[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 21 (Tuesday, February 6, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H498-H501]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, last week, I promised we were getting 
close to actually finishing our math in regard to what was the true 
story of what was happening with Social Security. A couple of our Ph.D. 
economists have spent months, and we have put it together.
  However, I first want to talk a little bit about the politics of 
telling the truth around this place. Then I want to talk about the 
reality that the Democrats, our brothers and sisters on the left, 
either willfully or through ignorance, their solution just doesn't get 
you there, and the immorality.
  Let's first walk through something. How many of you have heard over 
and over from me behind this microphone that, in 2033, 2034, a 25 
percent cut, because the Social Security trust fund is emptied? I had a 
debate the other day with a Democratic Member here who is running for 
another office, and she was saying Social Security doesn't contribute 
at all to the debt and deficit.
  She is absolutely right. That is not what we are discussing. What we 
are discussing is, in 8 or 9 years, we are going to double senior 
poverty, the average couple in America. In 2033--I am going to use 2034 
because at least that is more of a consensus number for the exhaustion 
of the trust fund. That average couple in America will take a $17,400 
cut. Articles that we have been collecting on the number of baby 
boomers who are ending up homeless--they are ending up on the street. 
We are looking at numbers that would explode that type of dystopian 
vision. Yet, if you get behind this microphone and tell the truth about 
the math, right now, some troll in a basement is writing something 
saying: Schweikert mentioned Social Security. Let's attack.
  It is the same thing with Medicare. This society is absolutely 
immoral. We have this obligation to modernize, to save, to protect. If 
you step up to try to do it, you will be attacked. There is a reason we 
call it the third rail.
  Well, screw them. We are going to tell the truth here. Part of the 
morality here is: How do you save something? How do you modernize it? 
How do you protect seniors?
  Everyone runs away from the discussion, runs away from the actuarial 
reports, because the moment you start to tell the truth, you are a 
target. Now, most of it is not true. I had someone in my office a 
couple of hours ago bring me something saying: Look, this person is 
writing editorials in your district saying you voted against Social 
Security.

  I am going, okay, let's see. I actually used to chair the 
subcommittee over Social Security, trying to work out the math and 
those things to save it. I don't remember ever having a vote in this 
place to change it.
  We looked it up. There hasn't been, but this is the way politics 
works anymore. Make crap up. Then you wonder why it is toxic. It is so 
much easier around here to pretend, somehow pretend magic is going to 
fall out of the sky and everything is going to be fine.
  Let's actually walk through a couple of things here. One of the 
things, just because this bothers me, my sarcasm that this is a math-
free zone, I listened to a number of people, both Republicans and 
Democrats, get behind these microphones today, and they have no 
understanding of the scale of the problem.
  Therefore, let's actually do a little bit of very simple math off the 
top of our heads so you understand some of the scale. Yesterday, 
interest rates popped up a bit. They came down a bit today, but I 
think, at one point yesterday, they were up 14 basis points. I just

[[Page H499]]

need this to be an example. The math is not going to be perfect. One 
percent on $34.2 trillion would be $342 billion of interest, right?

                              {time}  2100

  And a basis point is 1/100, so 1 basis point would be $3.4 billion, 
right?
  Just agree with me.
  So the 14 basis points movement in interest rates yesterday on 10-
year sovereigns, if that had stuck throughout this year, that is $48 
billion.
  Understand we are here knifing ourselves over fractions and fractions 
of a day's interest. We borrow about $7.5 billion a day. We borrow 
$85,000 a second, but here is the scam: We will knife each other back 
and forth over math--these are real numbers. This is important, but we 
are doing everything we can to avoid explaining the scale when a single 
day's interest rate movement is almost $50 billion.
  Then you hear Members come behind the microphone, it was $6 billion. 
Well, that was less than a day's worth of borrowing interest. I don't 
mean the total borrowing.
  I know I have been exacerbated, but I am frustrated because there is 
this unwillingness to understand the scale of the problem.
  Let's actually start to walk through the charts and try to get this. 
I have a mistake on this chart and I owe everyone an apology. Our math 
right now is, we are heading towards borrowing between about $2.7 to 
over $3 trillion this year.
  Remember, it was only several months ago, CBO and OMB and all those 
were saying, it is only going to be like a $1.6 trillion borrow. 
Something is horribly wrong. We have doubled it, but we have doubled it 
at a time when the economy is actually doing fairly well.
  Understand what these higher interest rates mean. Understand what the 
growth in healthcare costs mean.
  Right now this was our projection. We are going to borrow $1.45 
trillion. That is our Social Security. That is coming out of the trust 
fund and out of the taxes you are paying every single day.
  The next line item is where we had a mistake. We were saying gross 
interest was going to go over $1 trillion, making interest the second 
most expensive thing in this government. We also came back and showed 
that net interest was still the second most expensive.
  The difference between net and gross is gross is the interest we pay 
back to trust funds for borrowing the money. Net is only publicly held. 
The rest of the world doesn't make that distinction. It is just one of 
the things we do in the United States. That is why if you ever see 
something from OECD, they have the United States at like 144 percent of 
debt-to-GDP. It is because they put back in the borrowing from trust 
funds.
  It turns out Treasury a few hours ago did one of their monthly 
updates, and I have to apologize to everyone that gross interest for 
the year wasn't $1.003 trillion. I got it wrong. It turns out it is 
going to be $1.67 trillion, and we think this number is off because we 
had been looking at the Treasury receipts, the growth of spending, 
growth of healthcare, growth of interest. My math now is just interest. 
Just interest this year will be $1.100 trillion. No one knows what 12 
zeros are.
  When I speak about a trillion dollars with my brothers and sisters, 
Members of Congress, our staff, they just sort of stare at you. What 
you need to understand is, this is a disaster. It is an absolute 
disaster. Trillion, thousand, billion, but yet we are going to sit here 
and knife each other for months and months and months over a fraction 
of a fraction of a fraction of this because we don't want to actually 
deal with the actual structural crisis.
  We got old. The fact of the matter is, it is uncomfortable to talk 
about, but unless we do some things revolutionary on the cost of 
healthcare and dramatically change government, it doesn't work.
  Basic math: Every dime of defense is now borrowed. Every dime of 
discretionary now is borrowed and if you start to look at this math, it 
is about $1.4 trillion of Medicare, the stuff we don't even get to vote 
on.
  Every dime a Member of Congress votes on is now borrowed. We are 
clicking off another trillion dollars of borrowing every 140 days. And 
if you think you are going to fix that by a rounding error on this 
little piece of discretionary or this little piece here, it is a game 
of avoidance.
  I have had Members here who will, when I start to talk about a 
deficit commission where we are going to have to do a major redesign, 
they say, oh, David, I can't vote for that. I will, however, fight like 
hell to save a few hundred million here and there. That is real money.
  We are borrowing $85,000 a second, $7.4 billion a day, but it is 
great theater for our voters. It is horrible math, but great theater.
  So understand, even the Treasury statement now confirms my math. We 
are borrowing over a trillion dollars in interest. That is just the 
interest borrowing. And total borrowing looks like it may be coming in 
closer to $2.7 to $3 trillion this year.
  Let's do a quick walk through before we get to the stuff where I soak 
myself in kerosene and light myself on fire.
  What happened between the 2022 fiscal year and 2023 fiscal year? 
Well, first off, if we actually take a look, Social Security spending--
but it comes out of the trust fund, comes out of tax receipts--was up 
11.1 percent in a single year.
  Between fiscal year 2022 and 2023, if you take a look at the spending 
on Medicare, not Medicaid, not Indian Health Services, not veterans, 
just Medicare, spending was up 12.3; interest was up 38.7 percent.
  Anyone see a trend here?
  We are trying to track these same sort of numbers for this fiscal 
year. Maybe no one really cares. I know these numbers are really big. 
It is easier to scream and yell and worry about a shiny object or some 
latest conspiracy theory. You don't need a conspiracy theory. Just look 
at the math.
  Let's actually have an honest conversation of how much trouble Social 
Security is in and why it is absolutely moral that we keep our 
promises. We actually tell the truth about how we are going to 
modernize it, here is how we are going to save it, here is what we have 
to do to fix it. The reality of it is it has to be done with our 
Democratic colleagues.

  They have got to stop using it as a tool to win elections. And what 
is fascinating in the polling, I think FreedomWorks did some polling 
recently, saying if you are under 45, under 50, you understand this 
math.
  If you are over, you don't. You are almost pretending it doesn't 
exist. What happens to you? Think about yourselves. What happens to you 
if it is 8 years, 9 years from now and you get a nice letter from 
Social Security saying we are cutting your check by 25 percent?
  I am going to show a chart here, but remember my words: The average 
will be a $17,400 cut in 2033 or 2034, depending on if you use CBO's 
number or Social Security's actuaries.
  One of our structural problems is, in 1960, we had 5.1 workers. In 
2035, we were saying 2.3. We have been told this number is wrong. It is 
actually less, but we are trying to vet that number.
  Remember, Social Security was designed as a pay-as-you-go system. If 
you pay attention to some of these presentations--I have come here a 
dozen times and shown the average couple gets every dime back they put 
into Social Security plus about 72,000 SPIF.

                              {time}  2110

  It is a horrible rate of return, but you do get your money back plus 
a little bit of a SPIF, but it is a horrible rate of return. I want all 
of you to remember as we talk about this potential misery that 20 years 
ago, when Republicans got up and said, if we could just take a little 
sliver and do some other things with it, when we got to the 2030s, we 
would have a system that is actually more robust and people would have 
a much higher rate of return. It turns out they told the truth.
  When those activists told you, oh, they are trying to steal your 
money, this and that, try to remember this. They lied to you, and we 
now have 20 years of data to prove it.
  However, the big lie around here continues because it is great 
politics. Scare the crap out of people, and then make sure they don't 
actually read an actuary report because that might require math, and 
this is a math-free zone.

[[Page H500]]

  Let's actually walk through this. We are going to use 2034 because 
that is the one date we absolutely can vet, even though CBO says 2033. 
They both agree on a 25, 25.2 percent cut in benefits. In 2034, our 
best math is that very first year, single year number, $616 billion 
shortfall. That just means the trust fund is emptied, and without the 
trust fund to back up, the payroll tax that is coming in and the offset 
to beneficiaries, if there is more beneficiary checks, oh, oh, we have 
got a $616 billion shortfall. That is where you get your 25 percent 
cut.
  You start to understand, for lower-income workers who are receiving 
Social Security, as a couple, that is a $10,600 cut. For the average, 
it is that $17,400 I was talking about. For high-income couples, it is 
over $23,000. Remember, there is actually a formula within Social 
Security where lower-income workers with their 40 quarters get a little 
bit more than higher-income workers. It is part of the formula.
  Here is the math. It is conservative math. We worked like hell--well, 
the Joint Economic economists worked like hell on this. My job was just 
to torment them. In 2034, if you do the Democrats' and the President's 
solution of saying, hey, just take people over $400,000 and make them 
pay the 12.4 percent. Okay. Right now I think this year it is 168 
something is subject to Social Security tax, and you have this, like, 
doughnut hole in this plan. For everyone else in today's world, you hit 
that 168, if you are above that, you are not paying the Social Security 
tax anymore.
  On this math, understand this, this is sort of the Democrats', the 
President's plan, we are just going to tax people who make $400,000 and 
up, make them pay the 12.4 percent, but we are not going to give them 
any benefits for it.
  Okay, fine. It doesn't get you close. This is your new revenue. Our 
best model is you might get about $259 billion of income into Social 
Security doing it that way, but you slow down the economy. That would 
be general tax revenues.
  Over here is your still-remaining shortfall. You still have, what is 
that, $417 billion shortfall in that single year. You have already done 
the Democrat plan, and you still have a $417 billion shortfall. The 
next time you see an AARP attack ad on someone because they were 
willing to try to talk about saving Social Security, I hope they tell 
you the truth and say, our plan, we have supported raising this tax, 
but it looks like it doesn't even cover half. As a matter of fact, it 
only covers like 30, 40 percent of the shortfall.
  Let's actually go to the next level. I did this chart to just 
basically reemphasize what is going on in the math. The shortfall, tax 
receipts, tax receipts with the higher tax, tax receipts without it 
because it also actually has an effect on the general fund. The general 
fund, tax receipts go down.
  Now let's go to the other proposal. Let's not do people $400,000 and 
up. Let's do everyone $250,000 and up. Remember, this is 8, 9 years 
from now, okay? Remember, we should be working--it is not like we are 
doing anything useful here--on the 2025 fiscal year budget. Now we are 
talking about the 2033, 2034 fiscal budgets.
  Well, if you take everyone that makes $250,000 and up, and you 
subject them to the 12.4 percent, okay, fine, you get, our best model, 
about $380 billion of taxes, leaving $237 billion short, and you have 
slowed down tax receipts by $88 billion, so you are going to have a 
$325 billion shortfall.
  Okay. Well, that is not good enough. Let's just get rid of the caps 
all together. If you were making 168 today, it doesn't matter there is 
no 168, everyone pays the 12.4 percent. You still have pretty much the 
exact same shortfall because that gap doesn't produce that much tax 
receipts between no cap and the $250,000 cap.
  Still, the model is almost identical. You slow down tax receipts by 
$88 billion. The shortfall is $234 billion, so you are basically back 
to, what, $324 billion? No, $322 billion.

  The reason I do this is not to end my political career, but to tell 
the truth. Is it moral to be basically--it is right in front of us. It 
is coming. We know it is coming. There are actuary reports from Social 
Security, from CBO, from private groups, those around us, then there is 
the political ones who just lie to you because they want you to send 
them a contribution or they want Democrats to win the next election, 
which I believe those groups are absolutely immoral. I believe what the 
Democrats have been doing is absolutely immoral, but damn it, they care 
about winning the next election a hell of a lot more than they care 
about doubling senior poverty or the number of baby boomers who are 
expected to be homeless in a decade.
  Somehow when they say, oh, we will just take care of the shortfall, 
we will just get rid of the cap on rich people, it doesn't get you 
where you have got to go. Is there any leadership around here other 
than me as an idiot getting behind this microphone and telling people 
the truth?
  I have done presentations on also what is happening on Medicare. 
Guess what? It is multiples of the problem of this one. The difference 
here is we have a specific trust fund, so we can see the date it 
expires.
  I beg of you, if you are a voter out there, don't let some politician 
squirm out of, well, if we just tax rich people more, we would have 
plenty of money. That is not true. Look, I don't have all the answers, 
but I bet you I can make this work. It would be painful, but I bet you 
I can find a way to not let the collapse happen. Demand the morality 
that this government is going to keep its promises.
  This chart here is now 2 years old. The top line here is not $116 
trillion of debt. Now it is assumed to be closer to $130 trillion of 
debt over the next 30 years. Every dime of debt between today and 30 
years--and I don't know if the mics are picking the sound up, but my 19 
month old is in the back in the screaming. Yes, I have a 19 month old. 
That is a different discussion. Does that child deserve to have the 
same life the rest of us have had?
  Here is the math. 100 percent of the borrowing, it is coming. 
Interest. The shortfall of Medicare, because remember the vast majority 
of Medicare spending comes straight out of the general fund, and the 
Medicare trust fund is scheduled to be empty in, what, 7 years, okay? 
Part A trust fund is really primarily just hospital coverage.
  This is if we actually say we are not going to fix the Social 
Security trust fund, we are just going to borrow the money, we are just 
going to borrow the money. If you update what that means, it is about 
$130 trillion of borrowing. The crazy thing is the CBO math is actually 
the rest of government, military, discretionary, which military is 
discretionary, but all nondefense discretionary actually over the 30 
years when adjusted for inflation actually falls. That little portion 
actually has like a $3 trillion positive. The rest of it is about $130 
trillion negative.

                              {time}  2120

  Who is going to tell you that? It is all over. I mean, if anyone 
actually reads the reports, it is there. That is uncomfortable.
  We will spend maybe this next year doing really important stuff with 
failed legislation, failed votes. Every single day, we are going to 
click off another $7 billion, $7\1/2\ billion of borrowing. We will 
give some beautiful speeches about how we are fighting to save this 
little tiny bit of money, but we are not going to tell you it is little 
tiny.
  I have seen fights on the floor that in the time the fight on the 
floor took, the interest clock on U.S. borrowing used up more money 
than the debate was fighting to save.
  In Washington, D.C., it is always about the money. Group after group 
is wandering the hallways this time of year, all with wonderful things 
for us to spend more money on. Many of the things are things you really 
like. They get outraged at you when you start to pull out these charts 
and say, can we talk about what is going on?
  Once again--I will do this as my closing--every dime of defense is 
borrowed, every dime of discretionary is borrowed, and now $1.4 
trillion of mandatory, things we don't even get to vote on, is now 
borrowed.
  We are going to give these beautiful speeches about trying to save 
$16 billion, which is a lot of money, except it is like 2\1/4\ days of 
borrowing.
  We fought over that sort of amount for 7 months, and in that time, we 
clicked off well over another trillion dollars of borrowing because we 
fight over the shiny little objects instead of the willingness to 
actually have an honest conversation about the structural crisis 
because this is politically

[[Page H501]]

easy. You get a nice little spot on Twitter or Facebook or on social 
media, maybe even a hit on cable television, but it is a lie.
  How do you save this place when it won't even put batteries in its 
calculator?
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________