[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 140 (Tuesday, September 10, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H5149-H5152]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 SHOULD WE HOLD PEOPLE TO WHAT THEY SAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, I am going to try to do something a 
little backward tonight from what I have typically done.
  One of my great frustrations here is sitting on Ways and Means, 
having the Joint Economic Committee economists as part of my team, and 
the number of times this place makes promises that the experts around 
us say: You know, they are complete fraud.
  Then, somehow magically, we never sort of come back a couple years 
later and say: Hey, here is what you were promised when the Democrats 
did their Inflation Reduction Act. Here are the actual outcomes. Should 
we hold people to their own language?
  There are a couple of things I wanted to do here. I am going to walk 
through a few boards and try to give some examples of how this place 
engages in theater that is mathematically void, and what is the term? 
Oh, yeah, we lie to you.
  So how many remember a couple of years ago: We are going to put $80 
billion into the IRS. Yay. And we are going to collect money on those 
people making $400,000 and up, and there were Members of this body, of 
the White House, and others saying crazy things.
  The press--excuse me--the scribes who basically, in many ways, should 
have to file with the Federal Elections Commission because many of the 
press around here act more like a PR department for the Democratic 
Party, says: Better tax enforcement could raise $700 billion over the 
decade. The White House in 2021.
  Some of the others: Some Members of Congress think you can get $1 
trillion from finding and taxing delinquent rich people.
  Okay. Wouldn't that be neat? Wouldn't that make our job so much 
easier in a Congress that is borrowing close to $80,000 every second? 
Remember, this was what you were told.
  How come no one ever comes by on these microphones 2 years later and 
says: Okay, do we hold you to your language? You built budget 
documents. You built things on these numbers. Even when I go back to 
the CBO--and these are the updated numbers. Remember, CBO, the one we 
keep relying on, says: Hey, high of $851 billion over the 10 years, and 
additional collections on those $400,000-and-up rich people, and the 
low: $390 billion.
  This was one of the excuses the Democrats had for the trillion-plus--
depending on how you look at some of the other CBO numbers, so you can 
see how accurate it is--almost $1.9 trillion in the Inflation Reduction 
Act, basically how much of it was giveaways to big businesses, 
environmental groups, other things.
  Okay. You told us this. Well, it turns out we are 2 years in now. We 
are 2 years in, so let's hold them to, okay, you are going to get their 
average sort of number that became refined as late as this February. We 
are going to get $400 billion.
  So, for the fun of it, because I am a pack rat, I saved some of the 
articles. Here is a fine scribe--I mean, excuse me, reporter: IRS says 
its hiring surge and funding boost could generate $560 billion more 
than it thought, $560 billion over the 10 years from their Inflation 
Reduction Act.
  Then, 30 days later, the same reporter--that first one is February. 
This one is March--applications for revenue-generating IRS jobs are far 
below agency goals. Then, if anyone actually reads this stuff, oh, it 
turns out they had fewer revenue agents, tax collectors at the IRS than 
they did before because apparently, if you have a good accounting 
background and you are a tax lawyer and those things, IRS is really 
where you want to work.
  The fact of the matter is that the beauty here is actually, in the 
very article, they actually went down--let's see if I could find the 
percentage. They had several or 8 percent fewer. This is after billions 
and billions of additional money was being given to the IRS.
  Now, it started with 80. Remember, we used parts of the IRS money as 
pay-fors last year, so I think they are still sitting on about $57 
billion additional on top of their baseline budget for customer service 
and tax collections.
  I saved these articles. Well, what would happen if, annually, the 
Treasury has to update: What are the real numbers? How are they doing?
  Well, Madam Speaker, you might get a kick out of this. It turns out, 
over the 2 years, they have brought in an extra $1.3 billion. That is a 
lot of money. Now, we are still trying to figure out how much of that 
money would have just organically, eventually come in. It might have 
come in slower, so they moved some of it forward.
  If I take $1.3 billion over 2 years and then divide that in half, 
multiply it by

[[Page H5150]]

10, what happened to the $400 billion or the trillion dollars or the 
$700 billion that the Democrats from those microphones were telling us 
they were going to get by going after the $400,000-and-up rich people?

  My point here is so often this place, because it is mathematically 
vacuous, builds these promises that are complete fraud. Now, do I think 
people who have high incomes should pay their fair share? Absolutely. 
Actually, it is not even their fair share. They should pay what the law 
tells them they have to pay. Okay, that is fair.
  It turns out there were lots of articles that had been coming up 
saying it was a fraud, but no one around here was willing to pay 
attention to it, saying: The Department of the Treasury, IRS announces 
1.3 recovery, high income. It is not anything close. Treasury raised 
nowhere near what Democrats expected from tax enforcement.
  One of the reasons I am doing this sort of backward is I come behind 
this microphone week after week sort of showing, saying: Here is the 
scale of the debt. Here are the drivers of the debt. The drivers of the 
debt from today through the next 30 years are demographics. I get 
screamed at when I am home saying: David, stop telling us the truth.
  From today through the next 30 years, about 75 percent of all the 
debt--remember, we are expecting, in 30 years, to be about 116, $120 
trillion in debt, and 75 percent of that will be functionally Medicare, 
and in 9 or 10 years, when the Social Security trust fund is gone, do 
we backfill that and have to use the general fund for it? That is math, 
but it doesn't have to be that way. You can't fix things if this place 
keeps making crap up.
  The other thing I found--and I am just adding some irony to parts of 
this discussion because this is way back, June 26, so not that long 
ago. It turns out only 31 percent who called the IRS could get someone 
to answer the phone.

                              {time}  1945

  We gave them billions and billions and billions to do this. Is it 
time to stop attacking people like me who say that it is time for a 
revolution using technology?
  The fact of the matter is, you could actually adopt the very 
technology, saying if I need some information, I am going to call--and, 
yes, I am talking to a ChatGPT, but it can stay on the phone with me. 
It can help me fill out my forms. It doesn't want to hang up on me. It 
can text me the video I need to help fill it out.
  The fact of the matter is, the IRS is the second most unionized 
agency in the Federal Government. They don't like the fact that 
technology could really improve customer service.
  It turns out that technology could actually be fairer, more accurate. 
You don't run into the Lois Lerner problem. That is way back. If you 
don't know the name, Google it. You can audit an algorithm. You can 
audit AI. You can audit those things and see if it is being bias and 
chaste.
  I can't audit a leftist IRS employee who is going after certain 
conservative groups. You want a fair tax system. You want an efficient 
tax system. They are sitting on $57 billion 2 years in, and it is still 
not working.
  I chaired the Oversight in Ways and Means. I meet with some of the 
IRS officials. They actually have some competent people over there, but 
I can't figure out what is going on when these things just aren't 
happening.
  I want us to understand that I can't fix the math if we are going to 
keep lying about it.
  Here is another article I just grabbed from Politico, and I think it 
was from yesterday.
  As part of the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act, which is a 
completely Orwellian named bill because you have all seen the articles. 
It did just the opposite to the economy. It extended the inflationary 
period. ``How politics hung up a $42 billion Biden internet buildout.''
  Here is the thought experiment, and, once again, when I am done 
saying this, tomorrow there will be lobbyists in my office angry that I 
actually talked about this.
  Remember, everything in Washington, DC, is actually about the money. 
It is. Let's be brutally honest about it.
  Here is $42 billion that was supposed to help bring broadband to 
rural America. Come with me some time to my Navajo Nation in northern 
Arizona, which is bigger than some of the States back here in the East 
Coast. I have chapter houses and communities out there that have been 
waiting decades to get a broadband line. Yet, if you take a look, there 
have been millions and millions and millions and millions spent, in 
this case, billions were appropriated.
  If I came to you and said, if we really want to have telehealth, if 
we want to have digital health, if we want to have the living 
classrooms where the greatest science teacher is available to the 
entire country because you are doing it through the internet, broadband 
is moral.
  Is it moral waiting decades? Is it moral subsidizing and subsidizing 
and subsidizing and somehow that bit of fiber, that wire, never gets 
there.
  Hopefully, everyone around here is smart and said: We can't keep 
doing this. What would you do?
  Here is a crazy idea: Go out to the middle of nowhere and put this 
little satellite dish and then a couple repeaters around that provide 
WiFi, and guess what? Forty-eight hours later, boom, you have broadband 
at a fraction of the fraction of the fraction of the fraction of the 
cost.
  Welcome to this century.
  Oh, we hadn't thought about that. Well, I have proposed it. It is 
never going to move forward because the other side makes lots of 
contributions, lobbies around here. It is another example of trying to 
burn into this place to join this century of technology.
  Unless it is better off to keep subsidizing, subsidizing, 
subsidizing, and then waiting a couple more decades so you can get 
broadband to your rural community, or you could have it this week at a 
fraction of the cost to the U.S. taxpayers.
  I have a whole presentation. Some of you have seen it before where 
one of the things the Democrats did 2 years ago is, we are going to 
lower insulin prices. You know what they actually did is, they 
functionally took $16 billion, handed it to Big Pharma, the very pharma 
they attack all the time, and said, wink-wink, nod-nod, we are going to 
attack you--you give us contributions, of course. Wink-wink, nod-nod, 
here is $16 billion to buy down the price of insulin.
  They didn't actually lower it. What they did is, once again, the 
Democrat theory is everything is up for subsidization. Subsidize your 
way because it makes the receivers of that cash beholden. They are rent 
seekers.
  All of a sudden, you notice that all these folks that are receiving 
these subsidies happen to keep showing up supporting the left. What was 
immoral about that is 75 miles from here, there is something called 
Civica RX. Anyone who is crazy enough to watch something like this, 
look it up. There are three types of generic insulin. It is a co-op. It 
is a co-op with, I believe, the California Medicaid system, some 
private insurance companies, some healthcare providers, some hospitals, 
and they are selling those three generic insulins cheaper than the $16 
billion subsidized.
  Why wouldn't this place have done something saying, these things are 
off-patent. We can actually incentivize groups that want to come 
together and make them cheaper, better, faster, more available. What a 
crazy idea to want to lower drug prices, create competition, but make 
everyone compete against each other. Make those companies that want the 
cash subsidies say screw you, we are going to actually encourage the 
co-ops to make it. I have made these proposals. I get stared at and 
told, no, David. You don't understand. We are Democrats. We do 
subsidization.
  They don't actually want competition. They don't actually want lower 
prices. They want people beholden to them. Then they could take part of 
that cash, part of that $16 billion and go--I will give you a 
company name, but I believe there is multiple firms doing that.

  It is Vertex. Read the articles of what they are doing for type 1 
diabetes. They apparently have a number of folks who have actually been 
cured of type 1.
  Isn't the cure the morality? Instead, this place is fixated on 
maintaining

[[Page H5151]]

your misery. It is immoral, but that is not what this place does.
  I believe the intellects around here somehow need your misery. They 
need you to be attached to the system. If 33 percent of all U.S. 
healthcare is diabetes, why isn't literally every other speaker behind 
these microphones talking about how we are going to save our brothers 
and sisters?
  I accept there is type 2, type 1, autoimmune, but the concept and the 
discussions if you actually read the academic papers, what would happen 
if just a fraction of that cash went into actually pursuing a cure. The 
cure is the morality.
  Let's actually walk through a bit more of my rage. Please forgive me, 
Madam Speaker. In some ways, this is my therapy because I get so angry 
all day long listening to crazy and folks that are a decade out of date 
and what they think they know, and I am just saying, but there is a 
solution.
  ``Economy could be $29.5 billion larger if all opioid deaths since 
2018''--that is functionally 6 years--``were avoided.''
  Anyone that is following me right now, if you are the opposition 
researcher for the Democrats who want to just beat the crap out of me, 
if you think it is moral, go look up fentanyl vaccine. I think it is 
going into 2A trials very shortly. Apparently, it is a protein 
attacher. It makes it so it can't go through the brain-blood barrier.
  In the last 6 years, 390,000 of our brothers and sisters have died of 
fentanyl. I think one of my boards here is going to say 345,000 prime 
age Americans died of fentanyl. That is the morality of this place. 
Let's give some more money to doing the same things we have been doing 
over and over. Think of it as everything from border security policy to 
the firefighter who is just trying to save someone who gets exposed.
  In my county, I had someone tell me that, at least in my city of 
Phoenix, there may be two or three dead people every single day from 
fentanyl.
  What would happen if I came to you tomorrow and said they think they 
actually have--it would be once or twice a year. It is not a 
traditional vaccine. That is just the language if you look it up. It 
basically has your body attach to the protein so it can't pass the 
brain-blood barrier.
  For a number of narcotics, apparently, this type of technology 
appears to be working. Take a little bit of that money and help bring 
it to market. We could save people's lives. We live in a country where 
we may be about to have the fifth year in a row where prime age males 
are dying younger. In 14 or 15 years, America has more deaths than 
births.
  Six years, 390,000 of our brothers and sisters are dead. How many 
times have you seen someone come behind this microphone and even talk 
about it? If you want to think like an economist, just think about what 
you can do to grow the economy. You see the theme I am trying to sell 
here.
  You are going to have the Democrats come behind these microphones and 
say--maybe even in the debate tonight--we need rich people to pay their 
fair share, those people over $400,000.
  This was a factoid I got from Virginia Foxx a little while ago and it 
screamed in my head. If I came to you and said: The student loan 
forgiveness that the administration is desperately pushing because they 
desperately need the votes--remember, it is vote buying. It is 
functionally pay-for-play. Here, now vote for us. Madam Speaker, 
750,000 of those individuals make over $312,000, yet every dime of this 
is borrowed money. You are going to take working-class people, many of 
them that did not have the blessing like I have had and others in this 
body to go to school, to university, to go to grad school, things like 
that, you are going to ask working people who don't make anything close 
to 300-plus thousand dollars to subsidize. This is the morality of this 
place, but it is great vote buying.
  Now we are going to do some of the financial. Over 14 percent--the 
actual real number is 14.48 or something like that. Over 14 percent of 
the entire Federal Government's spending this year is interest on the 
U.S. debt.
  Once again, this is important. Social Security, number one spend. It 
is self-funding at least for a little while. Remember, when we say 
self-funding, most of it comes in as the FICA tax, the 12.4 we all pay. 
The employer typically pays half, you pay half, and then a little 
portion where the Treasury has to go sell debt to pay back the money 
they have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund.
  In 9 years or so, that money that the Treasury has borrowed is all 
gone and now we have got to figure out how we are going to keep our 
Americans from having a 17-plus percent cut, doubling senior poverty.
  Madam Speaker, 14.5 percent of all of our spending today is just 
interest. Social Security, number one. This year, I believe, it is 
$1.460--80 billion in interest. If you do total interest, interest we 
owe to the trust funds, interest we owe to anyone that bought one of 
our bonds, whether it is your union pension fund, our nice family on 
the other side of the world, that is actually the number two 
expenditure in this government. Interest is number two.

                              {time}  2000

  Medicare is number three. Defense is actually number four. The next 
time you are with your liberal relatives and they say to just cut 
defense, remind them the thing that is in the Constitution is now 
number four.
  In some of the projections over the next 10 years, that number almost 
doubles on interest because we have this insatiable appetite, and I 
need to keep showing some of these numbers so they make sense.
  This one seems to hit home. Think of this. In 2024, the fiscal year 
we are in right now, gross interest comes in at $1.14 trillion. Madam 
Speaker, 45.68 percent of every income tax dollar--so when you pay your 
income taxes, almost half of it, a little less than half of it, is just 
paying interest.
  Think about that. When you are out working your heart out, and you 
see that income tax bill you have on your paycheck. A little over 45 
percent of that is just paying the interest of this government.
  How many times have you seen people come behind these microphones and 
talk about this? Remember, interest is the fragility.
  If the bond market gets cranky because we do something stupid and 
interest rates spike up, I can make you an argument that, over the next 
few years, you want to know who really runs this government? It is not 
us. It will be the bond market because you want things.
  I need to show the next board. This is this year's budget. Madam 
Speaker, 26 percent, the blue, I get to vote on, yet we are borrowing 
30 percent.
  Every dime a Member of Congress votes on is borrowed. Medicare or 
anything in the red is on autopilot. That is what we call mandatory. It 
is earned benefits.
  Some benefits you get because you are part of a certain Tribal group, 
you fall below a certain income, but this is on autopilot. This isn't 
voted on.
  Remember, I showed a board a second ago that over 14 percent is just 
interest? Well, think about that. If 26 percent is what we call 
discretionary and defense spending, next time you are at home talking 
to your voters and they say: I want to you balance the budget today, 
okay. I can do it, but are you ready to get rid of all the defense of 
this country?
  It is a constitutional obligation, but we will just get rid of it. 
How about all of nondefense discretionary? That is the Park Service. 
That is the State Department. That is the FBI. It is all gone. Tell me 
what part of mandatory spending you want us to get rid of.
  There seems to be this lack of understanding of the reality, both on 
where is the spending and the danger, the fragility, this country has 
from the debt.
  Tonight, I had only half an hour, and I have a stack of these things 
where particularly the 2 years the Democrats ran this place, they 
didn't tell the truth. They made up fake numbers. We haven't hit 
anything close to that, and CBO seems to be sometimes months, if not 
years, behind on telling us the truth on how we make the numbers work.
  There are ways you can make this another American century, but you 
have to do it through a calculator. You have to stop trying to 
legislate around here by people's feelings.
  Yet, if you want to be on television tonight, say something 
theatrical, say something over the top, say something

[[Page H5152]]

that is a great dopamine hit. If you want to save the country, learn 
the damn math.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________