[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 121 (Thursday, July 25, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H4935-H4940]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RECOGNIZING OUTSTANDING CITIZENS OF MISSOURI'S FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL
DISTRICT
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 such time as he may consume to
the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Alford).
Mr. ALFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I
thank the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. Wexton) for her courage. We
love her, and America thanks her.
Recognizing Patrick O'Hanlon
Mr. ALFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate our top 10
speechwriters for this year's Missouri's Fourth Congressional District
Speech Competition. They were chosen to write speeches on what America
means to them, and we are so proud of the work they are doing in their
schools to keep the American Dream and spirit alive.
Today, we are sharing several of these speeches, the first from
Patrick O'Hanlon, from Pleasant Hill, Missouri, in Cass County.
Patrick writes: ``America is a special country. We have the freedom
of speech and the freedom of religion. America was built by people from
around the world. Our Founding Fathers wrote an amazing Constitution
and Bill of Rights that limits the government's powers and gives
freedom to the people.
``When a B-2 cruised over my home on the Kansas City Royals opening
day, it was such a magnificent reminder of our exceptional country. It
was hard not to be overflowing with patriotism. After seeing that, I am
glad they are on our side. These things are a big part of what America
means to me.''
I thank Patrick for being such a shining light in the classroom and
sharing what America means to him.
Recognizing Natalie Myers
Mr. ALFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate another top 10
speechwriter, this one from Polk County, Natalie Myers, from Pleasant
Hope Middle School.
``America, Where My Heart Calls Home.
``America is more than the home of the brave. It is where the heart
finds home. Home is where the heart belongs. My heart is painted with
the
[[Page H4936]]
strokes of red, white, and blue. Having the freedom of religion,
speech, to be who I want to be. That is what America offers me, and I
thank her in deep gratitude.
``America isn't perfect, but we strive for perfection. Let's not
forget the ones who fought for our land that hold the red, white, and
blue. America is always ready to provide peace and win battles. America
is a mighty land that embraces diversity and love. America is my
home.''
I congratulate Natalie on a great job and thank her for her work.
Recognizing The Cider House
Mr. ALFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Fourth
Congressional District of Missouri's July Small Business of the Month,
The Cider House, of Cass County.
Owned and operated by the Middaugh family, The Cider House was
established in 2004, but the family business roots run much deeper than
that. The Middaughs started their business adventure back on four
corners of 7 Highway in 1978. What began as a seed company grew into a
fruit market, an orchard, and a red barn that served lunch, pies,
breads, jams, jellies, and much more. They began hosting home-cooked
dinner buffets on the weekends, with a band playing upstairs while
renting the facility.
In 2001, part of the family bought the farm, which was formerly an
old horse stable, and began booking events again. With the addition of
a pumpkin patch, selling seeds, and young children growing up,
repurchasing the orchard seemed like just the right thing to do. For
Jeanne and her husband, Chad, they did that.
Repurchasing the orchard was just what the Middaughs needed, allowing
the family to rebrand the facility The Cider House and allowing them to
offer farm-to-table dinners, as well as hosting events that partner
with local farmers, wineries, and local artists.
Their story is an inspiring story. It reminds us all of just how hard
work and family-driven spirits can pay off in Missouri's Fourth
Congressional District.
Recognizing Captain Charles ``Ben'' Basye
Mr. ALFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize, honor, and
remember the July Veteran of the Month, Mr. Charles ``Ben'' Basye, who
sadly passed away this month in Columbia, Missouri.
He was born in rural Howard County and attended Union School, a one-
room schoolhouse there. At the age of 15, he graduated from Fayette
High School. He went on to serve his Nation for nearly 43 years in our
Armed Forces, spending 11 years in the U.S. Navy and almost 32 in the
Naval Reserves.
In World War II, he served aboard the USS Boxer, an Essex-class
carrier, where he flew multiple fighters. In 1949, he was one of the
first Navy pilots to land a jet on a carrier during the earliest stages
of catapult takeoff and landing operations for the Grumman F9F.
On his 60th birthday, Mr. Basye retired from the Navy with the rank
of captain. During his service to our Nation, Captain Basye attended
six different universities, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in
engineering and a Ph.D. in engineering and mathematics. He taught 18
different engineering courses and served as a faculty adviser for 400
engineering students.
A proud father, he is survived by his four sons, six grandchildren,
seven great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild.
He served his Nation, his State, and his family well.
We honor Captain Basye today on the House floor as July Veteran of
the Month, and we will continue to honor his life and his legacy. I
thank Captain Basye for his great service.
Recognizing Cackle Hatchery
Mr. ALFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Fourth
Congressional District of Missouri's August Small Business of the
Month, Cackle Hatchery, a longtime family-owned source of prime
poultry.
Located in Lebanon, Missouri, Cackle Hatchery remains one of the last
few hobby hatcheries in the United States. It preserves the genetics of
over 200 varieties of poultry and distributes hundreds of thousands of
chicks to families and farms each and every year in the United States.
As a family-owned and family-operated business since 1936, it is one
of the few businesses in Lebanon that still has had the same owner,
same location, and same business during that length of time.
While most hatcheries closed their doors in the mid-1960s, Cackle
Hatchery continued to provide chicks through local feed stores and mail
delivery.
The moniker of hobby hatchery is a representation of Cackle's
customer base, not the scale of their current business itself.
I congratulate Cackle Hatchery for exceptionally producing poultry
year after year. Keep up the great work.
Recognizing Harold King
Mr. ALFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor our August Veteran of
the Month, Mr. Harold King.
Mr. King attended Leigh High School in Nebraska, Utah State
University, U.S. Armor School, JFK Special Warfare Center and School,
and Command and General Staff College.
Mr. King joined the Army as a military policeman in 1984 and held
many jobs throughout his career. Among those are armor crewman, armor
officer, company commander, operations officer, and information
operations officer.
In 1990, he served in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm with
4-37 Armor 1st Division as a legacy. His grandfather was in World War
II.
He left Active Duty in 1994, becoming a psychological operations
officer with the 10th PSYOP Battalion in St. Louis, Missouri. Then, in
2007, Mr. Speaker, he deployed again to Iraq until 2008.
After that, King remained committed to serving his fellow veterans.
He worked as a veteran service officer with the Missouri Veterans
Commission for over 10 years and recently took on an additional duty of
appeals specialist.
Right now, he serves as military services coordinator for the
Department of Veterans Affairs at Fort Leonard Wood. There, he provides
veterans and servicemembers with the information they need to fully
understand the comprehensive assistance and benefits available to them.
He is a devoted father, devoted husband, grandfather to one, and papa
to a crew of dogs, cats, and fish.
I congratulate our August Veteran of the Month, Major King, and I
thank him for his service. Major King makes Missouri's Fourth
Congressional District and America proud.
Mr. Speaker, I wish my colleagues on both sides of the aisle a safe
and productive time working in their district, reconnecting with their
families, and making memories.
God bless this body, and God bless the United States of America
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, sometimes I come behind these
microphones and often what I share, what I need to share--it is my
therapy--is a bit dour, and it is sometimes fun to listen to someone
who actually is happy and joyous.
Now that the uplifting portion of this program is over, let's get to
the facts.
The number, $35 trillion, guess when we hit it. We should be very
excited and proud of ourselves. We did something that so many
economists said we would never get to this quickly. My math says, this
coming Friday, 3 p.m., the United States gross debt will cross over $35
trillion.
Now, understand that is not the way Europeans calculate our debt.
They calculate our debt dramatically higher because of our obligated
unfunded liabilities, but watch the Treasury, Friday, about 3 p.m.,
post up a number, $35 trillion. We did it. Congratulations.
How many people have you heard come find the microphone today or this
week understanding and wanting to talk about that? What we have gotten
is people coming behind the microphone and not telling the truth. We
all want to protect Social Security. The way you protect Social
Security is you know the math and how it actually works.
{time} 1200
We are on track in a decade to double senior poverty. God forbid if
any of us tell the truth about math because the truth gets you
unelected and a bunch of really angry ads at home, so this place runs
around and avoids telling the truth.
Let's walk through another little factoid. My math basically says
this year 45.68 percent of all the income tax collections, receipts
your government takes in, just cover the cost of interest.
[[Page H4937]]
I have been coming from behind the microphone and saying interest in
2024, this fiscal year, would be somewhere around a little less than
$1.2 trillion. I apparently have that wrong. It is probably going to
come in at about $1.140 to $1.160 trillion. Either way, I am off a
fraction, but 45.68 percent of every dime we are collecting in your
income tax now just pays interest.
I have tried to say it over and over and over at home and other
places and you get people that just stare at you and go, huh?
Who really runs this government? Seriously, it is an honest question.
I need you to think like adults, maybe those who actually went to a
finance class.
Who actually now runs this government? I am going to argue the debt
markets, the bond markets from around the world. If you have to bring
almost $10 trillion to market this fiscal year--2, 2.25 trillion virgin
new issues because we are borrowing--that is like $75,000 to $80,000 a
second right now. The economy is good. The actual baseline data on GDP
is good, and you are still burning almost $80,000 a second in
borrowing.
What happens the second you have a U.S. debt auction that is
undersubscribed or there are not enough people there? What happens to
U.S. interest rates? How much of the world goes into depression? Are we
going to talk about that?
Oh, God, no. No, because that would require math. That would require
being serious.
We passed a bill here earlier today. I voted no on it. They worked
hard on it. They lowered the top-line spending, but you have got to
deal with a really uncomfortable discussion: every dime a Member of
Congress votes on is borrowed.
Let's process that. Every dime a Member of Congress votes on is
borrowed and, depending on some of the projections, about a quarter of
Medicare.
Social Security has its own trust fund. It runs out in like 9, 10
years, and then we have got to figure out what is going to happen
there. We will continue to get Democrats coming behind the microphone
lying about it, which makes it almost impossible to actually lay out
the math and try to fix it.
Remember, raising the cap, doing the Democrats' plan of $400,000 and
up and just raising the cap, only covers about 38 percent of the
shortfall.
You had the President in that debate last month saying if we just tax
rich people 1 percent more--and I have a chart in here that will show
it is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the shortfall.
Remember, if you take $400,000 and up, the Democrats' definition of
rich, and you tax them at 12.4 percent, you will only cover 38 percent
of the shortfall.
This is the nature of our discussion. When every dime a Member of
Congress votes on is borrowed, is it moral to borrow money here to send
it to entities around the country, even though there are many programs
I love? I think they are the right thing. I just think the way we
finance it isn't. Is it right to send cash to that city, to that State,
to that county, and they have their own taxing authority? They may have
more cash in the bank than we do as a percentage.
Do you borrow money? That is what we are doing today; we are
borrowing money. The crazy thing is when you do the adjustment for the
ability for interest to be tax exempt from municipal debt, we have
municipalities in this country that have a better credit rating than
the United States.
Remember, Greece can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than the United
States today. We are number 14 on the credit stack, meaning there are
13 other countries that can sell 10-year bonds cheaper than the United
States.
If you read the instruments, if you read the Moody's, the S&Ps, their
documents and their reps and warranties and their analysis on U.S.
debt, they don't trust this place. They do not believe Congress. We are
supposed to be the adults in the room. We make policy. The White House
carries it out.
Remember that little thing, the Constitution. Maybe someone should
try reading it. They don't trust us, and they have no reason to trust
us.
How much discussion have you heard, anyone that has been listening to
these microphones this week, heard people like me--which maybe I am
just an idiot for actually giving a damn--get behind these microphones
and actually walk through the math and explain there is a way we keep
our promises.
There is a way we meet our obligation from the earned benefits. There
is a way to make this work. You don't have a lot more time to keep
screwing around, but if you do it in the next 3, 4 years, this is
another American century.
I have my 8-year-old sitting over here. I also have a 2-year-old. My
wife is exactly my age. Yes, I am pathologically optimistic. The math
says her generation will be the first generation to live poorer than
her parents. Great morality, Madam Speaker. I am very proud of us.
Madam Speaker, I thank anyone that listens to my diatribes here. I
think this is almost like my therapy session because I get angry all
week long listening to the absurdity and people saying things that
mathematically have no basis in fact.
One hundred percent of the debt--and this makes everyone angry, and
it is factual--100 percent of the U.S. debt from today through the next
30 years is demographics. Huh? What are demographics? This is your
country's leadership. It is demographics. We got old as a society and
we didn't set aside the resources to keep our promises.
Since 1990, U.S. fertility has been falling. I won't use the word
collapsing, but last year, we estimate, 2023, 1.63 percent, maybe 1.62
percent fertility. Meaning, the United States now has fewer children
than much of Europe.
Now, tell me how I build a pay-as-you-go system to keep our promises
to those who paid into Social Security, to those who paid into
Medicare? Remember, the Medicare taxes you pay only cover about 38, 40
percent. Why don't we do this right now?
Social Security does not add to the U.S. debt technically but paying
back the money that was borrowed from the Social Security trust fund
does. There is some $3 trillion that has been borrowed out, and for the
last few years, every month, there are not enough tax collections
coming in on the FICA tax, that 12.4 percent, to make the payments to
Social Security recipients.
I want you just to visualize this. Every month, Social Security says:
Hey, Treasury, I am holding a bunch of your bonds. You owe us some
money and they cash them in, then Treasury goes and borrows money and
pays interest for that borrowed money.
Social Security doesn't create the debt, but Treasury does because
the Treasury has to go out and borrow money to pay back the money they
have taken out of the Social Security trust fund.
If you add it all up, plus interest--forgive me, I am partially doing
this off the top of my head. I calculate maybe $6 trillion, 3-plus in
principal, then over time the interest paid back is probably another 3.
How many times have you had anyone just try to be honest about it? It
is not Republican math. It is not Democrat math. It is just math to be
avoided because we are terrified to tell our voters the truth because
we have lied to them for so long.
How many times have you had a Democrat go around here and say, what
if we just tax rich people more? I have done entire presentations here
and for those of us on the Republican side, if we just cut
discretionary spending, damn it, I can come up with about $300 billion
in discretionary that can be cut down. They will be screaming, but that
is still 1 percent of GDP.
For the Democrats, every tax hike they genuinely propose that could
be executed, when adjusted for its economic effects, that would be
about 1.5 percent of GDP. You have 1\1/2\ there on tax hikes, you got 1
percent in cuts over here. It is a big 2\1/2\ percent, right? Right? It
is 2\1/2\ percent. We are borrowing 7 percent of the entire economy
this year.
Madam Speaker, we are doing a great job. I guess part of my anger is,
I love some of the people I work with here. They are smart. They care,
but they run away from me when they see me coming because I want to
talk about this stuff. This chart is the pie chart of America's
spending.
Do you see this number? Seventy-four percent is in the red. The red
doesn't get a vote from a Member of Congress. That is on autopilot. It
is called mandatory. It is earned benefits.
[[Page H4938]]
Some of the benefits you get because you are part of a certain Tribal
group or you fall below a certain income, but this is earned.
Do you see the blue? It is defense and nondefense. Every dime of
defense is borrowed. Every dime of what we call nondefense
discretionary is borrowed and a wedge of this over here is borrowed.
When we say net interest, I have tried to explain the difference
between net interest and gross interest. Net interest this year will be
$892 billion. That is interest we pay to people out in the world: your
pension fund, a nice family on the other side of the world, the union
retirement fund over here. They buy U.S. debt.
The other debt is what we owe to the trust funds. We have borrowed
the money from the trust funds, but we still have to pay it back. We
still have to pay interest. It is one of the great cons we do in our
budgeting here. Well, gross interest is only $890 billion, Schweikert;
why do you keep going around saying $1.2 trillion?
Interest just this year is because of that other chunk of interest we
have got to pay, and we are going to have to pay back the principal.
The same as I just explained on how Social Security works.
Once again, if you are a Member of Congress and you are doing a
townhall or putting out something and you are not showing this chart,
you are not helping our brothers and sisters across the country
understand how serious this election is, how serious putting people in
office that will stop pandering to your need for a dopamine hit in your
brain, but maybe own a calculator.
Once again, I can make this math work. You can't pretend that we can
tax rich people, and we can just cut our way there. You may have to do
a bit of both of those, but it is policy.
I have done presentation after presentation after presentation on how
you could crash healthcare, how you could adopt artificial intelligence
to reduce the size of this government dramatically and still have
better customer service. How the mechanics of talent-based immigration
could actually grow the economy but shutting down the border--stop
importing competition to our working poor, making our working poor
poorer.
You have got to think like an economist. The folks here want to talk
down to you. They talk to you like you are a child and say, well, if we
just did this, we would be fine. It doesn't work that way.
We are now so upside down debt-wise that unless you do something that
is holistic with lots of moving parts, none of the math works. We are
uncomfortable telling that truth.
Let's actually walk through a board I don't think I have ever shown
before. Fiscal year 2024, here is where we are at to date. We have
taken in $3.755 trillion.
Do you see the red here? The red is the individual income tax. Your
country is an income tax-based economic system where other countries
may rely more on a value added tax, which is a really regressive tax
and crushes the middle class.
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The blue over here, when you start to look at that, we call it social
insurance and retirement programs. It is Social Security. That is
actually going out the door immediately, and we have to borrow some to
cover it.
The blue over here is actually corporate income taxes. Remember, the
United States, back in about the late eighties, early nineties, changed
much of the corporate tax structure when we started having
passthroughs. Do you remember LLCs, subchapter S, partnerships, those
things? Much of what is corporate activity in the United States flows
through to that individual tax line.
When you get the brain trust here that says we are going to raise
corporate taxes, great, okay. Is that going to solve something?
We are trying to vet the paper I got the math from, but we have a
paper from about a year or year and a half ago that said, in the 2017
tax reform we did, 67 percent of the corporate tax rate reduction went
to wages.
When you have someone from the left who runs around here saying we
are going to raise corporate taxes, what they are doing is basically
screwing over the working men and women of the country. That is how it
works.
When your wages go up, the old saying used to be it is inflation--
that doesn't get you anything--or it is productivity because you built
a tax code that said we can afford to buy the next better piece of
equipment, build better processes, build better supply chains, become
more productive, and workers get part of that.
Part of that productivity also is a tax system that maximizes
economic vitality. Economic growth is moral. If we want to have fewer
poor people in society, if we want to close income inequality, don't do
it through transfer payments. We have data over data that many of the
transfer payments, at the end of the decade, make people poorer because
you dissociate their lives from being part of the society, part of
work. The secret is having an economy that grows, that needs them.
Getting economics right is moral.
This is the reality. Do you see these tiny little wedges there? That
is excise taxes. Some will think of it as tariffs, when you actually
see some miscellaneous. Society is functionally financed by income tax.
This is FICA, and this is corporate.
Mark my words--and I will probably be long gone from this place--
because of what the Democrats are doing policy-wise and, honestly, the
Republicans' unwillingness to actually do tough things, at the end of
this decade, we are all going to be having a discussion of having a
national VAT, a value-added tax, just like the rest of the world.
All of the crap discussion that it is not progressive enough, that it
is regressive and hurts working men and women, working men and women
are going to get their heads kicked in because it is the only way to
start to confiscate enough resources from people.
Let's actually talk through and knock down some of the craziness that
keeps being said around here. This is a brand-new chart for me: U.S.
fiscal dynamics, now and then. We are going to go way back. Let's
actually do from 1984 to 2023 and then current.
Our tax revenues are up. We are taking in more receipts. Technically,
they are not revenues. Revenues are what you earn. Receipts are what
you confiscate. That is just a little bit of tax lingo there.
You see tax receipts are up, but our spending is way up. When you see
the white line over here, deficits, it is just basically the derivative
of tax receipts are up, but we are spending faster than those receipts
are going up. Therefore, you get a deficit.
If someone says those 2017 tax cuts--no, tax receipts are up. I have
another chart I am going to show. Corporate tax rates, corporate tax
collections--don't think about the rate; it is about what you take in--
are actually above the mean.
How much of this spending is the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction
Act? The Democrats lost their mind when we did 2017 tax reform.
Remember, it was actually a few trillion dollars--$5 trillion, $5.5
trillion--but functionally $4 trillion of it was also covered, direct
taxes.
We just moved things around to maximize productivity. It was about
getting companies to move back to the United States, move their
organizations, their intellectual property, the things they were making
money on, getting them back to the United States. We had to become
competitive in the world again.
The other $1.5 trillion, the Democrats say that is the driver of the
debt. No, it is not. It turns out it wasn't $1.5 trillion. The latest
data is almost $900 billion of that has been covered by economic
growth. Yet when the Democrats controlled this place in the last
session, they dropped $2 trillion in subsidies, handouts, to big
business. All of that is borrowed money.
When was the last time that a reporter actually covered this fairly?
When was the last time you met a reporter who owned a calculator? The
public has no understanding of what is going on out there.
I keep trying to provide this chart over and over. This is U.S.
Government revenues. The sign should say ``receipts.'' This is
mislabeled. Green is individual income taxes. Remember, we are mostly
an individual income tax country. When you see spikes like this,
[[Page H4939]]
this is the dot-com bubble of 1999, 2000, 2001, the dot-coms. That is
capital gains.
This spike here is actually people were getting lots of COVID money,
so it was direct spend from the Federal Government. We borrowed it,
gave it to them, and they had to pay taxes on it.
This line here, the blue, is FICA taxes. That is your Social Security
and Medicare--very stable.
Down here, this is corporate taxes. Do you see the line? Remember,
this is the regime of the new corporate tax rate since 2017. Tax
receipts, the actual tax dollars, are up. It is above the mean of the
last couple of decades.
We need vitality, dynamism. There are lots of things we can do
policy-wise. The United States is becoming a bit more of an oligopoly.
Many of our businesses are becoming far too big and far too
protectionist. That is government. Government likes big organizations
because they are easier to manipulate to get them to do what they want.
Here is a subsidy, wink, wink, nod, nod. Engage in our social policy,
engage in our political policy, and we are going to hand you billions.
Instead, what you do is tax reform for everyone. Knife fight, battle
it out, the best product, the most dynamic company, the one who moves
the fastest and most innovative wins. That is the way a market economy
is supposed to work.
Instead, now our brothers and sisters on the left here go behind
these microphones and use: Our industrial policy is this. Our planned
economy is this.
I keep waiting for them to build a
5-year plan and hold up little red cards. If you don't get that
reference, go look it up.
This is the driver of the debt. Remember, I showed tax receipts are
up, but our spending is up more. Where is that spending? It is in what
we call mandatory.
In many ways, this isn't Republican or Democratic. It is what we are
as a society. We calculate in about 10 years, 22 to 23 percent of our
population will be 65 and up. The politics will weaponize that very
sentence I just gave, but it is math. It is what we are. It is
demographics. We are having and have had, for the last couple of
decades, dramatically fewer children. We got older. If we tell the
truth about that, we can look at what the cost driver is. Then, folks
come in and say: Well?
Almost all the cost driver is interest and healthcare costs. A decade
from now, when the Social Security trust fund is gone, do we backfill
it? The brain trust here will say: Let's do this. We will do the ACA,
ObamaCare, the Republican alternative, or Medicare for All.
Those are financing bills. Once again, if our body here would tell
the truth, that is who gets subsidized and who has to pay. They don't
change what we pay.
Technology, cures, disruptions are better ways to do it, but we keep
much of the technology that could crash the price of healthcare here
illegal because there are armies of lobbyists in our hallways who don't
want to compete against your ability to use technology to keep yourself
and your family healthier.
I have been able to attach a handful of AI and algorithm bills to
provide customer service at the IRS, the VA, or other things, and then
we have gotten hate from the government employees unions.
The fact of the matter is, it is moral. It would be better customer
service for our constituents. It would be faster, better, and cheaper.
The fact of the matter is, there is no pension with it.
There are solutions that are not tax or cut and burn. It is a policy.
This place won't engage in the policy because we are afraid. We are
protectionists. We are protectionists of the government bureaucracies
and incumbent business models.
Is that Republican or Democratic? It is math. Not going to bother you
with that.
Madam Speaker, may I ask how much time is remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Maloy). The gentleman from Arizona has
23 minutes remaining.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, for those trying to take down my
words, I am sorry for talking so fast.
Tax revenues are projected to be billions of dollars. Once again, I
want to make the point that individual income taxes are projected to be
up dramatically. Payroll taxes are up fairly substantially. Corporate
income taxes are fairly healthy. Other types of receipts are also up.
Where I really want to get back to is trying to make this point, and
then we are going to do some actual tax history.
This is from the CBO, Congressional Budget Office. This is not
Republican or Democratic. It is math. One hundred percent of the next
30 years of debt is healthcare and interest, and then, in 10 years, if
we backfill Social Security. The rest of the budget is calculated to
have an almost $9 trillion positive balance.
When was the last time this place actually was willing to have one of
the most difficult discussions? About a month, month and a half ago,
the Joint Economic economists on the Republican side took the leap and
told the truth. We wrote a detailed report about demographics, tax
policy, maximizing economic growth. Then we talked about health.
This is where I get the crap kicked out of me for telling the truth.
Obesity in the detailed line item--and we spent months and months
working on these numbers and vetting them--could be as high as $9.1
trillion of additional healthcare costs over the 10 years.
Having a society where we are about to have the fifth year in a row
where prime-age males are dying younger, is that moral? Having a
society where we calculate, in 3 to 4 years, 50 percent of America will
be obese, is that moral?
What we do in the farm bill, what we do in nutrition support, and
what we do in trying to have a healthier society, is that Republican or
Democratic?
I often accuse my Democratic friends of wanting to engage in policy
to maintain people's misery, where others, at least myself, want to
cure the misery. I want to end the misery, cure diseases, move the
types of investment but also the policies so the FDA can use technology
to bring cures to market faster. We have a whole portfolio of these
ideas. Not one of those was a tax. Not one of those was a major cut.
We calculate that 16 percent of all U.S. healthcare, $600 billion, is
people not staying on their statin or taking their insulin improperly
or their calcium inhibitors so they are having a stroke.
There is a 99-cent pill bottle cap that beeps at you, and I can't get
a damn hearing on that for years. These are simple ideas that could
crash the price of healthcare.
{time} 1230
Our society is dying. In 15 years, we calculate that we have more
deaths than births. Oh, but that doesn't work in the next election.
That is not what I am going to use in my propaganda. The attack ads
that are going to come at you, Schweikert, well, we are going to say
you mentioned the words Social Security and Medicare, but we are going
to lie that you are one of the few idiots here trying to find a
mathematical way to save it. This place is absolutely immoral.
I have done this before; I have tried to walk through the actual cost
to the poor on what we are doing at our border. I will do this quickly.
You are the individual or the couple who didn't finish high school.
What you sell is your talents. You are willing to go out and hang
drywall, you work yourself off as hard as you can, and then you get a
White House that engages in border policy where millions of people with
the same skill set as you have come in, and they consume the housing
stock. You want to know why the lowest tiers, the least expensive
housing has had some of the highest inflation, why they can't find a
place to live, and now their wages are going down because you are
competing against millions of people with the same skill set. The
cruelty of the current border policy crushes the working poor.
Can we have a discussion like economists instead of ``Well, you are
immoral, you want to . . . `' No. Then on the flip side, we have entire
charts that talk about how talent-based immigration--and talent could
be a skilled carpenter or synthetic biologist--grows the economy.
I will argue a number of the economic policies I propose I cannot
make work math wise unless we actually--because in the 1970s, 1980s the
world fought for hydrocarbons. Last decade
[[Page H4940]]
we fought for rare earths. I can build you the math model that says
this decade and the next three decades, we are going to fight for smart
people, the entire world. We educate people here, and then we send them
away. Are we out of our minds?
Madam Speaker, I am going to skip a bunch of the boards and just try
to close this out with just a couple more. This is 2023. Total outlays,
total spending, $6.1 trillion; total receipts, $4.4 trillion. What is
that? $1.7 trillion borrowed. This year, borrowing is going to be about
two-and-a-quarter, and this is a time when the economy is doing
remarkably well. Now, it is subsidized, so it is basically a sugar
high, but it is still doing well.
Now, our problem is, in 2023, gross interest was about $700 billion.
This year, we are heading toward $1.14 trillion, $1.16 trillion, but
this differential here, almost every dime of that $1.7 trillion
borrowing, the growth on it--now, much of it is Inflation Reduction
Act, the shortfall from tax reform, but we have never been given the
run to show how it is growing tax receipts. I am showing you even
corporate tax receipts where the different rates are up.
It turns out it is healthcare and interest now. As we are moving back
to more normalized interest--How many of you live in a fantasy world
where you think interest rates are going back to 0? You realize the
current interest rates on 10-year notes still aren't at historic norms
when you take away the years of suppression on the rate.
For my brothers and sisters on the left, who like to say, well, you
gave away to rich people, today, the rich, as defined by you, pay a
higher percentage of Federal income taxes than they did before. The
Republican tax reform was more progressive than the previous Tax Code.
When we get to some of the other charts, here is my chart showing
that President Biden in the debate said something insane about covering
Social Security. Let me see if I can find one. In 10 years, gross debt
will be $56.8 trillion.
However, here is one of the points I desperately want to make.
Historically, when we have had very high marginal rates, we get 17.6,
18, 18.2 percent of GDP in taxes. When we have had very low marginal
rates, we get 17.6, 18.2 percent of the economy in taxes because the
economy changes in growth. When you look at it, the black line is
receipts, revenue. The line above it is interest and healthcare.
When our friends keep saying, well, we are going to tax the rich
more. Great, but I have already shown you if every tax worked
absolutely to its maximum efficiency, you get a point and a half, a
percent of GDP, and we are borrowing 7 this year.
We will make this the last one. Until we are actually willing to
first have the same definitions of here is the drivers of debt, here is
the innovations we are willing to bring into our society, this is our
future, our future is just absolutely crushing, and it is percentages
of GDP. We expect Social Security and Medicare outlays, as we start to
head to the 30-year budget, 17.6 percent of the entire economy, where
revenues are 6.3. Okay, no one has any idea what you are talking about.
My basic point is, today through the next 30 years, it is demographics.
It is mostly healthcare, and then the cost of financing that shortfall.
Helping people live longer, live healthier, live freer of disease is
moral. It isn't Republican moral, Democrat moral, it is just moral, and
yet every piece of legislation I have brought here over the last few
years can't get a hearing or gets shot down because the bureaucracy
despises it. The interest groups care more about their money than they
care about my 8-year-old's future.
There is a path where the math can be made to work, but for everyone
around here, you think there is a simple solution. My father used to
have this great saying, for every complex problem, there is a simple
solution. That is absolutely wrong. We will have to do complexity to
save our future, save my retirement, save my children.
We have put it on paper. We have done economic modeling; we have had
multiple Ph.D. economists do the math. There is a way it works. Will
this place step up and buy a calculator and put batteries in it and
then sit down with those of us who want to save our future and make
this another American century? Instead, we run around terrified from
doing what is hard.
Madam Speaker, thank you for the therapy session of letting me vent.
I am going to bite my tongue from saying what I have to say, but I am
going to throw one last thing. There are a number of people who watch
these presentations on YouTube. Half the comments are bots, they are
fake, they are Russian troll farms. Half the remaining half are people
who care more about saying ideological insanity, but there is about a
quarter of them that help, that actually have sometimes brilliant
ideas, are engaged in saying, what if you did this, what if you looked
at that? We are diving into ideas on things of consolidation, things
that are mandatory. Those ideas actually came from the population that
has been willing to watch these presentations over the years.
One of my last great hopes is when I would do these economic
presentations 5 years ago, 12 people would watch them. Today, I will
have several hundred thousand. Maybe, just maybe, Democrats,
Republicans, the people who are Independents are tired of being treated
like children, and they are ready for us to start talking to them like
honest brokers of policy.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr.
Mooney).
Mr. MOONEY. May I inquire how much time is remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 9\1/2\ minutes remaining.
Tax Neutrality for Monetary Metals
Mr. MOONEY. Madam Speaker, my constituents are getting crushed by
inflation caused by out-of-control Washington spending, which reduces
the purchasing power of their dollar.
Many Americans turn to gold and silver for a better store of value,
yet the IRS classifies gold and silver as ``collectibles'' alongside
artwork and baseball cards, which subjects them to a punitive 28
percent capital gains tax, despite the U.S. Constitution affirming gold
and silver as money. The IRS does not let taxpayers deduct losses they
suffer from holding U.S. dollars, so it is unfair to assess a capital
gains tax when citizens hold gold and silver to protect against
inflation.
My legislation, H.R. 8279, the Monetary Metals Tax Neutrality Act,
would end the Federal income taxation of gold, silver, and bullion, and
I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense measure.
Permanently Allow Localized Hiring Authority at Hazelton Federal Prison
Mr. MOONEY. Madam Speaker, I rise to call on the Bureau of Prisons to
permanently allow for localized hiring authority at the Hazelton
Federal Prison in Preston County, West Virginia, in my district.
The prison has struggled for years to fill critical staffing
shortages, which has resulted in unsafe conditions for both
correctional officers and inmates.
I helped lead the charge for the authorization of retention bonuses
at the facility and am pleased that the Bureau of Prisons has
authorized local hiring to speed up the process and provide jobs for
hardworking West Virginians.
Prior to this authorization, applicants were required to apply
through the Bureau of Prisons headquarters in Texas. This bureaucratic
process slowed down and discouraged hiring. Local hiring authority has
already resulted in a class of seven new officers, which are
desperately needed at this facility, which doesn't have enough people
there.
I join the correctional officers' union in calling for this authority
to be made permanent as the prison works to fill the 90-officer
shortage.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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