[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 79 (Tuesday, May 7, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H2924-H2928]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             IT IS THE MATH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rosendale). 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, we are going to do something this 
evening. Unless you want to sort of geek out a bit, I am not sure you 
want to hang out watching this, so maybe there is something good on 
Netflix.
  I am going to walk through a couple of financial debt concepts I 
tried sharing last week just to help people sort of get their heads 
around something. Then we are going to actually just go through a 
couple of top lines on the Social Security actuary report. Now, I have 
to admit, I haven't finished it. We have only just gone through some of 
the very top line. It is going to take me a week or two to work out all 
the math. We want to make sure--because some of the headlines, I 
believe, were misleading on just, still, how difficult these numbers 
are.
  Then we are going to go through sort of understanding the scale of 
the problem. Then we are going do a little bit of talking about 
optimism, and we are going to do some discussion about AI, artificial 
intelligence, in government, and some of the bills we have actually 
already introduced to disrupt the cost of this government.
  We keep hearing sort of the nasty and horrible noise that the world 
is coming to an end. I am going to argue that if we get artificial 
intelligence right, we can make a difference in government.
  So let's first walk through the first concept.
  Mr. Speaker, how many of you remember a little while back--I think it 
was S&P or was it Moody's--it may have been Moody's, downgraded U.S. 
debt?
  We have had two downgrades. Of the three largest rating agencies, we 
have been downgraded twice.
  Now, I know every Member of Congress and all of our staff read every 
word of it, but if you actually read it, Mr. Speaker, there is an 
entire report about why they would downgrade U.S. debt. It was more of 
a downgrade of future horizons. One of the number one reasons on that 
downgrade was governance.
  Now, the fact of the matter is the debt picture is off the charts. I 
am going to show one chart here where I think we have now had our 
fourth day in the last couple of weeks where we went over $100,000 per 
second of borrowing.
  Mr. Speaker, do you screw with your bankers?
  Because this is my passion, I try to convince my brothers and sisters 
here in Congress: You have to act like an adult. Have fights here. 
Actually know your math. Bend the cost of government, but don't do 
stupid things and then turn around.
  That is because this week, understand, Mr. Speaker, this week, I 
believe, the Treasury is going to market for about $125 billion. Our 
interest rates are actually slightly down this week compared to last 
week, but the fact that those interest rates bounce up and down this 
much lets you know sort of how nervous the debt markets are.
  Remember, Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago a lot of the fancy financial 
markets were writing stories about how U.S. debt is getting harder to 
sell. This week it looks like it is easier to sell.
  That is fragility. I know that is a big word, but it is the only one 
I have for this. Don't play a game here. We will pay $1.2 trillion in 
interest this year. Interest for the United States in this fiscal year 
will be the second biggest expense in government. Social Security will 
be $1.450 trillion. Interest will be $1.2 trillion. Medicare is almost 
$1 trillion. Defense is $960 or $980 billion. Think of that, Mr. 
Speaker. Defense is now the fourth biggest expense in government. It is 
no longer the first or second.
  Part of that concept is--this one is a little more for those folks 
who like to think of themselves as sort of monetary policy folks, think 
about what the Federal Reserve has been trying to do. They have been 
raising interest rates, they have been pulling liquidity, they have 
been holding back on buying bonds and doing just the opposite, letting 
their portfolio roll off. They are trying to pull liquidity out of 
society to squeeze inflation out.
  However, this place has actually made it that much harder to do. It 
is craziness how much we spent in the Inflation Reduction Act, which is 
singularly the most Orwellian-named piece of legislation in modern 
history. You do realize, Mr. Speaker, in the Cloakroom a moment ago, I 
was trying to do this math off the top of my head. I think it is like 
$2.8 billion a day that we pay in interest. We pay that in interest. 
The U.S. Government pays that to bondholders every day.
  So here is what you have, Mr. Speaker. We are borrowing about $8 to 
$8.5 billion a day. We are paying out $2.8 billion a day in interest.
  The question is: Is government borrowing really good for productivity 
in this society?
  Does government borrowing actually make us a wealthier society, a 
more prosperous society?
  Now, some borrowing is historic. You are going to do that.
  However, at the scale we are consuming, we are consuming much of the

[[Page H2925]]

world's liquidity, not just of the United States. The United States and 
China are the two big economies right now bingeing on debt. Europe 
actually has dialed back its debt.
  Remember, Mr. Speaker, I did the presentation last week, and I think 
there were 13 countries that had better credit ratings than the United 
States.
  Greece today has a better credit rating than the United States. Their 
10-year bond is cheaper, lower in interest costs, than the U.S.
  Much of that risk premium is governance. It is the belief saying: Oh, 
the United States is going to use its tools to bend inflation. The 
United States is going to do the things necessary to actually lower 
debt and borrowing.
  Are we?
  You see the conversations we have around here. Most of the time these 
microphones are full of people coming up with new programs and new ways 
to spend money.

  So understand, Mr. Speaker, I had two concepts I just walked you 
through. They are a little highbrow. The first is you need to actually 
have a government that convinces the bond markets that we are serious, 
and we respect our creditors.
  Let's be honest, Mr. Speaker, if you borrow a bunch of money, you 
don't go into your creditor and make a clown of yourself. We need to do 
the same.
  The second half is understanding the economic mess we are making. It 
is more than just the borrowing. It is the fact you pulled capital out 
of the markets that would have gone to more productive uses, and at the 
same time we are paying interest. Now we are paying interest that in 
some ways is higher than people who said: Why would I take a risk 
premium and invest in something, a new plant, a new widget maker, those 
sorts things, when I can get 5 percent on a 2-year? I am going to do 
that.
  The scale of our debt is creating economic distortion. It is just a 
concept we need to understand, that also in some ways Congress--and 
this always drives people crazy who believe it is Fed and liquidity, 
but in many ways, Congress, because of our borrowing, has actually 
created this liquidity cycle where we borrow and then we are pumping 
out interest. We borrow it, and then we give you almost a premium on 
the interest rate, and we are paying you out. It is a real problem.
  In many ways, we have made the Federal Reserve's job even more 
difficult for squeezing inflation out. Almost no one has actually spent 
time on it. There are a couple of good academic articles if you want to 
geek out, Mr. Speaker.
  All right. We have used this chart over and over and over because we 
are trying to help people understand.
  Do you see the blue, Mr. Speaker?
  The blue is what we get to vote on.
  Mr. Speaker, you do understand every dime a Member of Congress votes 
on is borrowed.
  So interest, this number is wrong now. Interest, if you do gross 
interest, is 1.2. Publicly borrowed interest is probably--it may be 
somewhere near that, $890 or $900 billion.
  This is interest.
  This is Social Security.
  This is Medicare.
  This is Medicaid.
  These are other mandatory programs.
  These are earned benefits. You worked your 40 quarters; you get your 
maximum Social Security.
  You worked so much, you get Medicare.
  However, I need you also to be willing to hear some very difficult 
math of how Medicare is actually financed to understand its impact on 
the debt and deficit.
  There are other benefits out there that are in the formula you get 
because we have a treaty obligation with some of our Native American 
population, where if you fall below a certain income, you get certain 
subsidies, those sorts of things. Those are also considered mandatory 
programs.
  The point here is the vast majority of U.S. spending your Member of 
Congress never ever gets to vote on, and we need to change that. We 
need to start telling the truth that we are hemorrhaging cash. At these 
interest rates you have got to understand, Mr. Speaker, what we are 
doing to your retirement and your kids' futures.
  So let's actually walk through. I will just do this board. You can 
actually go to my website and sign up. There is a little thing there 
you sign up for. Give us your phone number, we will send you a text 
message every single day called the daily debt. We have been doing this 
for several months now. You get a little text that says: Here is what 
we borrowed today. Here is what the gross borrowing is. We do the last 
365 days. This year it is 366 days because of leap year. Over here we 
do the fiscal year.

                              {time}  1815

  When you look here at the total gross--now, remember, that is 
borrowing from the trust funds as well as publicly issued--we have now 
gone 4 days in the last couple of weeks where we went over $100,000 a 
second--a second. For anyone there that has a relative who doesn't 
believe the debt is a big deal, sign them up. Send us their phone 
number. We will send them a text message every day, and they can start 
to understand the scale of how much of this U.S. economy now is in 
debt.
  Remember, think about that. If the U.S. economy is about $28 
trillion, $29 trillion, and we are going to borrow this year--publicly 
borrow, not total borrowing--publicly borrow maybe $2.7 trillion, $2.8 
trillion, you are functionally borrowing, what, 9 percent of the entire 
economy? That is remarkable.
  I am hoping I am wrong. CBO thought we would only be at about 5.4 
percent, but if you look at our current burn rate, the concept--and why 
that is important. Remember, I have come here and done the presentation 
of the left's version of let's tax people over 400,000. You do it, and 
then you say, okay, you max--there is this concept of tax maximization 
where I can tax your income to a certain point, but the next percent of 
tax on you, it rolls over. You will actually say: Screw it, I am not 
going to work as much.
  It is basically a concept based off sort of the Laffer curve concept, 
but you can get the same thing in capital gains. How much of capital 
gains today is just inflation? It is not actually appreciation of your 
asset. It is inflation changes of your asset, estate taxes, your 
passthroughs, all those things.
  The math came out to about 1.5 percent, 1.6 percent of GDP you could 
get by tax maximizing everything for those over $400,000. Play this 
math with me. If it is 1.5 percent of the economy and, so far this 
year, we are borrowing over 9 percent of the economy, does that give 
you an idea?
  Those of us who want to cut spending, if you are not allowed to touch 
defense and if you are not allowed to touch any of that mandatory I 
just showed you, you have the nondefense discretionary spending--what 
was it? Let's call it $900 billion--can you get 1 percent of GDP, 1.5 
percent? Yeah, you could cut all sorts of programs.
  Remember the Bloomberg economist, a year ago, put out a report 
saying, if you took $100 billion out of nondefense discretionary, you 
actually lowered GDP about one-half of a percent, so everyone who says: 
We are going to cut and we are going to pretend the economy is going to 
grow at this rate, that is not how the math works. Now, in the long 
run, you have more capital stock, those things, but in the short run, 
you actually lowered GDP with these cuts. You have just got to deal 
with it. It is the reality of economics and math.
  One of the things I wanted to go through is that very few people here 
have ever paid much attention to Medicare and how we finance it, and 
where does the money come from? You had the President behind that 
podium that made it sound like you are not allowed to talk about Social 
Security and we are going to actually raise these taxes for Medicare.
  Okay. You have to understand. You see this red area there? Think of 
that as Medicare part A. That is the trust fund. That is, when you pay 
your payroll tax, a little slice of that goes to this right here. That 
is the trust fund that bounces up and down. One day it is 6 years away 
from running out. Now, it is 2035 because of some changes and good 
employment and the economy, but it is really sensitive.
  This blue here, most folks don't understand. The majority here, the 
biggest single slice of the pie, of Medicare, comes right out of the 
general fund. When we talk about healthcare costs going up, they are 
already up over 10

[[Page H2926]]

percent this year. Tax receipts are up 7 percent, but Medicare costs 
are up 10 percent. That is a huge hit on the general fund.
  Over here, you see this. That is actually premiums. Then here are 
some actual State transfers and those things, some of the dual 
eligibles and some of those things. You have a lot of folks who run 
around here somehow thinking Medicare is financed off of the FICA tax, 
the payroll tax, and it is not. It is about a third of the spending.
  And why that is important is the actuary report that came out 
yesterday actually was okay on Medicare. We gained a few years. The 
reason, if you really dig into it, it is these minute changes and, I 
believe, unrealistically optimistic numbers that healthcare costs are 
going to stabilize--even though, this year, Medicare costs are up 10 
percent, so I don't know how they justified those two numbers.
  Guess what I am going to do the next week or two. We are going to 
read every line and try to figure out what they were saying in here. 
Welcome to my life.
  But when you see this, see this part A here--now we are doing it in 
blue--that is actually part of your payroll tax. The part B and part D, 
those are substantially coming out of the general fund. It turns out 
Medicare, other than interest, is the biggest spend out of the general 
fund because Social Security, until the trust fund is gone, does not 
have a general fund aspect.

  Social Security is self-financed right now. It is payroll tax and 
trust fund, but that is why so many of us are freaked out that--is it 8 
years? 9 years? Is it now 2035, or 2034? We are going to get to that. I 
need you to understand they played a little game where they combined 
the disability trust fund number and the old age survivor fund number. 
The old age survivor was still at 2033, but then you roll in 
disability, actually--because so many people are able to work in the 
new economy--its number was better. They combined the two, and that is 
where you really got some of the added time on the trust fund. Yay.
  All right. Now, let's go to the place that gets a lot of people 
really cranky. We are going to tell you the truth. You need to process 
this because you have had people in the political class, the media 
class, the fraud information class that comes through these things and 
tell you stories about Social Security and Medicare that just 
mathematically aren't true.
  Let's get ready for the truth. This is based on an average couple--
not an individual--average couple. This number is updated. Look, the 
average couple in a lifetime--this is an average in America. I think we 
are actually basing this on a 2023 number--average couple will pay in 
$783,000 in their lifetime in Social Security taxes. It is amazing.
  How many people will you hear: But they stole my money. No, actually, 
it turns out that the average couple gets every dime of that back. The 
benefits they will receive will be about 831,000, so a $70,000-some 
spiff. Okay. Crap rate of return.
  You have got to understand. George Bush, what, 20-some years ago when 
they talked about taking just a tiny slice of your money and allowing 
you to control it and put it into other types of accounts, you would 
have had a stunning amount of money. The left beat the crap out of 
Republicans over that. They are trying to privatize. That wasn't the 
deal. We can look back now. You got lied to. You got played for fools.
  But we got what we wanted. The average American actually gets every 
dime back of their Social Security, plus a little spiff. Horrible rate 
of return, but you get it all back. That isn't where the crisis is. 
What crushes the future Federal debt and deficit is the Medicare 
portion.
  That same average couple in that lifetime will pay $214,000 into that 
Medicare part A trust fund. Remember, I already showed you the majority 
of Medicare doesn't actually come from the trust fund. It covers about 
35 percent of spending. The rest comes in from your premiums, from the 
general fund, from some State transfers, other things.
  That average couple is going to pay $214,000 in taxes into Medicare. 
They are going to get $635,000 in benefits. That difference there is 
the number one driver of U.S. debt. Political class, it is so dangerous 
to tell you the truth because it makes our core voters cranky.
  It is not your fault. We as a society, we made a deal with all of us. 
These are earned benefits. We made a deal. You worked your 40 quarters 
for Social Security. You worked your time. You paid your taxes. You got 
to 65. That was the societal deal. But what this place didn't do is 
think about the cost of healthcare. We were so terrified to 
incentivize, to require, to encourage, to prod innovation, disruptions 
in cost. We committed a fraud here, and this fraud has gone on here for 
decades.
  We tell you: ObamaCare, we are doing something on healthcare. 
ObamaCare was a finance bill. It is who had to pay taxes and who got 
subsidized. Our Republican bill, it was better. It fixed part of the 
actuarial curve problem, but it was still a finance bill. It is who had 
to pay and who got subsidized. Do you see the difference?
  Medicare For All is a financing bill because we don't talk about what 
healthcare actually costs, and that is what we are going to end on, is 
I am going to give you some of the basic ideas of what we could do, the 
morality of disrupting the cost of healthcare. This is uncomfortable 
because I have done this at public meetings, and I get booed by my 
friends because a lot of people don't want to be told every dime of 
U.S. borrowing from today through the next 30 years--every dime--this 
is according to CBO and a bunch of the outside groups--every dime, 
interest, Medicare--and let's use the actuary, 2035--it is actually 
just the very beginning of 2035, and if there is one economic bump, it 
comes back down to 2033.
  Instead of the 25 percent cut you were heading toward getting in 
Social Security, the fed gets paid out of the general fund, those three 
things are calculated to be 100 percent of the borrowing.

  Here is the 2024 CBO long-term debt report that I know every Member 
of Congress here read, every line. When I started doing this 
presentation a few years ago, the long-term debt was $116 trillion. 
Remember, I just told you, it is interest and healthcare. And then, if 
we backfill Social Security, now it is $141 trillion.
  As of March, when CBO did their long-term numbers, it is no longer 
$116 trillion. It is $141 trillion. And, if these interest rates stick 
around, which our economists say they are going to because we are still 
not at the historic norm--how many Members of Congress have gotten in 
front of you and told you the truth that 100 percent of borrowing from 
today through the next 30 years, the growth of it--the growth--
interest, healthcare, if we backfill Social Security in 10 years, and 
now it is $141 trillion?
  There is a way to make this work. Are you willing to adopt 
technology? Some of it is incredibly simple stuff.
  I am going to do a slight non sequitur here, but I have done it over 
time because it is so easy to understand. We calculate--and there are 
multiple studies saying this--16 percent of all of U.S. healthcare is 
people that get sick or have a stroke or a heart attack, these things, 
because they didn't stay on--someone like me, can you imagine, who 
drinks 7 or 8 cups of coffee a day? I have hypertension. As long as I 
take my calcium inhibitor, I am not likely to have a stroke. If you are 
diabetic, if you follow your regimen, you should be fine, but 16 
percent of people in U.S. healthcare are people that don't take or 
don't follow their regimen. That is $600 billion this year in 
healthcare costs.
  Do you care about U.S. debt? Think about something crazy. You could 
actually just get a pill bottle for 99 cents that the cap beeps at you: 
Hey, did you take your statin? Did you take your hypertension medicine? 
It would cost 99 cents. You would be amazed. I have had that piece of 
legislation for years around here.
  I could no more get a hearing here because, well, that is creative. 
Maybe the outside world likes having sick people because they make 
money off of them. That is incredibly cynical for me to say. How many 
revolutionary pieces of legislation do you see coming through here that 
are simple, easy to understand, and make huge differences in the cost 
of healthcare?

[[Page H2927]]

  No, David, a pill bottle cap that beeps at me that might save us $100 
billion, we can't do that. Why the hell not? It is almost immoral.
  Look, I have done this before trying to show you that, over the next 
couple decades, it is actually Medicare that starts to consume 
approaching 7 percent of the entire economy, just that. You start to 
add in Social Security, that is going 5.9 percent. You start to 
understand, when you are starting to look at numbers of 13 percent, 14 
percent of the entire economy is just those two programs. You are 
probably not going to change Social Security. That is an earned 
benefit.
  You could change the cost of healthcare by introducing technology 
disruptions, other business models, if this place was willing to be 
just somewhat creative, maybe read some of the journals out there. We 
are going to talk about some of those disruptions to our economy.

                              {time}  1830

  Should I make you actually understand that in 2034, the deficits--the 
reason I have this chart is, I am trying to help folks understand how 
far we missed.
  If you and I go back a year ago, at that point we were saying, we 
will have about a $1.3 trillion borrowing. Then it went up. It might be 
1.6.
  How do we get expected deficits where we are missing numbers this 
much? Understanding the economic effects of what it actually does to 
economic growth when the smart people we keep turning to over in the 
administration, even our own CBO, are missing these numbers by 100 
percent, when a year or two later the debt numbers double.
  Does that let you understand something? If the economy is decent--
also what happened a week ago Friday, we went from running at a 2.8, 
2.9 percent GDP to, oh, sorry, we were wrong. The first quarter was 
only 1.7.
  There is something wrong in our data collection, and I don't know if 
it is the continued impacts of inflation making your life feel much 
heavier, much more stressed, but this stuff doesn't have to be 
terrifying. There are ways to attack it if you are willing to read, 
willing to be part of the action.
  This chart has been around forever, and it just keeps getting uglier 
every time it gets updated. I am trying to help you understand current 
baseline debt with some of the policy changes and the higher interest 
rates. Remember, we are running substantially higher than this this 
year, but long-term baseline is going to start being just the 
borrowing. It will be 5, 6, 7 percent of the entire economy.
  Long-run debt, if you go the 30-year window, debt starts to approach 
32 percent of entire GDP. Do you think the bond markets are ever going 
to let us get anywhere near that? You tell me where on this line here 
we blow up.
  It is not a crash. What it is is, you have got to turn on the 
printing presses. You start to inflate your way out. All your savings 
get devalued. Remember, I have done two or three presentations on this 
here. What is the biggest tax hike in modern history? You are living 
it. Understand, you are living it.
  The last 3 years of the Biden administration because of the higher 
inflation, in my district, unless you right now make about 24 percent 
more today than you did the day the President took office, you are 
poorer if you live in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area.
  If you are not making the 24 percent, you have the right to be cranky 
because that was a transfer of your wealth to the U.S. debt because we 
lowered the value of your purchasing power, but we now pay it back. We 
pay back the U.S. debt because the United States is the largest debtor 
in the world. We now pay it back with inflated dollars. It is a tax. 
Whether you understand it or not, inflation is a tax. Welcome to the 
biggest tax in modern history, and you just lived it.
  Have you ever wondered why so many of our brothers and sisters on the 
left despise it when we talk about inflation? The answer: Because it 
worked for them.
  It turns out when you have that inflation, the size of the debt as a 
percentage of GDP sort of flatlines a bit until the new higher interest 
rates come slamming into you, and that is where we are at now.
  Let's do some optimistic stuff or semi-optimistic. I want us to think 
about how disruptive we can be if we actually read and if we think. I 
think my staff who made this one got a little carried away, but you do 
realize I think we just had the eighth OMB report that is saying the 
Pentagon is unauditable. They cannot audit it.
  Do you really know your inventory? Do we know how many assets we 
have? It turns out we can't audit them. So why not do something crazy. 
How about this idea: We have multiple companies now that have designed 
artificial intelligence, AI audit crawlers that crawl through every 
asset list, every inventory list, every bookkeeping entry, everything. 
You could actually audit the Pentagon; you just have to use technology 
not a building full of people.
  We have this as a piece of legislation. If it works, you could then 
unleash this type of technology on the fraudsters of Medicare, the 
durable medical equipment fraudsters, the billing fraudsters. How about 
all up and down government to find the waste and fraud?
  The technology can do it. We and our army of auditors can't seem to 
do it. Can you believe I can't get a hearing on this? AI will audit the 
Pentagon. You would think this would be a no-brainer, but this place is 
terrified of the very technology that can save us.
  Let's actually walk through a couple other ideas. How about if I came 
to you and said we could fast-track a drug, a vaccine--and for anyone 
that is actually watching and is curious, I want you right now to grab 
your favorite search engine on your phone and look up a fentanyl 
vaccine.
  There is also one for cocaine, a cocaine vaccine. It turns out it is 
in trials right now where they figured out how to block the receptor. 
The cocaine one, because it is not a synthetic, the vaccine actually 
attaches to the protein. What is the morality in a society when you are 
approaching 100,000 of our brothers and sisters who die every year of 
synthetic opioid? What happens when law enforcement pulls over someone 
coming out of southern Arizona, and they have fentanyl tablets or 
powder shoved in their glove box and that law enforcement officer is 
exposed to it and has to slam Narcan into his system?
  I am told in the Phoenix area we have one dead homeless person a day, 
almost always from fentanyl. Why isn't this moral? Why isn't the 
morality of this is if they are really heading toward this technology, 
let's fast-track it. Let's do an XPRIZE. Let's find some way to get it 
into our community and try it. Maybe it doesn't work.
  There are all sorts of other ethical or moral applications. Does 
someone have to be in their right mind? Do they have to have sobered up 
to be able to make the decision to take something that keeps them from 
being able to have the receptors for the synthetic opioid. But let us 
embrace these things.
  How many more people have to die? You think I am ever going to get a 
hearing on this? These are moral, but they are also great for the 
economy. How many people could come back into society, into the labor 
force, or actually mitigate their addiction? These are moral, and they 
are also great economics.
  Let's actually walk through some of the other things going on that 
are wonderful, but we have to figure out here if we are going to do 
things to help finance it because it doesn't work right now.
  Today, the very first patient here in D.C. began the process of 
having their sickle cell cured. Now, it is a rigorous process, but it 
is a cure for one of the most expensive diseases in this country. Once 
again, I argue and my team argues, the morality is in the cure, and it 
is also great economics. When you have a population that suffers a 
painful disease and there is a path to cure them now, because this has 
been FDA approved, and it is going into the first patient right now 
outside of the trials.
  Let's actually walk through this. Right now there is a revolution 
happening in really smart labs all over America, where they are using 
AI to design the next generation of drugs. There is a great story from 
last week. I think it was WIRED magazine--if you want to geek out--
saying that AI produced a small molecule drug that no one had ever 
thought of, and at least on the computer simulator, it has amazing 
efficacy.

[[Page H2928]]

  Why wouldn't we promote or why wouldn't we work with the FDA, that is 
saying we have the ability to do the datasets much faster, bring these 
things to market faster, cure people faster? Or is the 1930s, 1940s FDA 
model what we are still going to stand behind?
  A cancer vaccine, particularly one--we have already had the 
conversation about the one for melanoma. This one is more brain cancer. 
It is actually going into trials. How do we help these things come to 
market faster? It is moral and it also saves boatloads of cash.
  I showed you healthcare costs which are our primary driver. Do we do 
what the troglodytes around here say, well, we will just cut 
reimbursements, or you can stand in the waiting line longer? Or do we 
do this: cure people?
  We have about a half a dozen AI bills just for healthcare. The 
concept of bringing technology faster, using AI to find fraudsters, 
using AI for the back office, for example, you are a doctor's office or 
medical clinic using AI to say--it is called AI clean claims.
  Instead of going through the rigmarole--boom--you just match up the 
insurance companies or the Medicare or the rules, and if they match--
boom--it is paid. You just cut the staff. Yes, it does remove some 
people, but it also removes a hell of a lot of cost.
  I talked to you about using AI to audit the Pentagon. The fact of the 
matter is, this is the MedPAC report from 3 weeks ago--and I know every 
Member of Congress read it, but there is one thing in here, when you go 
through it, that explodes at you and that basically says--it is falling 
apart because we have been using it so much--at the end of this decade, 
Medicare will be about 23 percent of every corporate tax dollar and 
personal tax dollar we collect. That is from 13 percent to 23 percent, 
and that is coming in just a few more years.
  There is this term called a ``black swan.'' That is when something 
sneaks up on you, blows you up, and you weren't expecting it.
  This is called a ``white swan.'' You know it is coming for you and 
you choose to do nothing about it.
  I know I come behind this microphone every week, and I am almost 
mentally exhausted. Is anyone listening? There are solutions. Our 
problem is the clock is ticking. The on-ramp to bring those solutions 
to market, to actually have an effect on our debt and borrowing and 
economic growth, I think we only have 3, 4, 5 more years, but you have 
got to deal with the real numbers.
  When this place borrows $8.5 billion a day and we will lose our minds 
over things that mathematically are rounding errors, when we have done 
things in this body that have made the bond markets nervous, when a 
single basis point--so 1 percent of interest has 100 basis points--a 
single basis point just this year cost us about $800 million.
  I have watched us--sorry. I am not supposed to curse on the floor. I 
have watched us have debates where we say absolutely insane things and 
you can almost watch parts of the market saying: Nope. I think U.S. 
debt just got riskier because these people aren't serious about 
economic growth and stability.
  Mr. Speaker, there are ways to make this work. Is anyone listening?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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