[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.
____________________