[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 85 (Thursday, May 16, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H3314-H3318]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1730
                              COMPLEX 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 am going to try to walk us through a 
couple simple concepts that require really complex math, so wish me 
luck here.
  Last week, and the week before that, I came here and tried to walk 
through a concept of how fragile we are because of our borrowing, the 
amount of insatiable borrowing we go through. I made a sarcastic 
comment that happens to have the benefit of being almost true that the 
bond market is the one that pretty much will run this country. I 
actually can prove part of my thesis.
  Last week, because we made it a couple weeks without looking like a 
clown show, we got some decent inflation data. The movement in the U.S. 
debt market on our interest rates coming down, if you annualize that, 
do you realize it is more than every dime of foreign aid?
  I need you to think about this for a moment, just those ticks. When a 
single basis point--remember, 1 percent of interest is one one-
hundredth of a point of interest. One tick is about $800 million a 
year.
  Whether this place likes it or not, when we tell the world we are not 
serious about leading the world, when we don't look serious that we are 
going to be the country that defends the reserve currency of the world, 
when we don't look like adults, we pay a price. Many of the folks here, 
you get your 5 minutes of theater, and then we add hundreds of billions 
of dollars of additional interest.
  I am going to show you charts here where we are approaching $1.2 
trillion in interest this year. I am going to try to walk through a 
concept that the spending, particularly what the Democrats did with the 
Inflation Reduction Act, where we are basically saying over the 10 
years, we are pumping out a couple trillion dollars of subsidies to 
corporate America, and also the fact that because of our debt and these 
higher interest rates we are also pumping $1.2 trillion of interest 
payments out. That much cash flow is going out into the marketplace at 
the same time the Federal Reserve is over here trying to pull liquidity 
out of the market to slow down inflation.
  For those of us that live in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area, you have 
the right to be cranky because the day Joe Biden became President, from 
that day until today, if you are not making a little over 26 percent 
more in your paycheck, you are poorer today.
  For all of us who are elected here, our area happens to be probably 
the second highest inflation in the continental United States right 
now. You meet people, and they have done fairly well in life. I have 
one of the more prosperous districts in America. I have one of the very 
best-educated districts in America. We are out there knocking on doors, 
and people want to share with

[[Page H3315]]

you that they are stressed out of their mind.
  Part of it is they don't completely understand why they seem to be 
working harder, why their kids can't afford a place, why the price of 
education for their kids is just crushing them, why they seem to 
instinctively understand their kids are going to live poorer than they 
did, which is now fact. That isn't rhetorical. In every data point, if 
you are functionally under 40, 45 years old, you will be poorer than my 
generation and my parents' generation. It is the debt that has done 
this. It is inflation.
  Once again, let's do a basic economics class. Inflation is too many 
dollars chasing too few goods and services. It is also a tax because 
who is the biggest debtor in the world? It is the United States. 
Congratulations. We did it. Yay. We are basically kicking off about a 
trillion dollars every 100, 115 days of borrowing. That interest is 
helping kick off inflation. Inflation is that tax.
  The inflation we have had the last 3 years is the biggest tax in 
modern history because here is what happened: there is this massive 
amount of U.S. debt. We are now going to pay it back with inflated 
dollars, and your savings just became worth less. This country made a 
decision with the crazy spending that, screw them, and it set off 
inflation. We are going to reach in and grab the value of your savings, 
and we are going to transfer it to the debt, and we are going pay it 
back with inflated dollars.
  Whether you know it or not, the reason you are poorer today is you 
got taxed. Thank you for your contribution to U.S. debt. Did you know 
you were even doing it?
  The other thing is also the fragility concept. I have talked to 
dozens and dozens of Members here, and I get that blank stare because 
we don't often think this way. We are on different types of committees. 
I do Ways and Means and Financial Services, so maybe my whole world is 
trying to think about the math.
  Today, the world has the highest level of debt since the Napoleonic 
Wars. You may not remember your history, but after that the world went 
into a massive depression for years.
  Do you know which two countries are borrowing at extraordinary rates? 
The United States and China. Greece has a better credit rating than the 
United States. You can sell a 10-year bond in Greece cheaper than the 
United States. Go and read what the credit rating is. I think the 
United States is now number 14 in creditworthiness, and we are the 
reserve currency?
  Does anyone care?
  The hallways here are just full of people showing up at my door 
begging for more spending or begging us to set up rules to make sure 
that competition and new technology can't disrupt their business 
models.
  If you are under 40, I am a baby boomer. I am sorry. I wish we had 
thought about the math. I wish we had been more honest with ourselves, 
but there are ways to deal with this. There are ways to make it work.
  The other thing is we have been grinding through the Social Security 
Medicare actuary report. I am still not done with it, and my economist 
and the Joint Economic Committee, we are still not done with this 
because we are all so busy writing the response to President Biden's 
economic report.

  I am going to walk through a few things here where we can't figure 
out why the actuaries would use the numbers they did because they are 
completely different than OMB and CBO's numbers. There are other things 
going on.
  Let's actually start to walk through this. Some of these boards, you 
will have seen before. A lot of them you have never seen. I am trying 
to build a theme. The theme basically is this: This place needs to get 
serious and start acting like adults and understanding it is not our 
feelings anymore. It is not our theater or the troll that is going bang 
on us. If you are also the Russian troll that is going to be in my 
comments when this goes on YouTube, screw you, because the fact of the 
matter is I, we, this country, the world needs us to act like adults 
and provide a level of stability because when we don't, the price of 
our debt goes up. When you are clicking off borrowing $1 trillion every 
100, 115 days, interest rates matter.
  Remember, if we are going to borrow a couple trillion dollars this 
year--and actually right now our burden rate is 2.8, 2.6--and our 
refinancing is several trillion dollars because, as you have seen, 
Treasury has decided to stay very short on the curve. That means 
instead of saying we are going sell a 10-year bond because the market, 
it turns out, wasn't as excited about buying a bunch of 10-year U.S. 
bonds because they didn't trust us, we are now offering a 1-year note, 
a 2-year note. Remember, there are notes, there are bonds, and the 
definition is on duration.
  We have made ourselves very fragile to the world, to the bond market. 
I used to come behind this microphone and joke that this country 
basically is an insurance company with an army. Now it is a really in 
debt insurance company with an army.
  Let's walk through some of our realities. Yay.
  The first thing I need to walk through is the deficit over the last 
12 months is 1.8. If you actually do gross, it is closer to 3 in the 
last 12 months. Originally, when we built this board, we thought that 
is what we were going to borrow publicly. Our burden rate is actually 
substantially higher than we expected.
  What is enraging about this is the economy is fairly decent. We just 
weren't prepared for higher interest rates and higher other expenses. 
The fact of the matter is, much of the Democrats' Inflation Reduction 
Act, the most Orwellian named piece of legislation in modern history, 
its distortion effects in the economy and also the borrowing--when we 
are handing out cash grants, do you think that money is coming out of 
tax receipts? It is borrowed.
  The point I wanted to make here is when you see this blue, that is 
what I get to vote on as a Member of Congress. The red, that is 
mandatory. It is about 74, 75 percent of all spending is on autopilot. 
Guess what? Every dime I vote on is on borrowed money, plus a sliver of 
your Medicare.
  Every dime a Member of Congress votes on is on borrowed money.
  Then we play this game around here. When you are clicking off, we are 
just shy of borrowing about $100,000 a second. We have debates here 
where we are debating on saving this tiny little bit, and the borrowing 
during the debate was greater than the savings because we are terrified 
to tell you the truth that the majority of borrowing, every dime of 
borrowing from this day for the next 30 years--and I am going to say 
this about a half a dozen times tonight--every dime of borrowing from 
today through the next 30 years is interest, Medicare, and then 9 years 
from now when the Social Security trust fund is gone we backfill the 
shortfall. Everything else is in balance.
  All right. So let's continue to walk through this. To give you a 
sense, that blue area I was just showing you before on the chart that 
we get to vote on, okay, nondefense discretionary, that is everything 
you think of as government. That is the FBI, that is the Park Service, 
that is the State Department. This over here is Defense.

                              {time}  1745

  Mr. Speaker, if you come to me and say: David, I want you to cut 
spending, then I am all for burning a bunch of this down. A bunch of 
the things we do I have a really weird ethical question that Members of 
Congress need to think about.
  Is it ethical for the Federal Government to borrow money and send it 
to an entity that has its own taxing authority? When many of those 
taxing authorities, if they actually had more skin in the game, might 
be a little more sensible and more disciplined in how they spend it.
  Mr. Speaker, you realize that is one of the greatest scams here. We 
borrow it, we send it, we get love, and then the groups we send it to 
act like: Hey, we got free money from the Federal Government.
  You are paying it back. Actually, Mr. Speaker, your kids, your 
grandkids, and your great-great-grandkids are going to pay it back 
because it is borrowed.
  Everything else you see is interest, Social Security, and Medicare. 
Now, remember, Mr. Speaker, Social Security self-finances right now. 
Social Security is the payroll tax and the trust fund, and every month 
the trust fund

[[Page H3316]]

gets a little smaller. We do pay interest for the cash that the Federal 
Government and the Treasury have borrowed out of the trust fund. We 
give them their principal back, and then the Treasury gives them a 
little bit of interest.
  However, that is continuing to shrink.
  Then, Mr. Speaker, you look at everything else and you start to 
realize that we don't run this government anymore. The mandatory 
programs and the bond market do.
  The other thing that also should really annoy anyone who actually 
pays attention to the actual math instead of theatrics, national debt 
increased in the first 7 months of this fiscal year. In 2023 at this 
point we had borrowed about one-half a trillion dollars.
  Yea, good job.
  Now we are at $1.45 trillion, the same time period this year. Yet, 
you have got to work through the problem with me.
  Was 2023 economically that different from this year?
  What happened?
  What happened? Well, our interest rates went up so we are burning 
through tremendous amounts of more cash. In the last 12 months, I think 
we actually had 2 or 3 months where we had to borrow money to pay for 
our borrowing. Forgive me. I have had a stunning amount of coffee 
today, I haven't slept well, and I am just cranky.
  Mr. Speaker, this chart is actually worse now. It is just the only 
one I have.
  Some of these numbers I have trouble believing. We go back and 
double-check ourselves. We go back and double-check ourselves because 
the numbers read differently than the CBO report from 4 months ago or 5 
months ago or the OMB report from 6 months ago.
  That is because if the economy is supposed to be fairly decent, how 
can we be bleeding like this?
  Think about this, Mr. Speaker. CBO and those who are saying: Hey, we 
are going to be borrowing about 4.5 percent, 4.7 percent of the economy 
is going to be in borrowed money. However, so far this fiscal year, our 
borrowing is closer to 9 percent, 9 percent, of the entire economy.
  Why is that important?
  Also looking at this chart, we are saying: Here are our tax receipts. 
We will get the Democrats, and we need to talk about this. They keep 
saying: Well, if we just tax rich people more.
  I have come here multiple times and shown the analysis of higher 
taxes on those who earn $400,000 and up. We take the left's and this 
President's proposal, and we say: Let's tax maximize everything. Let's 
tax maximize their income taxes, their estate taxes, and their capital 
gains taxes, everything. Then you look at the data, and you get about 
1.5 percent of GDP.
  Okay, so we have used the Democrats' plan. We are going to tax our 
way to prosperity. You get about 1.5 of GDP. Great.
  Mr. Speaker, do you remember I showed you the chart of nondefense 
discretionary?
  You take 1 percent of that out of GDP, and it is about 40 percent of 
all nondefense discretionary you just wiped out. Now you have yourself 
2.5 percent of GDP that we either tax or we cut.
  Great job, guys.
  Mr. Speaker, you are seeing a chart here where we are starting to 
talk about over the coming decade we are going to be at 31 percent of 
the economy is borrowed, but, hey, guys, everything we talk about we 
are going to get 1 percent of cuts and 1.5 percent of taxes?
  We are borrowing close to 9 percent of GDP right now. The CBO 
baseline was up like 5.
  Does anyone here do math?
  Does anyone own a calculator?
  Does anyone have a battery in the calculator?
  Mr. Speaker, you can't cut yourself and you can't tax enough to make 
this work.
  Yet, we are so vacuous intellectually around here. The ability to say 
that we are going to embrace the things that disrupt our cost drivers; 
we are going to actually adopt technology; we are going to adopt 
artificial intelligence to change the cost of government; we are going 
to adopt the things that crush the price of healthcare, not by making 
it more scarce and not by rationing it but by making it more moral.
  We can do that. Except this place will run like hell every time you 
say: Do you know that we could actually have technology that would cure 
that disease?
  Oh, no. That is our business model.
  In a couple of weeks, we are going to do a major presentation from 
the Republican side of the Joint Economic Committee. The math is not 
done yet. We are trying to grind through the number one cost driver of 
this government. I am going to get some really, really interesting 
comments, and it is mathematically true.
  It is obesity. We are starting to chase down some data that says that 
almost one-half of U.S. healthcare has a relationship to obesity. We 
are about to have our fifth year of prime-age males dying younger.
  It is immoral. It is absolutely immoral what this place has become. 
The debt is immoral, and what we do in healthcare is immoral.
  It is bad enough that we are destroying our kids. Mr. Speaker, I am 
62, and my wife is 62. Maybe I shouldn't tell you that. I have an 8-
year-old daughter we adopted, and I have a 23-month-old little boy we 
adopted, who is a miracle. Moreover, they are brother and sister.
  Do they have the right to have the same life or even be more 
prosperous?
  Because the American sort of societal contract says the next 
generation will be more prosperous, and right now that is 
mathematically impossible.
  There is a way I can make it work, there is a way you can make it 
work, Mr. Speaker, and there is a way this place could make it work, 
but we are so busy knifing each other over petty crap because we are 
idiots. We are children here, because doing hard things is hard.
  My father used to have a saying: If it is a complex problem, then it 
is a simple solution.
  That is absolutely wrong. Complexity requires complexity. The reason 
for this portion of this tirade is that next year there will be about 
$380 billion a year in tax hikes. You, as an individual, your LLC, your 
subchapter S, your passthrough business, congratulations, your taxes 
are already going up next year. It is the law as it is already.
  I will argue it is one of the greatest opportunities we have had in 
modern times because we are going to be forced to actually act like 
adults and do something.
  Now, here is your battle, Mr. Speaker. Will we be smart, creative, 
and intellectually robust saying: Hey, let's use this as an opportunity 
to broaden the Tax Code, fix it in a way where we maximize prosperity 
and economic growth. Oh, by the way, because we don't want to add to 
the debt, can we do things over here to actually change some of the 
debt drivers?
  We are going to legalize technology in healthcare. We are going to 
adopt technology to make government smaller but more efficient. We are 
going to crowdsource our data in a way where it is current, accurate, 
and more moral.
  We have bills on all of this. This isn't just rhetoric. We have done 
bills on this stuff for years, and they have gotten much better.
  Will the vision, particularly for those who have the responsibility 
of being on the Ways and Means Committee, will we actually step up and 
say: Is it going to be binary?
  Hey, we are going to raise these people's taxes and lower these so it 
balances out. Hey, screw everyone.
  Yea, we did something.
  Are we going to use the stressor that is coming with the expiration 
of those portions of the 2017 tax reform to actually grow the society?
  Mr. Speaker, you have to ask yourself that first, because I don't 
know if many of my Democrat colleagues agree with me that prosperity is 
moral.
  Having a society where every day you have the chance to live a little 
bit better, is that moral?
  Having a society we are not poisoning ourselves with what we eat, is 
that moral?
  Having a healthcare system that is better, faster, and cheaper, is 
that moral?
  All those things are in front of us because chart after chart after 
chart basically says that when we have had very high marginal tax 
rates, we get about 17, 18 percent of GDP. When we have had very low 
marginal tax rates, we get about 17, 18 percent of GDP.

[[Page H3317]]

When we have done lots of extra corporate taxes, we get 17 to 18 
percent of GDP.
  The fact of the matter is there are lots of brilliant economic papers 
and people have written their Ph.D. theses on this. You all have access 
to the internet. Maybe go read it. You are going to get about 17, 18 
percent of GDP, and a bunch of the Democrat policies are: Well, let's 
raise these taxes, and we will get 24 percent of GDP.
  Really?
  Tell me a time in U.S. history on a sustained basis that has 
happened. It just hasn't.
  Unless the Democrats' plan is to do a value-added tax, a VAT tax, 
which will crush the working middle class, you ain't getting that 
number. You have got to stop making crap up.
  Yet, we know our spending because it is demographics. Remember our 
point before: interest, Medicare, and backfilling Social Security.
  We got old as a society. I am going to show you a couple of charts 
here that are really rough, and they are absolutely factual.
  The only reason I grabbed this chart, and we are going to go through 
some of these pretty quickly, it is just to show you over the past four 
quarters, $600 billion, $288 billion, $487 billion, $258 billion, we 
are borrowing in quarters where a few years ago that was the entire 
year.

  Here is one of the punch lines: Social Security, $1.452 trillion. 
That is Social Security this year. However, Social Security is out of 
your payroll tax and then part of the trust fund. Interest now, there 
were a few of our brothers and sisters on that side who mocked me a few 
months ago when I said: I think we are going to close in on 1.1, $1.2 
trillion in interest this year.
  Oh, Schweikert, you have got to stop making crap up.
  Treasury's own number, $1.144 trillion is the interest.
  If you want this number to go down, then make us look like a stable 
government. Make us look like we are adults. Convince the bond markets 
we are actually going to take on our debt in a meaningful way instead 
of playing theatrics.
  This is interesting. Right now, there is actually a little bit of 
squish here, so you have to understand. Mr. Speaker, our most recent 
Treasury update, defense now is number 3 and Medicare is number 4. We 
actually think that is going to flip again because last month it was 
flipped and reversed, but they are almost identical right now. The 
punch line here is interest now is the second biggest expense in the 
government. At our current borrowing rate, and if interest rates stay 
where they are at or go up just a little bit, in a couple of years, 
interest, interest, will be the number one spend in this government.
  Congratulations.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a hard chart to read. The point of this one is 
just interest fragility, what happens with small movements in interest 
rates on U.S. sovereign debt. The basic point is where we are interest 
rate-wise right now in 2033. Right now, we are working on the 2025 
fiscal year budget; 7, 8 budget years from now, our model at today's 
interest rates we are at 3, $3.7 trillion baseline borrowing.

                              {time}  1800

  That is already our model. That is without a recession. That is 
without a war. That is without a pandemic. That is just where we are 
at.
  I have some other articles talking about how fragile we have made 
ourselves. God forbid, this year or next year, we go into a true 
recession. Do you have any idea how fragile we have made this 
government, this country, with our ravenous borrowing?
  What would happen if tax receipts started to roll over a bit on us 
because we went into a recession? Remember, tax receipts are up about 7 
percent. Medicare spending is up around 10 percent this fiscal year. If 
that rolled over and wasn't 7 percent and was closer to 4 percent or 5 
percent, do you want to talk about a bloodbath?
  Raising interest rates could push the national debt toward 300 
percent of GDP within 30 years. How many of you think the bond markets 
are going to let us get anywhere near 300 percent of GDP with our 
savings rates? If you are Japan, maybe you can do it. You would have 
remarkably high savings rates. They can almost finance their own debt. 
Actually, they do finance their own debt. Do you think the rest of the 
world is going to keep loaning us money, respecting the sovereignty of 
the reserve currency that is the dollar?
  Why are we destroying ourselves? Why are we destroying your 
retirement? Why are we destroying your kids, my young kids? Yet, the 
hallways, once again, are full of people wanting more money.
  Let's talk through a couple of things that are even more 
uncomfortable than talking about the debt. You all saw a week ago 
Friday the update on U.S. fertility rates. Yes, we are going to have an 
idiot Congressman talk about how many children we are having in society 
because it is important.
  We sit there in our offices, and I am blessed to have some freaky 
smart staff, people much smarter than I ever could dream to be, a bunch 
of economists, and we are trying to figure out, over the next decade, 
two decades, how do we pay Social Security? How do we pay Medicare? How 
do we do these things?
  The Democrats say that we will just raise more taxes, but then you 
show them the studies that that math doesn't work.
  Are we just going to lie to our voters and survive the next election? 
Great job, guys, but we have a little problem. A week ago Friday, you 
saw the updated report on the 2023 fertility rates. I was wrong on my 
number. It is worse. It is worse than the speeches I came here and 
gave.
  We are down to 1.62, meaning we are way below replacement rates now. 
The United States is dying, and one of the things I am frustrated with 
is the Census Bureau numbers basically say that when we start to get 
beyond--because, remember, the Census Bureau had us at 1.64, it turns 
out they were wrong. It is 1.62, and they were projecting as we go 
through the rest of this century, which is a long time.
  Think about your kids. If you have a young child right now, they are 
going to live, hopefully, with the Lord's blessing, 100 years. We start 
to collapse populationwise, and we are going to walk you through a 
couple of why these are such a big deal.
  Deaths are projected to exceed births. This chart said 2040. It is a 
little sooner. If you take last week's fertility number, in about 15 
years, the United States will have more deaths than births.
  There is no industrialized country that has succeeded in adopting 
policy that changed their fertility rates in the long run, so you have 
Hungary and these others that say, in your future life, have a fourth 
kid, and pay no income taxes in the future. We will buy you a house, 
and you get a little pop, and then, boom, after a few years, it moves 
right back to mean.
  You have to deal with the reality. It turns out, all over the world, 
as the world has gotten more prosperous, we have a collapse in 
fertility, yet we built a social entitlement system. It is earned 
benefits. You earned your Medicare. You earned your Social Security. 
They were based on the concept that there would be this many workers 
because the reality is that today's FICA taxpayer's and payroll 
taxpayer's paycheck went into your Social Security check today, or your 
Medicare. It is just the way it has always been.
  What happens when that next generation gets smaller? Are we also 
emotionally and mentally prepared for the number of schools that will 
be closing? It is starting to happen all over the country because U.S. 
fertility started to roll over in 1990. It has just now accelerated. We 
had a tiny little blip during the pandemic, and now it has gone back. 
The trend line continues to get uglier and uglier.
  It is reality. Think about it. You live in a country where, in 15 
years, we will have more deaths than births. Are we prepared for that? 
Are you ready, are we ready, is this body intellectually ready for 
saying you are going to adopt policies that are child friendly, this 
and that? There is no other country that has come up with an example 
where it actually raised the number of children. Are we ready to adopt 
policy to embrace technology?
  This is where it gets really uncomfortable. How many robots are you 
ready to embrace? How much AI are you ready to embrace? When you call 
the IRS, instead of having a person, are

[[Page H3318]]

you ready to be talking to ChatGPT? Probably, in that case, you might 
prefer the chat.
  We are going to have to adopt the embracement, or whatever the word 
would be, of technology in ways to keep the economy growing without 
more people, and this is happening all over the industrialized world.
  How many times behind these microphones have you heard any Member of 
Congress come and say: I actually care about prosperity. I care about 
the next generation. I care about economic growth. I care about the 
future. We are going to adopt things where we are going to embrace 
technology so we can keep having prosperity.
  What? The math is the math, and the math will always win.
  One of the things I am also annoyed with is, reading through the 
Social Security actuarial report, they are making crap up. They have 
fertility numbers in here. They have us growing.

  CBO actually has numbers growing, yet we talk about the Census 
Bureau, and the Census Bureau is down here. Could our government 
agencies--we spend a fortune with all these actuaries--maybe have a 
cocktail party, preferably no alcohol? Make it a coffee. We will do a 
coffee because that is what we need, a bunch of well-caffeinated 
actuaries in the same room from Social Security, from maybe OMB, CBO, a 
couple of these others, the Census Bureau, all in the same room. Can 
you give us a number because you are making it miserable around here 
trying to say what our future looks like because, so far, they keep 
being wrong.
  It is a little geeky, but that is important, and that was my mocking 
them for the number of times I send them memos saying: Can you explain 
your number and why it is so different than each other?
  I had some questions on this from last week, so I just brought the 
board back. You had the President stand right there, and he basically 
said that we are going to do this from Medicare, that we are going to 
raise this tax and this and that.
  The red portion here is when you pay your payroll tax. That is the 
portion that goes to the Medicare trust fund. The rest, you 
functionally pay for. This comes out of the general fund, which we are 
borrowing part of it. Over here, that is actually your premiums, and a 
little bit of this is some other transfers. Then, we also have a little 
slice here, which is for dual eligibles, those who are seniors but 
maybe in Medicare and Medicaid, so we also get a little sliver from the 
State. Once again, the majority of spending in Medicare is not the 
trust fund.
  I am elated that the current model on the trust fund extended for 
another few years. That is wonderful. We need to sort of study that, 
except if you read the actuary report, the reason it extended is really 
fragile. This dark blue there, that and interest are the primary 
drivers of U.S. debt.
  Tell the truth. Maybe it will get you unelected, but how do you make 
public policy in a world where you are not allowed to tell the truth? 
That is what Members of Congress do.
  ``Rising Security and Medicare Shortfalls Drive Nearly Entire 2019-
2033 Deficit Rise.'' That is the fact. That is CBO's own quote.
  Here is the board that I promise will be in the attack ad going at me 
in the next election, except it is CBO's own numbers, except it is 2 
years out of date. There is a number right here that basically says 
Social Security and Medicare, $116 trillion deficit, and the rest of 
the budget, $3 trillion, is functionally in balance. Except the problem 
is, for anyone right now, if you care enough, go grab your phone. Go 
use a search engine and look up CBO's report from 6 weeks ago. The 30-
year number is not $116 trillion. It is $143 trillion that is now our 
model.
  That is what higher interest rates did, $143 trillion, 100 percent of 
that borrowing, Medicare and the interest financing on that, 
backfilling of Social Security and the interest financing on that. We 
can revolutionize this if we would finally be willing to legalize 
technology, the morality of moving and pushing cures.
  Why does this place seem to like to finance people's misery instead 
of working with the FDA, working with biopharma, working with the 
people out there who are disrupting disease and misery? We seem to have 
a place around here that wants to build diabetic clinics instead of 
curing diabetes. What is wrong with the morality of this place?
  Another thing we are trying to figure out in the Social Security 
actuary report is they play this game where, hey, when we get the out-
years, things collapse. We will do that in a week or two because it is 
a little complex.
  Another chart just trying to explain, once again, what is the part A 
trust fund, part B general fund. This here, part D, also is a 
combination of some of the fees you pay. That is your Medicare.
  Back to the last couple of points I want to make here.
  When I just told you we are about to have our fifth year of prime-age 
males dying younger, is it moral to stand here and say--remember, this 
chart functionally ends at 2020. It has actually gotten uglier.
  The U.S. is an outlier in disease and disability trends. We are 
sicker than the rest of the industrialized world. Is it that we are not 
spending enough on healthcare? Well, that is absurd because, let's be 
honest, we engage in agricultural policy and nutrition support policy 
where you can take your EBT card and go buy onion rings.
  Is that moral? Why isn't there a fixation in this place when we have 
States where over half of the population statistically is obese? They 
are dying on us. We have a society that finances crap in our diets. Why 
would we do this to each other? Is that Republican or Democratic? I am 
just trying to make the arguments. It turns out, if you took it on, it 
is the single biggest thing you can do for U.S. debt, taking on the 
very things that are killing us.
  I have done presentations before. They were a little geeky trying to 
explain that if we could make our society healthier, it is the single 
biggest thing I can do to reduce U.S. debt. You all remember your high 
school economics class, first-degree effects, second-degree effects, 
third-degree effects, knockoff effects. Do you remember all the weird 
language? You want more of our brothers and sisters to be able to marry 
and family formation and participate in society and be able to 
participate in the economy. Help us make our society healthier.
  Mr. Speaker, I am trying to make the morality argument that the very 
thing that would be most effective for us to take on the U.S. debt is 
legalizing technology to crash the price of healthcare, putting 
technology into this government to make government smaller and more 
efficient. It requires thinking.

                              {time}  1815

  It also requires really annoying a whole bunch of the people in our 
hallways demanding more money from us. It would also be incredibly 
moral. It would actually give our kids a chance, in many ways, for the 
prosperity that we and previous generations had.
  Let's think about it: We have done this to ourselves. There is a way 
out. It is not easy. It requires some complexity. Are these Republican 
or Democrat ideas? They are neither; they are just hard. They are just 
hard.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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