
tax revenues versus expected deficits under different wealth models. 
Here is actually the deficit. This is the baseline deficit number. Here 
is what you got. The Sanders wealth tax, I understand, is probably 
unconstitutional. This is where they would come in and say, even though 
this isn't your income, we are confiscating some of your wealth. The 
big one they are pushing right now is the oligarch tax, where they are 
going to come in and say if you are really rich, we can come in and 
every year take 8 percent of your wealth.
  The problem is, I have got $1.8 trillion, and this thing is basically 
covering what? $230 billion of shortfall? It also blows up the economy, 
and it doesn't get you anywhere.
  I am not here to defend really, really rich people. I am here to 
defend math.
  Mr. Kelly has a personality. I am like a walking calculator. Tell me, 
why am I failing to communicate the reality that the proposals we are 
getting are absurd? They only cover a fraction of the shortfalls.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly) 
for a colloquy.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, there is no reason for any of 
you to know me. My whole life has been spent in the private sector, and 
I have really come to believe that nobody should serve in the public 
sector unless they first have been in the private sector.

                              {time}  1445

  My whole life has been about making sure that on the 6th of each 
month and the 21st of each month--they are special days for me because 
those were days that the people who worked with me every day got paid.
  We use something called kitchen table economics. I sit beside David, 
and I talk to him all the time. I am more of a person who says: Do you 
know what? Let's use kitchen table economics.
  Now, I am told that Army manuals are written on a sixth-grade level 
so that people can understand them. I want to show you something. I 
reduced this down to a $1 bill because when you hear our friends 
talking about: Oh, no, you can cut spending. You can do this.
  I want you to think not as a Member of Congress who can spend 
whatever he or she wants because it is not coming completely out of 
your pocket but of the American people, hardworking American taxpayers.
  We took a dollar bill and said: Let's look at this dollar bill. 
Mandatory spending is money that has to be spent out of every dollar we 
collect from a taxpayer, $0.63. Look at this. What do you mean by that? 
Well, we are talking about Social Security. We are talking about 
Medicare. We are talking about Medicaid.
  As all of you know, any loan you ever had, you are actually charged 
interest on it, $0.10 of every dollar. This year, that represents $663 
billion just to pay for the interest on our debt. That leaves us a 
whopping $0.27 out of every single dollar we collect from you.
  This is the important thing. I am so fed up with elected officials 
talking about what they have done for you. They do nothing for you. 
Every single thing we do in this country is paid for by a taxpayer or a 
debt that you cosigned that you didn't know about.
  Now, I told you a bit of my history. I am an automobile dealer. Most 
people, 97 percent of the people that we sell a car or truck to, borrow 
money to pay for that car or truck. They sign their name to a contract. 
We take great time to explain to them exactly what is expected of them.
  I told you this $0.63 goes for Social Security, Medicare, and 
Medicaid, and 10 percent, $0.10 on each dollar, just to pay our debt 
down--$663 billion.
  That is why I wanted to reduce it down to kitchen table economics. 
This is what is happening to your dollar.
  We have $0.27 that we can spend any way we want. What does that mean? 
Well, that includes transportation, education, defense, and other 
programs. Let's take a look at the $0.27 of our budget, of our 
revenues, that we have left to spend.
  Of the $0.27 of each dollar, spending for defense, $0.13. We don't 
ever want to walk away from that. In the world we live in now, are you 
kidding me? We are going to stop that?
  That leaves us, my friends, with $0.14 that we can actually control. 
Every single dollar out of your pocket is reduced down to this.
  When people say that you have to learn how to cut spending, I say: 
You gave me a dollar bill? I can adjust $0.14.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. It is worth pointing out, for everyone looking at 
that, you see that chart of defense and let's call it nondefense.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Yes.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. It is all borrowed. Every dime of that today is on 
borrowed money.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Yes.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Plus another $400 billion of the mandatory.
  So many of our brothers and sisters around the country don't 
understand. It is so out of whack now because all--look. The number one 
growth is healthcare cost, but that is sort of on autopilot because 
every time we try to fix it, the lobbyists, the Democrats, lose their 
minds. We are just trying to save the country.
  We end up having the fights that are going on right now over that 
$0.14.

[[Page H4904]]

There is waste, fraud, and things that we need to fix, but it is a 
fraction of the budget, and it is all on borrowed money, which adds the 
additional stress of there is a morality of squeezing everything we can 
out of it.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Schweikert and I sit 
beside each other every day, and we keep--honestly, these are things 
that keep me up at night.
  In another month, my wife and I will be celebrating our 50th 
anniversary. I don't know what she was thinking. All I did was ask, and 
she said yes. Then, for half a century, we have been going at this.
  We have 10 grandchildren, and I am constantly asked by people: How 
can you be so responsible when it comes to spending our tax dollars?
  We don't want to be irresponsible. David and I sit there, and I have 
to tell you, sitting beside him is hard because he has so much going on 
in his head at one time. He is like a calculator, and I keep going back 
just to the basics.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. In other words, you are telling people the truth: I 
drive you nuts.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Social services, natural resources, 
science, space, technology, and other programs, we are down to $0.14 of 
a dollar. This is a dollar that you paid, by the way. This is out of 
your taxes.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. They are paying the interest on it now.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. The interest is $663 billion of what we 
owe.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. $800 billion next year.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. It keeps growing and growing and growing. 
No responsible person would ever sit back and work this model.
  The greatest nation the world has ever known, the wealthiest nation 
the world has ever known, has been totally irresponsible in the way she 
spent her money, and it wasn't done by her.
  This incredible group of people that sit down here--remember, I said 
this to begin with. I don't believe anybody should serve in public 
office until they have been in the private sector. I, myself, have been 
in situations on the 6th of the month and the 21st of the month where I 
made sure every person that worked at the dealership got paid. There 
were many times I did not pay myself because I didn't have enough money 
to do it.

  The point I think we keep trying to make is: When are we going to 
wake up to what is going on? This is a Titanic moment for our country.
  The reason I say that is because the Titanic went full speed ahead 
into an iceberg. What did the captain of the Titanic see? Just a small 
part of the iceberg. They didn't see what was hidden.
  My friends, right now the hidden part of what it is that we are 
spending--I would just ask you to please think with us as we go through 
this.
  Reduce it down to where it makes sense and understand what is 
happening right now on the floor of this Congress. We represent you. We 
do not represent ourselves alone. We represent you.
  If we talk about this, and this is where we are--I would just think 
at some point, we would sit back and say I cannot watch this and allow 
this to happen to hardworking American taxpayers.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I think in some ways you just described why the 
fussing over the budget documents is going on.
  We put together some interesting slides here that we have never 
presented before. We took these from a researcher at Manhattan and a 
couple of other places. Then Joint Economics, some of my economists, 
did some math here. We set this for 2033. We actually had a year that 
is 10 budget years from now. We did not put in the fact that the Social 
Security trust fund is gone, and there is $616 billion that needs to 
somehow be recapitalized. That is actually not in this deficit number.
  We also rolled the number. The baseline for anyone that is really 
geeky out there, we ran this to the standard debt-to-GDP number.
  There is a new update on what debt will be 9 years from now that is 
now $3.1 trillion. If interest rates stay as high as they are spiking 
right now, it could be as high as 3.7. We are going to use the $2.5 
trillion.
  The reason this board exists is we took--and I have a bunch of slides 
we are going to walk through, but I need to set up the pitch first.
  If we took every tax that our Democrat colleagues talk about in the 
Ways and Means Committee and did what they call a revenue-maximizing 
rate, there is a rate that you can charge that the economists--this is 
economic modeling where you maximize tax collections before it rolls 
over and people change their behavior and the tax collections go down.
  We actually added it up--maximize estate taxes, maximize income 
taxes, maximize corporate taxes, maximize capital gains taxes. We 
maximized everything, and then we also came back and said, all right, 
here is the maximum number taxing the rich. This is the top 2 percent. 
If you make $400,000 or higher, you are part of the top 2 percent of 
income in America. You have to understand that.
  Then we also did if you did the economic effect, what they call the 
dynamic score, which is always the real number we get.
  So here is our $2.5 trillion borrowing. If you did the full max on 
Democrats and got every dime, you get about $700 billion.
  If you actually do the real number where the dynamic score comes in 
about $450 billion, you have just maximized all taxes. It gets you a 
fraction of the talking points.
  My reason for going through these boards--how do I say this politely 
without sounding like a jerk? Our brothers and sisters have to decide. 
They may actually believe these numbers, but they are not real.
  How do you make public policy that saves this country when half of 
your brothers and sisters here say: No, we just tax people over 
$400,000. We will be fine.
  You show the slide, and it is nowhere near that. It is the 
unwillingness to deal with the reality of the math.
  This is one you and I have talked about a couple of times where if 
you basically look at our history--go back to 1950 because, actually, 
what is fascinating is from 1950 until recently, you actually have 
history where sometimes we have had really, really high marginal tax 
rates, 90 percent for the top income earners.
  After tax reform, you are lower, but you took away a bunch of the 
deductions. You took half of society and removed them from the tax 
rolls. They don't pay income taxes.
  We actually built lots of charts that sort of show, during times of 
high tax rates, you get pretty much the same part of the size of the 
economy in taxes. Low marginal tax rates, you get the same part of the 
economy in taxes.
  There is this concept that it always goes back to the mean, so the 
way you get more tax receipts to government is growth in the economy. 
That is the magic. That is how you get more tax receipts. It is growth.
  When we have really high marginal rates, chart after chart shows you 
get the mean. When you have had very low, you get the mean, but it is a 
bigger pie because the economy starts growing again.
  You show this to our Democrat brothers and sisters, and they will 
often say: I have seen that, but my voters don't like that because it 
doesn't satiate the feeling of punishing.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. When we have talked about this, because we 
have time when we are in meetings to talk about this--I want you all to 
try and just bear with me a little bit. I know that at some point, you 
say, I don't know if I like this dog-and-pony show.
  In my district, PA-16, the average income for a family of four--mom, 
dad, two children--is $54,000. This is where it really starts to make 
sense.
  Federal revenues this year will be the highest we have ever gotten. 
They are projected to be $5 trillion. That is a lot of money. I mean, 
it is almost incomprehensible.
  What we are projected to spend is $6.9 trillion. You say, okay, well, 
that is only--that is not that far apart. It is only $1.9 trillion. 
Here is what it means. This is where it starts to sink in. That means a 
family that I represent in western Pennsylvania earning about $50,000 a 
year is spending $69,000 a year.
  You see what we are getting to. Because when we reduce the numbers 
down, first of all, the high numbers are just so high, it is 
unimaginable. It is

[[Page H4905]]

also unimaginable that we can ever pay the debt down.
  I would just say this to you. If we continue on the path we are 
going, if we disregard the basic math that stands there, and the way we 
do it--I can tell you that most of the time that I pay monthly bills, 
it is at our kitchen table. I open my checkbook, and I start doing the 
subtract, subtract, subtract, subtract. I am just trying to understand 
how we can be so reckless.
  None of you would do this because you have too much respect for your 
children and grandchildren's future, and you also have too much respect 
for yourselves. Nobody would consciously do this. That is the problem.
  One of my favorite movies--I just want to make a point.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. You are not going to do movie reviews, are you?
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. The movie I love is called ``A Few Good 
Men.'' Have you seen this movie?
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Yes.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Jack Nicholson is in it, and he is being 
cross-examined in a military trial.
  They keep asking him questions, and at the end, he becomes so 
frustrated, he said: ``You can't handle the truth.''
  In our lives, the people who raised us--our moms, our dads, our 
grandparents--would never have done to us what is happening right now 
and what we are doing to our own grandchildren.

                              {time}  1500

  We have to handle the truth. We have to face the truth--this path 
that we are on, this mission that we are on, and this idea that somehow 
we have to get the message out to our hardworking American taxpayers 
that our future is being destroyed because of irresponsible spending.
  Now, just to be sure on this, your Social Security will never be 
touched. Medicare and Medicaid are not going to be touched. The banks 
are never going to forgive the interest on our loans. That is the 
reality of it.
  When you understand it that way, it becomes, oh, my gosh, what are we 
going to do? So, we sit there and try to figure out what it is that we 
can do to save the future for our children, and I looked at pictures 
yesterday with your two children. What are we doing to these kids? What 
are we doing to them?
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, in some ways, Mr. Kelly and I are the 
yin and yang of districts. I have a very highly educated district, a 
fairly prosperous district. I represent Scottsdale, Phoenix. I am 
blessed to have grown up there. I have to accept that the economic 
experience that a lot of my people have is going to be very different 
than his, but we are all in the same boat.
  Let's get back to trying to help people understand the reality. I do 
need to amend something Mr. Kelly is saying, though. We used to talk 
here that this debt is an existential risk to our grandkids. I am 
sorry. It is a risk to your retirement. There is the reality and the 
math. If you are retiring anytime now and in the near future, you have 
to understand that we are heading toward the time when we are going to 
have to turn the printing presses on. When we turn on those printing 
presses, we wipe out your savings.
  Besides the misery we create for the devaluing of the dollar, 
devaluing of every bit of your savings, making it so our kids can never 
afford--high interest rates out to the future, but it is not a crash. 
It is actually an extension of potentially decades of misery.
  Folks don't think this way. I keep coming back to trying to make the 
tax collection argument. Let's talk about why this is so important.
  Here is the 1950s, when we had a 90.5 percent tax on the top income 
earners. Here is a deep secret: The tax code today is more progressive 
than it was back then because they had the lower middle class pay 
income taxes back then. Today, they are off the tax rolls.
  Back then, 7.2 percent of the economy came in in income taxes, even 
though we had 90 percent. You go over all the years there has been tax 
reform, so 2020, let's do that year, we functionally had a mean tax of 
37 percent, not 90 percent as that high part of the marginal tax rate, 
but we are getting 9.2 percent of the economy.
  Most people have no idea what I am talking about, but here is the 
economy, and here is a really high marginal tax rate. We have a history 
of this, and repeatedly, you are only getting about 7 percent of the 
economy in taxes. We lowered the marginal tax rate for these top 
brackets, and now we are getting over 9 percent. We get dramatically 
more because the economy got bigger.
  Show this to our brothers and sisters on the left, and they will 
often say, yes, I know, but it doesn't feel like I am punishing people. 
The amazing irony is that the highest income Americans vote for 
Democrats, not Republicans. It is the bizarreness.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to Mr. Kelly to ask how many billionaires he 
thinks are in his district.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. I don't think there are many. The people I 
represent are either in ag or in the fields, in the mines, in the 
mills, on the rails. They are blue-collar people who are living an 
incredibly strong life because those families, the nuclear family, the 
mom and dad raising children, are the key to our success going forward, 
and an education. Based on the very foundations of what we know is 
true, is accurate, has been proven over the ages, the gift that America 
gave all of its citizens was the gift of education.
  Mr. Schweikert and I can talk all day. I wish the gallery was full. I 
really wish the gallery was full. It is not a message of anger. It is a 
message of hope. We have to change our spending. We cannot sustain this 
irresponsible trajectory.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, there is a path where this works, and I 
want to double down on something. I want to make it perfectly clear: We 
are not defending rich people, not defending poor people, not defending 
the middle class. We are just trying to tell the truth.
  This is how it works. This is about a society that prospers. 
Prosperity is moral, and we first need to shut down the excuses for not 
actually doing anything, saying oh, don't worry.
  Democrats do it. They had all sorts of chances to do it before this 
session. They knew the math was a fraud, but it makes for great talking 
points because then they can get on MSNBC or CNN and say we should just 
do this and we will be fine. It is not true.
  There doesn't seem to be a reporter in this city who owns a 
calculator. This is one Mr. Kelly and I have actually touched on. What 
happens when you have really high capital gains rates or really low 
capital gains rates? It turns out, when you raise capital gains rates 
really high, like some of our Democrat proposals, you actually get less 
revenues. We have charts of this going back to '54 when we started to 
play with some of those rates.
  I am going to show some numbers here when we get ready to close that 
if everything was at revenue maximizing, whether it be capital gains, 
estate, income, even corporate, take a look and you are only going to 
get about 1\1/2\ percent of the economy in additional revenues, 
additional receipts.
  This year, we are borrowing 9 percent of the entire economy, and 
there is the elegance of really good pro-growth tax policy.
  I have been on this floor dozens of times, and Mr. Kelly and I have 
talked about this for a couple of years now. There are things you can 
do to crash the price of healthcare--the adoption of technology and 
taking on something that is very uncomfortable, obesity and diabetes. 
We need to take on things that are killing our brothers and sisters.

  Remember, in the last 4 years, life expectancy in America has gone 
down. Next decade, we have more deaths than births in America. How do 
you help people understand? It is beyond just those of us who are math 
and budget geeks. The morality is what Mr. Kelly talked about, which is 
why I asked him to come share this time with me.
  I need someone like him who is able to talk to people's hearts 
because sometimes I don't think I do it well. I sound like an 
accountant on steroids.
  The morality of opportunity, the morality of prosperity, the morality 
of our brothers and sisters--and I don't care if you are one of my 
Tribal communities, your rural communities, an urban community, take a 
look at the statistics of our brothers and sisters who are dying of 
diabetes and other diseases when we actually can have incredible impact 
of having them be healthy.
  How do you get this body to see that, sometimes, great math is also 
great morality?

[[Page H4906]]

  

  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. I would pose this for those of you who 
have been watching: Are we making sense? If we are making sense, can 
you please raise your hand? Does this make sense to you about what we 
are talking about or what we are doing with your dollars? No, it 
doesn't make sense.
  We can't have the interaction with the gallery.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. They are not allowed to actually see them react to 
you.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. This is their House. We just happen to 
represent them. This is your House. Everything that goes on in this 
House is being done by people who are voted in to represent you, not 
represent themselves, but represent you. If it is not making sense, we 
need to know because, I have to tell you, it makes no sense to me at 
all what we are doing, not only to our future, but to our present.
  If we can't grasp what is happening right now--that is why I talk 
about kitchen table economics. If I can reduce this down to a $1 bill 
that I would hand you and say, oh, by the way, that first 73 cents, 
give it back to me. You can keep the 27 cents, but then I am going to 
take another 13 cents.
  When you really get down to it, it is so small what it is that we can 
control. In your own lives, you know if you have a mortgage payment 
come due, if you have a car payment come due, if you have healthcare 
costs come due, you can't walk away from that. At some time or other, a 
lender is going to say to you: Do you know what? We would love to help 
you, but we can't. The math doesn't work. It is not good for you.
  When we talked about this the other day, the real challenge is to 
make sure that we understand the path that we are on and not try to 
sugarcoat it for you.
  I know for myself the hardest lessons in life to learn are the days 
that you lost something. I wish I could go back and sit across from my 
mother and father and thank them for what they did for us, sit across 
from my grandparents and thank them for what they did for us. I can't 
thank them enough for what they did for us.
  I am just so disappointed that we haven't performed as well as they 
have and made it possible for us to enjoy the most incredible country 
the world has ever known, a nation of people that is so diverse. There 
is no place else in the world. None of us are thinking about leaving to 
go someplace else, but it is our responsibility to make sure that it is 
a sustainable business model.
  If I am not connecting with you, I apologize for that, but only 
because we have to understand the dilemma that we are in. This is not a 
scare tactic, by the way. This is a wake-up moment that we have to be 
aware of what is happening right now to each of us every day in every 
way.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I am sorry you have to hear it all the time sitting 
next to me, but the math will win. The math will always eventually win.
  Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Arizona has 9 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I am going to run through a couple of 
boards real quick. It is going to be a little thick. I am going to do 
them quick, and we will put these up on the website. If anyone really 
wants to dive into this, I believe Brian Reedle about 2 weeks ago 
published a fairly substantive--with amazing footnotes, so if you 
actually care about the subject, get it, read it, pull out your 
calculator. You will see it proves out.
  I am going to blow through this real quick to sort of help people 
understand why some idiot on the floor of the House is walking people 
through maximum sustainable revenue calculations. I am trying to make a 
point that there isn't an easy fix here.
  If we do a deficit commission or something of that nature, it turns 
out it is going to be complex. You are going to have to deal with 
things that don't seem interrelated but are. You are going to have to 
talk about immigration, technology, maybe AI, maybe a tax code that 
promotes growth. You are going to have to talk about changing the way 
we finance parts of healthcare. You have to do it all at the same time. 
You have seen this place. We are having trouble walking and chewing gum 
at the same time.
  Let's blow through this real quick. Part of the studies out there, 
and this is from CBO, OMB, and also the Tax Policy Center and the U.S. 
Treasury have all confirmed these numbers. If you did a maximum 
sustainable revenue from taxing the rich--let's first do individual 
income taxes.
  If you took the rich and said you are the top 2 percent income 
earners--this is functionally anyone over $400,000--we are going to put 
a tax rate that maximizes receipts before the calculations say revenues 
would roll over. For some of those, that is like adding another 10 
points on top of it. Then you actually tax some other parts of estate, 
put a bunch of money into enforcement. You do all the things.

  These are all the Democrat proposals added up. You are picking up 
another half a point of GDP or so. I have a board where I add it all.
  Then we added in maximizing corporate taxes. Looks like we can get up 
to about another 0.8 percent of GDP if you maximize taxes because we 
have a little problem in the United States. You go up to like the 28 
percent corporate tax rate, the next increment, and you see a bleed 
saying: Well, screw it. We are just going to recharter the headquarters 
in Ireland.
  You hit this point where you start to roll over. This is in the 
liberal models, conservative models, people that just do models. You 
walk through everything, from the corporate tax hikes that Biden has 
been promoting, even the new international tax that Secretary Yellen 
has been pushing, do the additional corporate savings by IRS 
enforcement mechanism, add that all up, and what do you get from that?
  Then, you go in and actually add in investment taxes. We are going to 
raise capital gains up to like 39.6 percent, which we know at that 
point you hit a wall and actually get less money in the taxes.
  You close all the loopholes. You actually remove the ability to roll 
over certain assets--1031 exchanges, in kind. You take those all away. 
You basically say we have done everything to start to maximize income 
taxes from the rich. It is a lot of money.

                              {time}  1515

  You actually take a look--sorry, we had very little time, we took 
these directly from the report. You can get up to--if you do what they 
call static--no economic effects, that is about 2 percent of the 
economy in new taxes.
  Then when you do the actual, okay, people, stop working, it changes 
investment and people basically hunker down. So the economic models, 
you actually get about 1.1 to 2 percent, so a mean of 1\1/2\ percent. 
That is a lot of money. That is 1\1/2\ percent of the economy in new 
taxes.
  Did I mention we are borrowing 9 percent of the economy just this 
year?
  The utopian tax, everything of that $400,000 and up, you have 
maximized every single tax. We are borrowing 9 percent of the economy 
just this year and every tax proposal will get you another point and a 
half.
  Does anyone see a little problem?
  We are living in this fantasy world.
  God knows, I love my charts and I sometimes feel guilty for all--but 
this one is actually really important, particularly if you are one of 
my progressive left acquaintances and you care about income inequality 
and progressivity and all those kinds of things.
  Today's income tax code is the most progressive in U.S. history. The 
top percent of income earners now pay more of the Federal income tax 
than at any time in U.S. history. This is after our tax reform that Mr. 
Kelly and I worked on.
  Yet, I promise you today and tomorrow someone will come to that 
microphone and say, well, the Republicans give it away to rich people. 
Except we are taxing them more as a percentage of the tax collections 
because we removed so many of our brothers and sisters, the 50 percent 
of folks in the--economic term--lower quartiles who don't pay income 
taxes now.
  Here is the problem, it grew the economy right up to the time of the 
pandemic, then we started spending money like crazy on corporate 
subsidies--Democrat proposals. It is fascinating.
  They accuse us of liking Big Business, yet they are the ones giving 
hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars out as subsidies to 
corporate

[[Page H4907]]

America. At the same time, our tax receipts are falling when they are 
doing it.
  It is the weirdest economy you have ever seen. It basically shows 
monetary policy, their Keynesian economics, have fallen flat on their 
face.
  Last board. Even when you start to do the adjustments for what they 
call income inequality--you normalize those. We have a more progressive 
tax system today than we ever had before. When a Member of Congress 
looks at you in the eyes, and says: Well, we are just going to tax 
people over $400,000, that solves the problem.
  I showed you the boards, it doesn't come close to solving the problem 
of saving Social Security in 9 years. It is only 1\1/2\ percent of GDP 
when we are borrowing 9 percent.
  Mr. Kelly, you have been here longer than I have. Do we have anyone 
we work with that owns a calculator that is willing to save this 
country?
  I will let you do the close.
  Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Arizona for the chance to work with you, and all our friends in the 
gallery.
  This is called the people's House because it is truly your House. 
Anybody that is here was elected, they didn't just walk in and sit 
down. They take an oath of office to do things in your best interest.
  What we have been trying to go through--and we have looked at all the 
different charts. All of you probably have a $1 bill somewhere in your 
wallet or your purse. I want you to imagine, taking this $1 dollar 
bill, and this is what you actually can control when it comes to the 
spending.
  So when I hear this thing about: Well, you just have to cut spending, 
you just have to cut spending. That is fine. Could you please give me a 
road map of what you want us to cut?
  That is not accepted because that is not what is being fed to you. I 
am going to tell you; we are here because of you. We are here for you. 
I thought the dollar bill was the easiest way to show it because we are 
all used to that.
  Mr. Speaker, I have 10 grandchildren--and maybe you can all relate to 
this. When our kids were growing up they liked to go skiing in the 
wintertime because I am from Pennsylvania. They came to me one time, 
and said, Dad, can we go skiing? I said, No, I don't have the money to 
go this weekend. They said, Sure you do. They went under the bed and 
picked out my checkbook that has three checks to a page. My son said, 
Here, you have all kinds of money. I said, Well, you have to put the 
money in before you can write the check to take it out.
  That was a concept that a child didn't understand, and unfortunately, 
there are too many children representing you here right now that don't 
understand what is taking place in every American home and with every 
one of our hardworking American taxpayers.
  We are here for you. I don't care if you are Republican, Democrat, 
Libertarian, or say, I wish you people would stay the heck out of our 
lives, we are here representing you. I would ask you to please 
communicate with the people who represent you to let them know that you 
are concerned about the way the country is going and the future, not 
only for our grandchildren and children, but also for us.
  I hope we get through, and if we didn't, please contact us. We are 
here every day for you. There is no other reason for us to be here 
other than for you.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
referencing occupants in the gallery.

                          ____________________