[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 113 (Tuesday, July 9, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H4519-H4522]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1815
                         MATH IS UNCOMFORTABLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Alabama 
(Mr. Carl).


           Honoring Baldwin County Sheriff Huey ``Hoss'' Mack

  Mr. CARL. Mr. Speaker, I proudly rise today to honor Baldwin County 
Sheriff Huey ``Hoss'' Mack, who will be retiring later this year and 
will become the director of Alabama Sheriffs Association.
  Sheriff Hoss Mack served as the county sheriff for the last 18 years. 
His educational background includes a degree in criminal justice and a 
master's degree in human resource management.
  He began service in Baldwin County Sheriff's Office in 1989 before 
becoming sheriff and was elected in 2006. Sheriff Hoss Mack has always 
been heavily involved in multiple criminal justice organizations, 
including both the Alabama and the National Sheriffs' Association. Not 
only has Hoss served Baldwin County with the utmost integrity, but he 
has been a friend of mine, and I appreciate that.
  He is a true American and a true public servant. Baldwin County is 
blessed to have had Sheriff Hoss Mack for the last 35 years, and I wish 
him fair winds and good luck in his next endeavor.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, we are going to try to do something a 
little tricky this evening. You are going to see the continuing theme 
of, hey, here is where we are borrowing and here is where the borrowing 
is coming from.
  Then I am going to hit on some of the things that--what is the next 
one--drive me almost insane on the questions I get here, the things I 
get on this stupid thing. I have come to this conclusion: We live in a 
world where the propaganda, the fake information, and the distortion 
fields around us actually do not want America to succeed.
  That is a pretty dark thing to say, but let's actually walk through 
my theory. I am going to make the point. On some of these 
presentations, I have been blessed. If you go on YouTube, I had one a 
couple months ago, I think there is, like, 1.3 million views. Go look 
at the comments section. I will argue about half those comments are 
bots. They are fake.
  You see things like: Well, if you just didn't give any money to 
Israel, we could balance the budget. You start to realize that there is 
a world out there that takes advantage of our open society, that comes 
at us with things that are lies, and the poor person out there who is 
just trying to take care of their family, on occasion, grabs their 
phone, tries to read little bits of news, maybe reads a comment or two, 
and they don't realize the information coming at them is absolute crap.
  Then the other problem that I am going to show here is when I have my 
own President get behind a microphone, look at the American people, and 
say things that are absolutely not true. Then an idiot like myself 
tries to come up and say: I have a path. There is a path. If I can get 
my brothers and sisters on the left to work with us on the right, there 
is a path to save this country.
  It is really hard when the State of the Union goes on that podium 
right there and says things that are absolutely not true.
  Does that mean they are also a deliverer of fake information because 
math is hard? Math is uncomfortable. Telling the truth is hard. Maybe 
this place has lied for so many decades that the public says: Look, we 
are just going to believe whatever is comfortable.
  Let's actually walk through, first, a little bit of reality here. I 
will start with this chart because it sort of lays out where we are at 
today. Do you see the red? That red area is 74 percent of the spending, 
and 74 percent of the spending in this place is on auto pilot. We don't 
get to vote on it.
  Do you see the blue? That is what I get to vote on. That is defense 
and nondefense discretionary. I get to vote on that. Every dime of it 
is borrowed. Every dime a Member of Congress votes on is borrowed 
money. Also, guess what--we are in so much trouble--I have net interest 
on this, which I think is unfair because there is this thing called 
net. That is the publicly borrowed. That is where the Treasury sells 
bonds.
  I think, this week, we are selling $111 billion--maybe it is $112 
billion or $113 billion--in three different auctions this week just to 
finance our insatiable spending because, remember--this is one of the 
things I find is uncomfortable even at home--100 percent of the 
borrowing from today through the next 30 years, according to CBO, is 
interest, Medicare, and if we backfill Social Security in a decade from 
now. It is demographics.
  Yet, how do you make policy? There are ways to fix it with policy. 
When the leader of the free world looks into a camera and says things 
that are just insane when it comes to being on a calculator.
  Take a look one more time. Nondefense discretionary, defense, all of 
that is borrowed, and a wedge--I should do a chart that shows you how 
much is borrowed money. I originally thought we might be at $2.5 
trillion borrowing this year. Some of the tax receipts are a little bit 
better. Some of the spiking growth that we had in the first part of the 
fiscal year on healthcare costs have flattened ever so slightly, so we 
are probably going to end up borrowing around $2.3 trillion this year.
  What that means is even part of the mandatory spending, Medicare, 
because remember, Medicare isn't all on the trust fund. The trust fund 
only covers 38, 40 percent. The rest comes out of the general fund. 
Once again, look at this chart and understand your government 
functionally is an insurance company with an army. That is meant to be 
sarcastic, but it is meant to sink in.
  Let's actually walk through. I am going to walk through a couple of 
these just to sort of lay out where we are actually at. CBO predicts by 
2054, so 30 years from now, budget deficits are entirely driven by 
Social Security and Medicare shortfalls.

  We are not allowed to say that, are we? Does anyone remember the 
State of the Union? There was a handful of us, Democrats and 
Republicans, who had been quietly working for a year trying to put 
together a plan to save Social Security in the long run.
  The President gets there and says: Promise me you won't talk about 
Social Security or Medicare. People look terrified and go: Okay. Yes, 
good campaign issue. They care more about winning the next election 
than protecting seniors. It is the great lie around here. You talk 
about it saying: I want to find a way to modernize and save, and you 
will get the crap kicked out of you. You also told the truth.
  You have to look at the data, the charts. Remember, the SSA, the 
Social Security Administration's actuary numbers are actually 
substantially more optimistic than the Congressional Budget Office, so 
we are going to

[[Page H4520]]

use the more optimistic numbers. When you start to realize and when the 
outlays are, over the next 30 years, starting to hit 17 percent of the 
entire economy and revenues don't come anywhere close to that, there is 
your crisis. We can just pretend because getting through the next 
election is more important.
  Look, you have all seen this chart over and over and over and over 
and over and over that interest continues to grow, and we think 
actually the interest calculation--this is important. Let's do this 
right now. The hierarchy right now, today, Social Security will, this 
year, be $1.480 trillion. The total gross interest because, remember, 
just a couple days ago, I think we sent $36 billion to Social Security 
because we borrowed the money. Treasury had borrowed the money from the 
trust fund. We pay it back with interest. Total interest to the United 
States will approach $1.2 trillion this year.
  Then you have Medicare, and then you have defense. Defense is 
functionally sitting as No. 4. How do you have a society that runs 
around thinking, well, if we just cut some defense? I showed you the 
chart before. You can get rid of every dime of defense, every dime of 
nondefense discretionary. That is the Park Service. That is the FBI. 
That is the Foreign Service. That is us. If you get rid of everything, 
you still have to borrow money.
  You look at the charts over and over, and when we have had high 
marginal tax rates, we get about 18 percent of GDP in taxes. When we 
have had low marginal tax rates, we get about 18 percent of GDP. You 
have a long history--and I have done floor presentation after floor 
presentation--that when you lowered the rates, you grew the economy, 
you got about the same percentage of GDP. When you raised the tax 
rates, the economy shrunk a bit or slowed down, and you got the same 
percent of GDP.
  The idea is grow the economy as much as possible, and then cut 
spending everywhere you can. I have some charts, and I don't know if I 
should do them again--actually, maybe I will just jump to them in a 
moment--where you lay out almost every tax hike that are the dreams of 
the left: Let's tax rich people who are over $400,000. Let's do this 
tax and that tax.
  I come here with the academic papers and showed you, when you 
maximize all those tax rates, capital gains, income tax, estate tax, 
just do it all, you get about 1.5 percent of GDP.
  For us on a cut side, it is brutal, but I can come up with almost 
$300 billion in nondefense discretionary. That is 1 percent of GDP. So, 
hey, together, we came up with 2.5 percent. We are borrowing 6 or 7 
percent of the entire economy, and we have used up everything.
  I mean, understand what is going on here. Just another chart that 
basically gives you a sense: Rising Social Security and Medicare 
shortfalls driven entirely or nearly the entire 2019 to 2034 deficit 
hikes. That means, in a 10-year window, almost all the growth of the 
debt and deficit during that time period, interest, Medicare, and then 
at the end of the decade, Social Security trust fund is gone. Right 
now, you will get a Democrat saying: Well, Social Security doesn't add 
anything to the deficit. They are absolutely correct until the trust 
fund is gone.
  There is the part that enraged me the other night. If any of you were 
able to watch the Presidential debate the other night, my phone lit up 
at one point by a bunch of reporters who wanted to double check a 
number.
  The President was asked about Social Security. I begin to make the 
wealthy--okay. I begin--and this is his actual quote, so it is 
disjointed, but this is what he said: `` . . . I begin to make the 
wealthy begin to pay their fair share, by increasing from 1 percent 
beyond, to be able to guarantee the program for life.''
  He is talking about Social Security, so 1 percent. Then he went on to 
say: ``Well, that one enough will keep it solvent.''
  The left's definition of wealthy is over $400,000 income, right? The 
President just told the American people 1 percent. I will fix Social 
Security by taxing them 1 percent.
  We have a math problem. The problem here is, the blue you see here, 
that is not 1 percent. I had to make it 2 percent because the 1 percent 
was so small we figured you couldn't even see it. I doubled what the 
President said.
  This is the shortfall. Half of this is what the President told you 
would work.
  I am enraged by all the fake crap that comes into my phone in my 
office, our phones, our publications, all the things that you see on 
Twitter, or X, or whatever we are supposed to call it today, that are 
just made up by bots particularly and foreigners.
  What happens now when my own President does it? How do I show up 
here? How do I get my brothers and sisters here to actually make 
policy? How do you make policy when the leader of the free world says 
things that are mathematically just insane?
  The immorality here, functionally 9\1/2\ years, we double senior 
poverty in America. If we don't fix this, we double senior poverty. The 
Democrats will weaponize it because they care more about winning the 
next election.

  We have a President who could have just looked in the camera and 
said: Look, we haven't had the number of children, therefore, the 
number of workers. We started the rollovers in 1990. It is just math. 
It is not Republican or Democrat. Demographics are what we are.
  Last year, the United States had 1.62 children fertility rate, 
meaning, functionally, now our math is, in about 15 years, the United 
States will have more deaths than births. I say that over and over 
trying to get people to think.
  If your brain is trapped somewhere in the 1990s' policy sets, none of 
that math is real anymore. It hasn't been real in 30 years.
  This place is absolutely immoral. I brought charts here over and over 
and over, the Democrat solution saying: Instead of the President's 1 
percent proposal, if you do the--what is it--the 14-point-whatever 
percent, 14.4 or 12.4 total Social Security tax, not the Medicare, not 
the unemployment, those things, and you put it on all income over 
$400,000--I have shown a number of charts--if you use the CBO math, it 
covers about 38 percent of the shortfall.

                              {time}  1830

  That is using over 12 points, both the employer and the employee's 
portion. I have a President who looks in the camera and says 1 percent. 
Now, let's come together at a townhall or a meeting here and say: Hey, 
guys, let's have an honest conversation because every day we wait, the 
on-ramp is harder to save Social Security.
  Oh, David, the President already told us we are doing 1 percent on 
rich people. I can show you with the 12.4 you are covering only about 
38 percent.
  Why is this place so absolutely immoral? Do they really care that 
much more about winning the next election?
  After the President said that, I started to dig through the stories 
other people had sent me. I had this woman text me weeks ago saying, 
did you know that with the money in Ukraine that the First Lady of 
Ukraine bought almost a million-dollar Bugatti, or however you 
pronounce that car.
  Well, the BBC did a very long article about how much is absolutely 
fake coming into the U.S. marketplace of ideas. There are bot farms. 
There are troll farms. They created fake photos, which turns out that 
is what actually helped BBC identify that this is all fake stuff.
  How do you make policy in a world where we are awash in things coming 
in from our enemies, from the countries that want us at each other's 
throats, make it impossible to do basic policy to save the Republic, 
and then my own President is making crap up?
  Article after article of disinformation that is crashing in, the 
things I have that come into my office about Israel that are coming in 
from bot farms.
  We have article after article that Microsoft did an analysis of how 
much was coming in from Chinese bot farms, Chinese servers. Apparently, 
we just had a major disruption by stopping 968 Twitter accounts that 
were completely fake and they were all coming from a bot farm in 
Russia. That happened this week. The State Department just identified 
that bot farm and got it shut down.
  Mr. Speaker, I say now to my Democrat colleagues that we have 
actually had a couple stories come out that have some real fun stuff. 
It turns out a

[[Page H4521]]

number of the Democrat activists are actually setting up fake 
newspapers. Now, if that wasn't bad enough, one of these articles in 
there actually has a section talking about that in American small town 
newspapers as many as half process this, as many as half are actually 
fake.
  My wife pointed out to me that there was a newspaper from southern 
Kansas, where she grew up, that went out of business decades ago that 
somehow popped up in her news feed and it had this crazy stuff in it. 
Turns out, that was on the list of the ones that had been spoofed. A 
spoofed URL that looks like it is from Russia.
  Think that about. In America, about half the small town online 
newspapers you see are actually fake.
  How many of our constituents know that? It looks like the Democrats 
actually have decided, hey, this is a great business model. Let's make 
up fake newspapers online, have it laced with leftwing propaganda, and 
we will do it under a newspaper masthead.
  How is this not a violation? Once again, the left proves they are a 
hell of a lot smarter than we are when it comes to being mercenary on 
campaigns. They figured out a way to get around the campaign finance 
laws. Spend money, but it is free speech. It is fake, but it is free 
speech. Then idiots like me get here and try to walk through the math.
  Look, this is the MedPAC report. It is not that hard to read. You 
have quotes in here that in 2022, 13 percent of all personal and 
corporate income taxes collected by the Federal Government were 
transferred to the Medicare trust fund.
  By 2030--so that is how many years? 5 budget years? 4 budget years?--
22 percent of all tax receipts from corporate and individual income 
tax, 22 percent will just go to Medicare.
  Functionally in a decade, you have gone from 13 to 22 percent of all 
tax receipts. It is demographics.
  Why isn't this what we talk about around this place, how are we going 
to save these programs? Oh, you can't do that because you are going to 
have a President who is going to knife you by saying crazy things.
  The Joint Economic Report we published a couple weeks ago, we tried 
to provide brutally honest math, brutal detail with actual solutions. 
Will anyone actually read it?
  This one my staff was particularly fond of. It turns out that one of 
the new spoofings out there that are coming into young people's phones 
are celebrities with quotes that the celebrities have never said.
  Are you all ready for this election cycle where you have AI memes 
looking like a Member of Congress, looking like a President, looking 
like a Senator, looking like a celebrity, saying things that are 
completely fake?
  Now come here and try to do difficult policy where you are going to 
have to take on some bureaucracies, take on certain business models, 
adopt technology to crash the price of healthcare. Are you going to get 
hit by an army of bots, an army of fake videos, an army of fake 
postings, saying they can't do that, because some group has figured out 
that winning the election is stopping us from saving the country from 
its debt spiral?
  I am trying to explain it is bad enough having to take on the 
bureaucracy, it is bad enough having to take on the calcified 
intellect, of particularly some of my friends here, that say we can 
just fix everything by taxing people more.
  What happens when our voters have to face millions of absolutely fake 
information videos that are crashing at them? I can't wait to see the 
bots and the comments they put in the video below this posting.
  Take a look here: ``Not touching Social Security means large benefit 
cuts.''
  When you start to actually take a look--and I think we did this 
before. Remember, the number goes up and down depending on employment, 
but we were working on one the other day from last year's CBO number 
that basically showed the average couple would take about a $17,400 cut 
in their Social Security a decade from now when the trust fund is gone.

  This is immoral. Shouldn't this actually be a place where we actually 
work on these things? Then you start to actually look at the lies--
excuse me--the misinformation that our brothers and sisters on the left 
keep saying.
  Oh, when we did tax reform, it was a gift to the rich. Okay. You got 
a math problem. The higher income, the top 20 percent today pay 69 
percent of all income taxes. It is more progressive today than the tax 
code has ever been. The wealthy pay a higher percentage of Federal 
income taxes today than ever before. The lower quartiles today pay the 
lowest Federal income tax rates since income taxes, 16th amendment.
  How often do you hear this? But that doesn't fit the narrative. Then 
you have the jerks actually say things like this: Well, you guys had 
$1.7 trillion spending. Yes. We got $900 billion more revenue than 
expected, but that was horrible. We are going to spend about $2 
trillion in grants and gifts and those things to big business because 
they do clean energy stuff. It is like they don't look at themselves in 
the mirror.
  Once again, I have done entire presentations here going through every 
leftwing tax idea trying to add it up. Even when you don't do economic 
effects--if you do economic effects, these numbers--and then try to 
say, hey, you guys are only getting about a point and a half or so of 
GDP out of these numbers, you are not getting anywhere close. You got 
to do it through policy.
  Then the fragility that no one was prepared for--well, some of us 
were prepared for--are interest rates. How many of you think interest 
rates are going back down, particularly in the long end of the curve?
  Remember, what the Federal Reserve does is on the short end of the 
curve, meaning shorter term bonds. When you start to look at 10-year 
debt and up, some of the best bond traders and economists right now are 
saying it is not going down. You might get a little bit of a tick.
  The United States is now number 14 on the credit stack, meaning 
Greece today can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than we can. You read the 
notes on the S&P's and the Moody's, it is not--we have one of the 
healthiest economies in the industrialized world, but one of the things 
that is going on is they don't trust us.
  Will our governance be disciplined enough to actually take on the 
spending and the debt? The fact of the matter is, we are paying a 
premium now. The United States now pays a premium on our debt.
  This week, I told you we are borrowing about--there are three 
auctions this week--$111 billion, and we are going to pay a premium on 
that debt. Sometimes this place doesn't look like we are serious about 
taking the debt on and managing our fiscal affairs.
  First off, we are having great difficulties selling long-term bonds. 
Do you remember a few months ago we had sort of a bond tantrum? Why do 
you think Treasury moved things down to sell short-term, short-term, 
short-term? A lot of investors out there don't even trust this 
government enough to say, I am going to buy a 30-year U.S. savings bond 
and I am going to be safe.
  Once again, even a 100 percent tax rate on small businesses and 
upper-income families could not come close to balancing the long-term 
budget in this country.
  Stop thinking you are going do it with tax hikes or even for those of 
us who want to cut the size of government, you need to have 
revolutionized the cost of this government. Stop being afraid of 
technology. Stop being afraid of the things where we could change the 
cost of this government because it might affect your business model.
  Look, I was going to try to put up one or two slides last for happy 
talk, until I realized one of the slides I wanted to show you was, once 
again, another concept of why the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act is 
the most Orwellian named piece of legislation in modern history.
  They are very proud, saying we are subsidizing electric cars. My wife 
has an electric car. She loves it, but the data basically said--when 
they passed that, I came here to the floor and showed, hey, here is the 
survey data. Almost everyone that is going to buy an electric car is 
buying them with the subsidy, without the subsidy. It is a lifestyle. 
It is almost a status symbol, but let's give away billions and billions 
of dollars.
  Now you actually have breakthroughs. Could you imagine if just a 
fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that resource had gone more 
into primary research? Looks like there has

[[Page H4522]]

been a breakthrough on solar cells, an additional 25.7 percent 
efficiency, except the problem is it was developed in China.
  The very people who preach at us to subsidize all this stuff, but 
let's subsidize less generations or maybe even the generation before 
that's technology.
  You want me to put solar panels on my house, you want us to drive 
electric cars, make it so economically sensible and make it so 
economically affordable that it is the disruption.
  Why did you stop going to Blockbuster Video? Because you had this 
button you could hit at home and stream videos right to your home. Was 
that subsidized by the government?

                              {time}  1845

  The fact of the matter is that there are technology disruptions. Why 
didn't we fixate on that? Well, it turns out that maybe the disruptions 
don't write checks to your campaign.
  The Democrats' planned economy, the control of the marketplace, the 
arrogance that somehow they think they know what the future looks like 
instead of building a tax system or regulatory system that is 
competitive, that is disruptive. Some are winning; some are losing. 
That is the way the American economy is supposed to work.
  In many ways, we have now built a society of oligopolies, thanks to 
Dodd-Frank and Democratic policies. They have made the big bigger, the 
big really powerful, and the really big and powerful now your 
constituency.
  It turns out now that if you look at who votes for Republicans, it is 
entrepreneurs, working people, and those who are being crushed by those 
they have to compete with who now get subsidies from their political 
allies.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________