[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 28 (Tuesday, February 11, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H638-H642]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FEMA CORRUPTION
Mr. MOORE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of
my constituents in western North Carolina who are angered and disgusted
by what we have uncovered in Washington, and they have every right to
be.
Just yesterday, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency
uncovered that FEMA bureaucrats, holdovers from the last
administration--and against the Trump administration's wishes--tried to
send payments of $59 million to luxury hotels for illegal immigrants in
New York City. They had the gall to try to sneak this under our noses,
but I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, not anymore. That is just the tip of
the iceberg, though.
Since late 2022, FEMA has spent over 1.4 billion of our hard-earned
tax dollars on illegal immigrant housing, transportation, and services.
That is $1.4 billion that could have been sent to disaster victims for
rebuilding communities, for helping Americans in crisis, and it was
squandered on Biden's failed border policies.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Helene devastated my district and tore through
communities throughout western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and
other southern States. It took over 100 lives, wiped entire towns off
the map, Mr. Speaker, and left thousands of American families homeless.
They needed FEMA to step up and do their jobs. They needed help.
Mr. Speaker, but for the volunteers, but for the nonprofits, but for
the churches, we would be looking at more loss of life, more loss of
property, and more devastation.
Shortly after I was sworn in, we had a winter storm. Tell me why,
during that winter storm, were illegal immigrants given luxury hotel
rooms while my constituents, American citizens, were calling my office,
asking and pleading for help from FEMA to extend their hotel vouchers
during a winter storm. They had nowhere to go home to, and no heat.
Washington bureaucrats turned their backs on them. Thank God for
President Trump, for Secretary Kristi Noem, and for DOGE because this
is getting turned around fast.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to show you something with this new poster
that was just put up beside me. This is a photo in western North
Carolina. This is a photo that I took, and this is what Biden's FEMA
has ignored. I took this picture, as I say, two weekends ago in Chimney
Rock. It is a very small town, but it gives us a glimpse of things.
These people need help to rebuild their homes, their businesses, as
well as major bridges and roads. This is just a snapshot of some of the
damage we had. We are still in the thick of it.
Who showed up for us? Who showed back up? President Trump did. He
made it his very first trip of his second term and one of his
administration's biggest priorities. We were also honored when
Secretary Noem came here, literally with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, to
help and to see what was happening.
Just yesterday, Secretary Duffy visited us in western North Carolina
to see the damage along I-40 and pledged his support to ensure that I-
40 gets rebuilt. Even before the elections, Tulsi Gabbard came after
the storm with her nonprofit to bring everything from chain saws to
food. My friends, this is real leadership in action.
When it comes to the Federal Government, President Trump is working
very hard to root out corruption. He is making sure that the
bureaucrats who betrayed the American people are held accountable.
There are no more backdoor deals, no more slush funds for illegal
immigrants, and no more Washington elites ignoring the very people they
are supposed to serve.
It took President Trump to step in and fix this mess, and let me say
he is fixing it fast. We are already seeing money flowing back to the
disaster relief where it belongs. We are cutting through the miles of
bureaucratic red tape that delayed rebuilding efforts in North Carolina
and Tennessee. We are making sure that no American is left behind ever
again.
Mr. Speaker, this is just the beginning. Every single Federal
employee needs to hear this loud and clear. If they think they can keep
wasting taxpayer dollars, if they think they can keep sneaking through
payments for illegal immigrants, and if they think they can ignore the
suffering of the American people, their time is up.
To the many bureaucrats who refuse to go to work, they need to get
out of their pajamas, show up to the office, start doing their jobs, or
get DOGE'd.
Mr. Speaker, President Trump is leading. We are rebuilding, and we
are making sure the American people-- not illegal immigrants, not
political insiders, not corrupt bureaucrats--the American people are
put first. This fight is not over by a long shot. I promise we will win
it.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I have a handful of things we need to
do. A little while ago, we had an Oversight Subcommittee hearing--I
chair the Oversight Subcommittee on Ways and Means. Some of the things
that get said around here, we just shake our heads. Think about some of
the things we hear from the press, from the Democrats, they are just
panic-stricken.
I need to actually walk the American people and our own staff through
a little bit of the facts and a little bit of the truth.
We have done multiple presentations here, saying if we want to find
waste and fraud, if we want to find programs that are mis-designed, and
other things that are going on, don't hire a bunch of lawyers. Don't
actually hire a bunch of investigators. Hire data scientists. It turns
out the truth is in the math. The math can tell us.
What is amusing is listening to some of the Democrats talk about how
we
[[Page H639]]
don't want people seeing our data. Maybe they should actually pay
attention to the current law.
When we hear certain leftist groups--and most of these are actually
fairly left--saying we did an analysis of U.S. taxpayer data and blank,
blank, blank is getting this, actually understand--the IRS is one of
the things I oversee. For decades, apparently, they have data-sharing
models for researchers. Not to give out the names but Harvard,
University of Sydney, so they are not even domestic; some are out of
the country. Yes, there are some rules.
The fact of the matter is, with this sort of hyperventilation going
on around here, has anyone wondered if it is because the ability to
mine data is how we find bad acts?
Look what The Wall Street Journal did over the last year in looking
at Medicare. It wasn't about people's benefits. It was about people
being defrauded on durable medical equipment. Other groups out there
also did data-sharing, modeling, and research agreements with CMS and
they found bad acts.
A simple question is: Why has the left become terrified of data?
Aren't they the ones who preached to us in the previous years about
science? Why don't we believe in science?
Guess what? Now science is being used to protect the U.S. taxpayers
and Americans' future. Instead of being used to research things to
write papers to support a leftist cause, maybe it is actually now being
used to actually find out how the American people are being cheated.
When we hear them hyperventilating and reading the talking points
from the Public Employees Union, maybe take a step backward. Let's deal
with the fact that much of what is being put out is clickbait, and
understand these research agreements have been going on for years and
years. What is going on now is these folks are designated as special
Federal employees with an even higher level of standard fiduciary
responsibility.
This is just part of the things around here that when we get
something we don't like or when we start to expose decades worth of bad
acts, fight like hell because the Public Employees Union functionally
supports one side here. We are trying to find out what is going on.
One of the things I want to also accomplish in today's floor speech
is--and I am sorry. I know I am a broken record, but I am trying to
break through. Let's actually deal with a couple of things here.
Before I go to the boards, I made the mistake of looking at some of
the comments from last week's speech.
Notice there are almost no people here. That is how it is supposed to
be. If this room is full of people listening to an idiot like me give
another speech, they are not working. They belong in their committees,
in their working groups, in their offices, meeting with either
constituents or their staff or other people.
This is where we come to actually have our final debate and vote. The
vast majority of work done in Congress isn't done in this room. It is
done in the dozens of committee rooms and offices all over this campus.
When we see the room, stop falling for the clickbait.
Why is the room empty? It is supposed to be.
One of the reasons we get behind this microphone is we are probably
on a thousand televisions around this campus and here in D.C. and
around the country. This is our chance to talk to those staffers and
help them understand how dire the math is and how intense the battle
ahead of us is.
How do we communicate with Members who are maybe new to Congress and
get them to realize much of what they are being told may not be
mathematically honest or true?
Let's actually, once again, set the baseline. This one is about a
year or so old. The numbers are actually slightly uglier. The blue is
nondefense and defense. That is all a Member of Congress gets to vote
on. A Member of Congress doesn't actually vote on the interest
payments, the Social Security, the Medicare, Medicaid, or other
mandatory because those are formulas now. Every dime a Member of
Congress votes on is borrowed money.
Last year, every dime we voted on was borrowed money and maybe $300
billion or $400 billion of what we didn't vote on was borrowed money
because we actually borrowed more than every dime on what we call
discretionary. Defense is discretionary.
Remember that in today's world Social Security is the number one
spend. It is about 1.4, 1.5. Interest is number two. Medicare is number
three. Defense is actually number four. The next time we have some
brain trust saying, if we just cut defense--I am sure there are
efficiencies that we may find in defense.
I have been pushing for--this my third Congress in a row, trying to
get an AI audit because the Pentagon has failed their audits for 8
years. It is unauditable is the report we get back. So use AI at least
to go through and stack the asset list because we can't audit it if we
don't know where the trucks are and other things. In the security
areas, do human auditing of those.
Help us because it has finally actually risen to the surface of
people saying maybe technology can help us save our science and our
future and our economy.
When we take a look at what really goes on here in Congress, we have
to understand: Our government is functionally an insurance company with
an army. Almost 100 percent of the next 10 years of borrowing is
interest and Medicare. Yet, we are terrified to tell the public the
truth. It is math. The math will win, but we have to stop being
fearful.
I am going to show you some of these. Stop saying crazy stuff. If
your mission in life is to fill out comments or put out things on X and
this and that and say things because your life's mission is to be
clickbait, don't you care enough about this Republic to tell the truth
of the scale?
It is debt, deficit, and demographics. We have a country that in 8
years, less than 8 years now, will have more deaths than births.
{time} 1530
We have a shortage of young people, and it really screws up the long-
run math and ability to be productive, the ability to actually raise
wages, all those things. There are ways to make this work. We just have
to do hard things. You see how difficult it is just to have an honest
conversation about the math around here.
Look, I showed this last week. I am only going to do it for a second.
This is for those people that run around this campus saying: Let's just
use current policy because that way I don't have to deal with actually
telling someone no.
Baseline, by the end of this fiscal year, CBO says we will be at
$37.2 trillion in borrowed money. Then CBO tells us over the next 9
budget years, 10 calendar years, we are going to borrow another $22
trillion. That is $37 trillion, another $22 trillion, and then if we
were actually going to do the expiring tax provisions, without finding
a way to pay for them, that is $5 trillion to $5.5 trillion. Then there
is another $1.3 trillion of interest on top of that. Then many of the
President's priorities are another $8 trillion when you add in the
interest. You are functionally at $74 trillion of borrowing in the next
9 budget years. You basically have doubled U.S. debt.
Is that really what is going on here? It took 240 years to get where
we are at. Once again, for the people who are listening, those are the
gross numbers because we borrow from the trust funds. The other problem
you actually have, if you really want to geek out, is by the end of
this budget window, so the next 8 years, 9 years, the trust funds are
almost empty.
One of our models basically says in mid-2033, the Social Security
trust fund is empty. It is not because someone stole your money. It was
demographics. We haven't had enough young workers, and Social Security
was always designed as a pay-as-you-go system.
The money that comes out of the Social Security trust fund and is
loaned to Treasury. Treasury pays in interest. In the past, it has
actually been a little above even some of the market interest you would
have gotten. The problem is, every single month, Treasury gets a little
note from Social Security saying: We got our FICA tax collections. It
is not enough for all the checks going out the door. Treasury, we want
some cash; so they cash in what we call special T bills.
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Since the brain trust in this place decided in lame duck that we were
going to extend some additional Social Security benefits without paying
for them, we actually shortened the life of the Social Security trust
fund. Some of the math, in 2033, looks like the trust fund will be
gone. If we don't fix it, we double senior poverty in America.
This is the morality of this place. The Democrats right now are
writing an ad to attack an idiot like me for telling the truth because
they care so much more about winning the next election than doubling
senior poverty in America. They are going to try to scare the hell out
of you instead of stepping up and saying: Here is how you do it.
Understand, in 2034 or 2035, when you have a full year and the trust
fund and Social Security are gone, we calculate that it is like $600
billion a year.
Think about what we are fighting over here, it may be $400 billion a
year to extend the tax policy so people's taxes don't go up, but by the
end of this window, you have got another $600 billion a year to deal
with.
It gets worse every single year, and that is not even dealing with
the fact that a couple years outside the budget window, the Medicare
part A trust fund is also empty.
Is this place capable of dealing with difficulties?
For everyone out there, when your reaction is: Well, just raise
taxes. I have done it a half a dozen times on the floor. The staff is
telling me the six people that watch this are bored with it.
Go on the Manhattan Institute's website. I think it's Riedl has a
great article from a year ago who took all of the tax-hiking policies
that have been offered by the Democrats and scored them and said: Here
is the economic effects. Here is what you get if you tax the rich,
everyone over $400,000. At the end, the calculation came out to you get
about 1\1/2\ percent of GDP. Yea.
We are going to borrow close to 7 percent of the entire economy this
year. Does anyone see a math problem? When your default is: We are
going to tax rich people more. It doesn't get you close to where you
have to be.
That chart I just showed you a moment ago, if we were to do these
things without offsets, in 9 budget years we are no longer borrowing
about 7 percent of the entire economy; we are borrowing close to 9.2
percent of the entire economy.
It is not popular because the folks out there want their feelings
satiated and don't own calculators. I am sorry. I know I am being a bit
of a jerk. I am just tired of dealing with lunacy. The primary driver
of debt is demographics.
What happens if we can clean up ourselves? What happens if we are
able to squeeze waste and fraud and find more modern ways that are more
compassionate, more efficient to actually deliver the benefits to our
brothers and sisters?
This is just a thought experiment. We have been working on list after
list after list after list of things you could modernize, reduce
spending, and never cut someone's benefits, never cut their services.
We have one project we are doing in our office. In Medicare and
Medicaid, Indian Health Services, DOD, and VA, how many duplicate scans
are there? How many people go get an MRI, an x-ray, an ultrasound? What
if you take that and then immediately attach it to someone's phone so
that the scan is mobile with them? We are seeing numbers where it is
billions and billions and billions of dollars being spent in
duplicative scans.
Is that cutting someone's services? Of course it isn't. The lobbyists
get upset because they make money on how many times--or at least their
clients do. I need you to think about how you modernize to do it
better, faster, cheaper, and more compassionately.
We have done entire presentations here on the floor over the years
trying to demonstrate that maybe the most moral thing we can do as a
government is actually help people to be healthier. If we are seeing
data that says 5 percent of the population with multiple chronic
conditions are over half of all healthcare spent, what would happen if
we focused on them being cured?
If diabetes is 33 percent of all U.S. healthcare spending, should we
actually think about that? If it is over $600 billion, 16 percent of
U.S. healthcare by people crashing, having a stroke because they didn't
take their calcium inhibitors, things of that nature, are there things
we can do to help our brothers and sisters be healthier?
It turns out a year ago, the Joint Economic economists actually did a
study that obesity in America may be an additional $9.1 trillion in
healthcare over the next 10 years. Turns out that becomes the number
one spend in the U.S. Government.
How do we make our brothers and sisters healthier so they can
participate in the economy? Maybe they can actually have families.
There is suddenly this awakening in America. It is not Republican or
Democrat. I would argue it is just moral. We want our brothers and
sisters to not only live longer but more vibrantly. Are we willing to
do very difficult things in farm policy, in nutrition policy, in how we
deliver health services? It is worth thinking about.
Being in this stupid town, instantly, the partisan rage is: Oh, how
is that going to get me elected? How am I going to use it as a wedge to
beat the crap out of other side?
Maybe the morality is helping our brothers and sisters and not having
this country be crushed in debt when the bond market is the most
influential group in America today, not Members of Congress.
Let's actually take a quick look. I am trying to find the nicest way
to say this. If we were just to do this TCJA extension--which we
believe we need to do. We are not going to raise taxes on working
people, but we need to find a way to pay for it. It is not only the
$5.5 trillion that CBO is now scoring if you did it to 2035. It is the
$1.3 trillion financing cost of doing that. That is the interest.
How about no tax on overtime pay? It is a passion of the President.
We need to come up with $3 trillion to cover that cost over 10 years.
If we don't do that, it adds another $700 billion of interest cost.
If we do no tax on Social Security, that functionally comes out to
almost $1.8 trillion. Almost all of that money goes to Social Security
and Medicare. We have got to find a way to cover that if we are not
going to have tax on Social Security.
How about SALT for the folks in California and New York who are
saying they will not vote to extend the tax policy unless they get
something for their areas. That could actually be another $1.2 trillion
over 10 years and another $300 billion in interest if we don't pay for
that.
No tax on tips, actually turns out that one is fairly easy. It may be
$600 billion over 10 years. Our math is a little higher, but that is
the number we have been given.
You have to understand, everyone has these wish lists. The President,
Members of Congress, our constituents, everyone wants something. We
need to look at the fact of how does it help the society grow
economically. Prosperity is moral. How do we pay for it in a way--
because if we keep pushing up the U.S. debt--I showed a couple weeks
ago that if we were to make the bond and the debt markets nervous, a
single point of interest over the next 10 years costs the average
American family $30,000. You would have a higher car loan, higher home
loan, higher credit cards, higher student loans, everything else around
you.
You have got to think about it. There is no free option here. You
need to do the data to find out where there are bad acts and things we
can make more efficient. Then we are going to have to make hard
decisions saying: That policy is 20 to 30 years out of date. We need to
end that program or we need to modernize it.
If you don't, if we just do the expiring tax provisions and don't pay
for them, understand that in 9 budget years, interest alone is over $2
trillion a year, and that is on today's interest rates.
Mr. Speaker, if you are one of the people like me who believe if we
make the debt markets nervous and they start raising our interest
rates, you are walking right into that thing they call a debt spiral.
This is current policy if we just do it without paying for it. That
is assuming interest rates don't go up on us.
I have shown in the past a chart that basically says if U.S. interest
rates--I said this last week, and I need to drill
[[Page H641]]
it in so maybe someone hears it. If U.S. interest rates went up to a 6
handle, which we have been close to before, in 9 budget years, 45
percent of all U.S. tax collections go just to interest.
This isn't a game. This isn't a wish list of: I don't want to do
difficult things. Do difficult things today, because if you blow this
up in the near future, it gets almost impossible to deal with. The
dystopian crap you would have to do to the American people will make
today's tough decisions look like a walk in the park.
I am going to breeze through this, just because I find some of this
fun.
Did you know a penny actually costs like 3 cents to make? Okay.
Great. Get rid of them. I don't care.
A nickel actually costs almost 9 cents.
You'll be happy to know that we make money on dimes and quarters and
half-dollars.
These are tiny. I am going to make an argument, as I walk through
these boards. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of little things
that really don't add up to much, and you should absolutely do them.
However, if you are the politician, if you are the press, if you are
the staff, if you are the talking head on cable television, you are
saying: Well, if we just got rid of pennies, we are going to balance
the U.S. budget.
Stop saying insanity. One of the problems is people like us, we go
home and we talk to our voters, and they have heard these things, they
are saying: If you just got rid of the Department of Education, we
would be fine. Then you show them the math and they look at you like:
Well, I heard it on television. Please, I beg of you, take this
seriously. There is a way to make this work. We just have to do really
hard things.
{time} 1545
Let's take a look at this one. This is one of my favorites. This is
as of last Friday. I think there were 45,000 folks, according to The
Wall Street Journal, who said they would take the early retirement. The
reality of it, with the technology we have today, you could have a
revolution in the Federal workforce. You could dramatically change the
number of people.
How many law firms today actually have a fraction of the people they
had 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, because of the use of technology?
Why wouldn't you accept the same thing for your Federal Government?
Remember, you are paying for this.
You have got to understand the real math. If 40,000 Federal workers--
and I am not actually talking about the buyouts, it's just the base
salary, the average salary is $106,000. Then we added in wages and
benefits; multiply it times 40,000, that is one day of borrowing. On
average right now, we are burning about $6 billion a day. If 40,000
Federal employees are gone, we covered one day of borrowing.
You absolutely are going to need to do things like that, but don't
act like you just solved the U.S. debt problem. It is dozens and dozens
of these things you have to stack up.
I am trying to tone down the sarcasm, because we have got to do these
things.
Let's get rid of foreign aid. You just covered one week of borrowing.
Can't tell you how many times I am at home and people say: If we just
didn't have foreign aid, we could balance the budget. It is a week of
borrowing.
The U.S. will waste billions of dollars on the United Nations. We get
rid of the United Nations. That is 2 days of borrowing.
Let's take a look here. The U.S. spends too much on the Smithsonian
and national parks. If we are borrowing $6 billion a day and the
Smithsonian cost $1 billion a year, you have basically covered what, 4
hours?
Maybe you don't want the museums. Maybe you want to create entrance
fees or you want to do something else. Don't act like you just balanced
the budget by doing something like that.
Let's do another one. Cutting congressional salaries would solve the
deficit. Look, we are probably overpaid for the quality of our work,
but if you are borrowing $6 billion a day and you do that, if you got
rid of congressional salaries, I think it is 20 minutes for an entire
year. Take an entire year of borrowing, you just covered 20 minutes.
Stop saying crazy stuff.
These are serious problems. Maybe we need serious people to start
actually thinking about these things.
Let's take a look at another one. The government spends billions on
unused Federal office buildings. Absolutely, we need to clean this up,
and it would be about, oh, let's see, 6 hours, maybe 7 hours of
borrowing.
Close them up. Get rid of all the unused office space, which we
should do. We absolutely need to do that, but it is like 6 or 7 hours'
worth of borrowing because we are burning over $6 billion every single
day.
Am I making the point? Are you starting to understand the scale of
what Members of Congress have to take on?
These trite little sound bites don't get us anywhere. Cutting funding
to NPR, PBS, and the National Endowment for the Arts would save
billions of dollars. It would cover 4 hours of borrowing. Maybe we
should. Maybe we should actually turn those into public trusts and let
the public pay rather than taxpayers and have a fundraiser. That is
fine, but don't act like we just solved the national debt problem. It
is 4 hours of borrowing.
Let's do one or two more to get this off my chest.
Presidential travel, one of the Democrats was going after President
Trump. All the Presidential travel is like $350 billion, so you have
1.4 hours--yes, about 1.4 hours. That is less than 2 hours for an
entire year's worth of borrowing.
Let's have one or two more for fun just because I have them done.
Department of Education salaries, let's just get rid of the Department
of Education salaries. Yay, but we covered 9 hours of borrowing.
Emergency services for undocumented--these are people here illegally.
They walk into hospitals and get a Federal subsidy. Let's make it so it
just becomes uncompensated care of a hospital. Fine. That covers 9
hours of borrowing for an entire year.
The reality of it is that it is not these crazy, little trite things.
Yes, they are problems, and there may be hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of billions of dollars out there that we need to crush and get
rid of. We are going to borrow about $2.3 trillion this year, and in 10
years, that number is up dramatically.
It is demographics. If you look at the 30-year data, everything that
is in the Federal budget, except Medicare and Social Security, actually
is designed to grow slower than tax receipts. We modeled that, in 30
years, we will have about a $9 trillion surplus, as we have counted. It
grows slower than tax receipts. Medicare and Social Security, my math
is actually much more dour, but this board is about 1\1/2\ or 2 years
old. It is probably about $116 trillion in spend and interest.
We can make this work. We can do this without cutting our brothers'
and sisters' benefits, but we have to be willing to think disruptively.
We have to be willing to think creatively. We have to be willing to
think morally. We have to be willing to think how we modernize the
world around us.
What would happen if we could change the cost of delivering services
to our brothers and sisters by getting rid of the archaic designs of
many of these programs?
My 2-year-old is somewhere in the back. Yes, I have a 2-year-old. My
wife is exactly my age. We adopted a little girl years ago, and the
same birth mom, the phone rang--so I have a little person.
I have said this repeatedly, and I am trying to have it break
through: Is there anyone out there who thinks morally?
When my 2-year-old is basically 22, 23 years old, every U.S. tax has
to be doubled just to maintain baseline services. The math is very
clear. It is left math, and it is right math.
Mr. Speaker, every economist who is honest basically says that my
kids, your kids, and your grandkids are going to be part of the first
generation to actually be poorer than their parents and grandparents.
That is not America. This was the country of aspiration. We were the
ones who always knew we were leaving the next generation an opportunity
to be more prosperous. It can be that way, but it can only be that way
if this place stops acting like intellectual
[[Page H642]]
children, the bedwetting--I am sorry; I take that back, Mr. Speaker--
the fear, just the fear of going home and explaining to our
constituents the truth.
Mr. Speaker, you see how the Democrats are acting right now just by
data scientists digging through and looking for perversities in the
datasets. You would think there would have been joy because those
aren't cutting services. Those are finding people who are exploiting us
and taking advantage of our country, but because it is being done by
President Trump, it must be opposed.
How do we fix things? How do we save Social Security? How do we save
Medicare? How do we save the future when it is not a loyal opposition
anymore? It is basically anything to burn the place down to take power.
For anyone who really doesn't have a life and is watching this
presentation, I beg of you, get good at the math and stop making crap
up because if you get good at the math, then it provides us the
opportunity to have the building blocks to actually produce a solution.
There is hope. There are ways that work.
We also have some economic data that basically says if we don't do it
within about the next 4 years and interest rates start to move against
us, then we are in for a long, slow rest of the century. That is worth
thinking about because the debt starts piling and piling.
Remember, Mr. Speaker, in the previous year, I think we had 3 months
when we had to borrow money to pay for our borrowing. For every dime we
will take in in tax collections this year, we are going to spend I
think it is $1.36, which is an improvement. Last year, it was $1.39.
It doesn't have to be this way. We just have to start telling the
truth about the math, telling the truth to each other, and toughening
up.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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