[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 3, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H2407-H2411]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ACTUAL SOLUTIONS
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr.
Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of
the majority leader.)
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to just do a couple of
very simple things here. I will walk through that. I believe there are
actual solutions. The problem is they are hard, and it is one of those
occasions where I think we play this game. We talk around each other
because we talk
[[Page H2408]]
our book. We talk what gets us elected. We talk what raises us money.
We talk what enrages our base so that they are more politically
involved. The fact of the matter is a substantial amount of that is
just a boldface lie.
For anyone who is really interested just in sort of the academics of
what goes on here, I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. If you
have your search engine, look up ``AI Review of Congressional
Speeches.'' There is an academic group.
This is in like Nature, so it is a peer-reviewed article going back
over 140 years of congressional speeches. It basically says that the
use of facts has absolutely crashed. If you actually read it, it has
crashed. We now talk about our feelings and intuition because that is
how we manipulate people.
Mr. Speaker, it is in Nature publication right now. Go pull up the
academic article. That is what goes on behind these microphones day
after day after day, is we have people who tell stories. We tell about
our feelings, but we don't seem to actually bother doing something
called math. The family slogan is: The math will always eventually win.
I am going to do this a couple of times here.
{time} 1940
We are in the middle of the reconciliation budget battles, the
propaganda, the things that get said that are true or not true. My
argument for everyone here is that there is a way to pay for lots of
this. It still doesn't save us.
As a country, we borrow about $6 billion a day right now. Next year,
we are going to borrow about $7 billion. I am going to show you some
charts. In 9 budget years, we are borrowing about $10 billion a day.
The vast majority of that is demographics. Turns out it is not
Republican, not Democratic.
One of the great lies here--and I have done entire presentations here
where I took a whole hour a while back where I did every tax hike that
the left has proposed and the scores and its economic factors.
Actually, we did a bunch of the cuts in spending and those things,
Republicans.
These tax hikes came out to 1.5 percent of GDP. Our cuts came out to
about 1 percent of GDP, a big 2.5 percent. Looks like we are going to
borrow 7.3 percent of the economy this year. And in 9 budget years,
Moody's says--I am going to show this board a couple of times--we will
be borrowing 9 percent of GDP.
Now, I am sorry. Most people--David, we don't know GDP. What do you
mean by that? Just understand the scale is--so often, the solutions are
never meant to hit you with a dopamine hit. They are meant to
manipulate you. When I say ``you,'' I mean the voting public, often our
staff, trying to even manipulate each other. We have spreadsheet after
spreadsheet around us talking about what is going on.
My point I am going to come back to, Mr. Speaker, I have introduced
legislation to fix what MedPAC has talked about now for years, back
when the Democrats controlled all this place, now that the Republicans
control this, but we are all too scared to actually read something that
is in a big binder that actually has math in it that would be hard and
difficult because, let's be honest, it is really hard putting a couple
of hundred pages of facts and details in a tweet.
The fact of the matter is that MedPAC, The Wall Street Journal
series, and the ProPublica series have gone over Medicare Advantage. If
any of you have your phone and like tracking stories, put in ``Medicare
Advantage fraud'' right now. You will see at least five major articles
from The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, and some of the others. In
some of those articles, if you actually add it up, it is $100-plus
billion a year in fraud.
We have introduced a piece of legislation. The preliminary number is
around $1.7 trillion to $1.84 trillion, making it the single-biggest
reduction bill, I believe, in modern history--actually, in history at
all.
So, I just got you $1.8 trillion. We have also introduced a talent-
based immigration bill. If you want to hit the GDP growth numbers that
we keep talking about, that the left has even talked about, and that
the President has talked about, you can't do it without a talent-based
immigration system. Read the literature.
As even the President has said, it is insane. We educate people, and
then we send them home to compete with us. Are we out of our minds? Do
a talent-based immigration. Keep people.
I am going to show you another chart in a moment that is saying that
we have to deal with the reality. If the primary driver of debt in
America is demographics, it is functionally Medicare; in a few years,
Social Security, when the trust fund is gone; and interest.
If you go back 20 years ago, the number of 18-year-olds we had then
compared to the number of 18-year-olds today is almost identical. The
number of our brothers and sisters who are 65 and up has almost doubled
in that 20 years.
Are we allowed to tell the truth about our brothers and sisters?
Those of us who are baby boomers with gray hair have changed the math
in our country. When I was a kid in the 1970s, for every dollar that
was spent on people 65 and up, there was $7 spent on young people.
Today, that is reversed. Today, we spend $1 on young people and $7 on
those over 65. It is the deal. It is part of our societal commitment.
Fine. Keep our promises. The way you keep your promises is to know
your math because, at some point, you have to finance it.
So, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Part C, deal with the waste and
fraud issue from the insurance companies managing it. Make it so the
incentive is to help our brothers and sisters be healthier instead of
making billions and billions of dollars scoring people as sicker. Read
the articles.
Turns out, I think this bill the Democrats would like, the
Republicans would like, and people who do math will really like.
Talent-based immigration is great for long-run economic growth. It
actually fulfills even things the President talked about on the
campaign trail.
The third one is functionally our bill that I have done for years and
years around here. It is called the forgotten funds bill. Now, in some
ways--got to be honest--this isn't new money. It is cash we have
borrowed and have given to agencies, but they haven't been authorized
or haven't spent it.
Mr. Speaker, off the top of your head, will you raise your eyebrows a
little bit if we call this SF 133, so it is money that has been
appropriated, sitting in their accounts, so it is cash. We are paying
interest on it because that money was borrowed. We estimate that it is
over $1.5 trillion.
If you grab that cash and realize you don't have to pay interest on
it anymore, talent-based, MA reform, you just paid for our
reconciliation bill and put some more money in the bank.
My point is that if we would actually think about policy, the
modernization, doing things better, faster, cheaper--next week we are
going to do a--I think one of our Democratic colleagues a couple of
moments ago was attacking some of the--we will call it the DOGE cuts.
Last year, for every dollar we took in in tax receipts, we spent $1.39.
When I go home, people say, David, I need you to balance the budget.
Great. Tell me what 40-plus percent--because you have to deal with the
economic effects--of government you want us to cut.
The fact is, with just the movements in interest rates this year, it
is approaching a couple of trillion dollars in additional interest over
the next 10 years.
Look, no one needs another speech from me doing interest rate
fragility, but the fact of the matter is the bond market is on the cusp
of running this country, except that is really hard to explain to our
voters. If you are a Democrat, you don't want to explain that because
you want to keep handing things out and doing the lie that we are going
to tax rich people. Then, you show the charts saying, okay, it just
takes care of weeks of borrowing, and that is it for an entire year.
Those of us who run around saying we are going to just cut waste and
fraud, got to cut waste and fraud--I am going to show you some charts.
We need to redefine, redesign, modernize, and use technology on how we
deliver services.
Let's walk through a couple of things. What is the real reason we are
doing the reconciliation budget? It comes down to one thing, at least
for
[[Page H2409]]
me. Our taxes are all going up next year.
In my district, it is over a couple of thousand dollars for an
average family. In some of my ZIP Codes--look, I represent a fairly
prosperous district; I represent Scottsdale and Phoenix--it is over
$3,000. For my average, it is a $2,062 tax increase next year.
I have been really happy to hear how many of my brothers and sisters
on the other side have gotten behind the microphone and talked about
how they don't want--small businesses in my district will be hit with a
43 percent tax hike, and that is the law. That is already coming. They
are going to give us ideas on how we keep this from happening?
If you think like an economist, this is sort of maintaining today's
policy instead of what is in the law, where everyone's taxes go up. It
maintains consumption, but you don't get the same type of economic pop
of doing things that create investments in productivity and those
things.
{time} 1950
This is your reason that we have to battle through this, and the
absolute absurdity I get from some of our brothers and sisters out
there, you can't cut--this is just heresy. It is brutal.
We are baseline going to spend $86 trillion over the next 10 years,
or we are talking about reducing. It looks like we are not going to hit
the number which will enrage me. It is $2 trillion. You see the stack
of coins there. That is $86 trillion over the next 10 years. That was
baseline spending. All we are talking about cutting is functionally
2.2, 2.3 percent of it.
Then I think of the rage, of the theater, of the protests, and of the
nasty text messages. You don't realize that just a couple ticks in
interest--I think I can almost do the speed math in my head. If I had
70, 75 basis points, it is more than all those cuts.
If we went back to the interest rates we had in the early 2000s, I
think that would add another $3 trillion, $4 trillion over 10 years of
just interest. The theater around here is about telling stories. It is
emoting the emotion, but damn it, does anyone own a calculator?
Mr. Speaker, what was it, 10 days ago, 2 weeks ago, Moody's
downgraded the United States and part of the point--because I know we
all read it because it was such a big deal. You subscribe to Moody's,
you downloaded the report. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for letting me have
a Bloomberg Terminal. I chair the Joint Economic Committee so we bathe
in the math.
In 9 budget years, we are spending--9 percent of the entire economy
is borrowed, and that is based on our baseline. I said that twice. In 9
years, the borrow will be $3.8 trillion.
Mr. Speaker, most of that growth is interest and healthcare. I am
sure we are all around here trying to revolutionize the cost of
healthcare by curing people, by using technology, doing it better,
faster, cheaper, helping our brothers and sisters live healthier,
instead of in misery with their chronic conditions. So often the
debates behind these microphones are about needing to spend more money
to help you maintain your misery instead of curing it.
The complete lack of vision around here of the morality--when you
realize couple of the great studies from a few years ago is the number
one contributor to income inequality in America wasn't education; it
was healthcare. It was the health of the population.
What happens when your brothers and sisters have diabetes, when they
are crashing repeatedly? It turns out if 33 percent of all American
healthcare is just diabetes, if 47 percent of all American healthcare
is obesity, why wouldn't we take those on?
Yeah, it means doing some very difficult things. It means having a
brutal discussion about agriculture policy, nutrition support, and how
we are going to deliver healthcare through our clinics and other
things. It is really great economics, and the morality of having people
live longer, be healthier, be able to have families, family formation.
We are going to show a couple numbers here. If you have 7 million
prime-age males missing from the economy, and one of the datasets says
it is not drugs; it is actually obesity and other things, what do we do
incentive-wise to help our brothers and sisters, particularly those
prime-age males, get back into the economy and participate in the
society?
In 9 budget years, we will go from borrowing $6 billion a day to
borrowing $10 billion a day. Why doesn't this just set people up
saying, okay. I don't want to raise my brothers' and sisters' taxes. We
need to do some things to get the economy to continue growing and get
investment back in productivity.
That is why you do expensing, research and development expensing, and
other things of that nature because you need the investments and
productivity because we have got to raise wages.
Now, we are going to do a little economic geekdom. Remember the
previous few years where we had high inflation? Most of America is
poorer today than they were 4 years ago, and that is basically
inflation. Your dollars, your salary became worth less.
In my district today, if you don't make about 27-plus percent more
than you did 4, 5 years ago, you are poorer today. You are not
magically going to make the cost of everything in your life go down,
particularly in an environment where interest rates are going to be
higher because we are borrowing so damn much money. It is not just us.
Germany is backing the debt markets. The world is bingeing on debts. If
you think interest rates are going to come crashing back down you are
delusional. The world has only so much savings.
What do we do, Mr. Speaker? Well, you do things so you invest to
create productivity. The incentives within the tax code, regulatory
code to invest in things so you can raise wages.
Remember after 2017, one of the datasets we had, I think it was 68
percent of all the corporate tax cuts that enraged the left went to
workers' wages.
It turns out that the way you make our brothers and sisters whole
from the years of inflation is you have got to get the growth. You have
got to get productivity stepped up.
In this chart--and please understand, this one upsets both
Republicans and Democrats. I have even had people in my own party
saying, David, you have got to stop telling people the truth.
Even just a little beyond baseline, that is if we had no legislation
at all, what took us 240 years, we are almost going to double in the
next 10.
Let's think of that. The day we were all re-elected or elected last
November, public sold debt, so this is debt that is auctioned off--the
Japanese own some, the Chinese own some, but we own most of it--was
around $28 trillion. We will almost double that in the next 10 years.
We have to deal with reality. If you are going to rage at me because
I said the bond market is going to be running our country soon, don't
rage at me. Crack open an article about bonds and the stress and bond
vigilantes and term premiums and what all these things mean and what
happens when just clicks of interest rate consume every available
dollar that you and I might want to invest in medical research or the
left wants to do whatever the hell they want to do and it is going to
be consumed by paying interest.
Demographics, which is the primary driver of our debt, is not
Democrat or Republican; it is just who we are. We have a shortage of
young people. There are lots of us who are baby boomers and we are
going to continue to lie our backsides off. If you keep looking at the
charts and just understand, the 65 population has nearly doubled in 20
years, while the number of 18 year olds is basically the same.
You would think these would be the types of data that we could all
get together and say, all right. That is math. It is what we are. It is
indisputable. It is math. It is Census Bureau. It is from census data
from the Biden administration, so as a Republican using it, it isn't
partisan, it is just math.
How do we keep our promises as a society, as a country, as a
population that used to, at least, make an attempt to be moral? How do
we keep our promises in--what is it--7 years now, the Social Security
trust fund is empty.
Basically, meaning, if Social Security follows the law, my math a
couple weeks ago was a 21 percent cut in Social Security checks across
America. So 2033, it is gone. Mr. Speaker, 2034 is the first year with
the 21 percent cut meaning we double senior poverty in America.
[[Page H2410]]
{time} 2000
We are going to double senior poverty in America. How many Members
have you seen come behind these microphones and talk about the morality
of, guys, 7 years from now, let's double senior poverty, and then,
let's do everything we can to talk about it. By the way, the solution
you get is to just raise the cap. Okay, raise the cap. Do you realize
just eliminating the cap on Social Security at that time covers only 38
percent of the shortfall?
The first full year, our math last year we did was $609 billion or
$608 billion. It is almost two-thirds of what the entire defense budget
is. That is 7 years.
We should have been working on this 15, 20 years ago, but the fact
that an idiot like me gets behind the microphone and even uses the
word, it will be an attack ad next week because, God forbid--this place
cares more about winning the next election than doing what is right,
doing what is moral, owning a calculator. This place is absolutely
perverse.
Here is another thing. Let me enrage my brothers and sisters because
so much of what we are having to deal with in this reconciliation
budget--look, I hope the scorekeepers are wrong. I hope the Joint
Committee on Taxation economists are wrong. I hope the Ph.D.s over at
CBO are wrong. Because much of it is extending current tax policy--what
we get today--instead of what is in the law, where just individual
taxes go up--what?--$3.1 trillion over the next 10 years, and add in
the passthroughs to small businesses and those things, add in another
several hundred billion dollars.
That is the law. It is coming. Just extending that, you don't get a
huge pop in growth, but you do maintain consumption. Where you get the
growth is some of the other things--the expensing, the research and
development, those types of things, a couple of the tweaks we are
trying to do, and also the incentives to invest.
If our brothers and sisters are going to say we are magically going
to grow at these sorts of rates, I wish they would actually give me a
reference, give me a credible economist, maybe a guy, a gal, someone
with a Ph.D. in actual economics.
I chair the Joint Economic Committee. I have a handful of Ph.D.s.
These are the numbers they come up with.
Back to solutions, we have introduced a bill. Our first number was
$1.76 trillion in savings just reorganizing and redesigning the
incentives within Medicare Part C, Medicare Advantage, as everyone
knows it, where you are incentivized to keep your brothers and sisters
who are on the program, you make money by helping them be healthier
instead of scoring them as sicker.
Our preliminary number from CBO wasn't $1.706 trillion over 10 years.
It turns out they gave us $1.84 trillion as a preliminary guess.
Hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, we will get an official score.
Is this Republican or Democrat? It is just fixing the waste, fraud,
and misalignment in the program.
Look, I fully expect within minutes I will have attack ads in my home
district beating the crap out of me, and I am in a 50/50 district.
Maybe it is an occasion where a few more of our brothers and sisters
here take a risk, particularly those in overwhelmingly partisan
districts. They can afford to tell the truth. Try it. If an idiot like
me in a 50/50 district will get up and tell the truth about the math,
why will no one else here?
Do the charts. These charts aren't magic and secret. They have been
in the MedPAC report for most of the last decade if someone would just
bother to open it up, crack the binder, and read it. You can see the
savings and alignment. The model that comes back is that seniors on
Medicare Advantage will be healthier because the incentive is to keep
them healthier.
We have to do some designs. We have to say that you should be within
one plan for maybe 3 years, so there is an investment in helping you be
healthier. There are things we did in there to make it work. The bill
has been introduced. Yet, if you look at the total spend over the next
10 years, it is still $14.67 trillion as the baseline spending over the
next 10 years.
We are just trying to deal with what article after article has
basically said, that this is fraud. If anyone else has their phone in
their hand and wants to look up something, look up the number of
criminal cases that are open right now. The Wall Street Journal--the
Justice Department, I guess, has been leaking. It is no longer civil
suits. It is criminal suits, saying people are going to go to jail.
Has there ever been a moment where particularly the left and the
right can get together and say that we need to fix the incentives in
this program? Also, it is great economics, good healthcare, and great
vision for the future. No, David. You see, we care too much about
winning the next election and beating the crap out of the other side.
Then, you hear some of the brilliant things that are said about
Medicaid. Now, I need to disclose that it has been many, many years. As
a child, I spent two terms in the State legislature. I was never going
to run for office again. Because I was so tall, smart, and good-
looking, I got to--well, it had nothing to do with the fact that I was
the vice chair and my chairwoman actually had a brain aneurysm. Also,
they had just indicted 10 percent of my State legislature.
Remember, the fastest way, Mr. Speaker, to move up in an organization
is to have 10 percent of the people go to jail.
I was a 28-year-old kid in my State legislature, and I was chairing
the health committee. Arizona does something very unique in our
Medicaid system. We were the last State to enter Medicaid. We didn't
enter it until the mid-1980s. I was actually a part-time page during
the negotiations.
In Arizona, we do something odd. We buy managed care policies, so we
functionally buy HMO policies for--the technical term is our indigent
population. We actually do it really well. We were the first ones to do
pharmaceutical benefit management and those sorts of things.
It is an interesting intellectual argument, and I wish we could
actually have a little more highbrow discussion here. Should a State
like Arizona be rewarded for how efficiently we deliver and the quality
of our services compared to so many other States that are just ripped
with fraud?
You start to see cumulative improper Medicaid. This is not Medicare.
This is Medicaid. It is supposed to be healthcare for indigents. That
is the law. Payments since 2019 are over $400 billion. If you actually
look at the literature, people who have analyzed it--here is a Paragon
study, written by a Ph.D. It basically says that Medicaid reported
functionally half a trillion dollars over 10 years, but their analysis
when you do all of it is $1.1 trillion of improper payments.
Think about that. If you just fix this, if you just fix this one
issue, that covers everything that is being discussed right now in
trying to reform Medicaid. This would require work and also reading a
hell of a lot of accounting documents.
Look, I am going to run through these boards really quickly because I
have already gone, Mr. Speaker, longer than I want. People forget that
we actually had a time slot here where, functionally, we sort of
stopped some of the measurements and some of the enrollment criteria.
If you look at the overall rate of improper Medicaid payments, if you
have a multitrillion-dollar system and it is 5 percent, it turns out
that pretty much pays for what E&C did a couple of weeks ago. Are we
willing to invest in the technology to go fix it?
Look, remember how I was just telling you in a previous life I
actually helped--I was not there during expansion, but I was county
treasurer years later where I managed some of the dispro share moneys.
That is sort of the geeky talk.
This is a chart from The Wall Street Journal, and they just happened
to pick out my State. I love Arizona. Look, if you get to represent
Phoenix and Scottsdale, you are one of the most blessed human beings in
life, but the point that The Wall Street Journal was trying to make in
putting up this chart is that, in Arizona, we put money--$363 million--
back in the general fund because of the way they do their provider tax.
They are actually making money from the Federal Government.
We idiots--excuse me, this fine august body, we borrow the money. We
[[Page H2411]]
are borrowing money. A State is doing a provider tax. It covers their
match, and then, they are sticking money in their general fund from our
borrowed money. Why is this good?
{time} 2010
Mr. Speaker, I am just going to skip to the last one because we need
to tell the truth. With our great financial burden, we are elected. We
are functionally the board of directors of the biggest enterprise in
the world. We represent a quarter of the world's economy.
Does this body act like a board of directors? Do we pay attention to
the math? Do we pay attention to how we take care of our customers, the
American citizens? Do we pay attention to the reality?
Social Security, Medicare, and net interest account for 80 percent of
the spending growth over the next nine budget years. If we do the 30
years, it is everything. If we do the 30 years, military and nondefense
discretionary are scheduled to grow slower than tax receipts.
Are we even allowed to talk about these? Are we even allowed to tell
the truth about the math?
Mr. Speaker, we have been collecting every article we can that talks
about--and some of these are Republicans. Some of these are Democrats.
Some of these are Conservatives. Some of these are just academic
economists.
Here is one that talks about the growth of males of prime age in
Medicaid. What is fascinating about this particular study is they spent
an average of 6.1 hours per day, or 184 hours a month, on all
socializing, relaxing, and leisure activities.
We get attacked for saying we are asking for work requirements.
Understand how many States--my State already has an application in for
work requirements. I think we already have work requirements--forgive
me if I get this wrong--in ten others.
If we take a look at the chart, a number of the States had
applications in. The applications were approved. Then the Biden
administration took over, and something happened either through court
or action here. They started rolling them back.
If I say right now there are 7 million males of prime age missing
from the labor force, Mr. Speaker, if I come to you and say we want tax
receipts to grow, that means we need participation in the economy.
If anyone wants to geek out, probably about 5 years ago the
University of Chicago did an amazing study on what work requirements do
in benefit programs. At the end of the decade, the participants are
wealthier because they may get the benefit, but the work requirements
changed their participation in the economy. It raised their skill set.
They moved up in the economy.
In many ways, if we read the academic literature, those who oppose
things like work requirements have to read the literature. They are
crushing people. They are destroying their economic futures, their
ability to learn skill sets, and how to participate in the economy.
Maybe we have people around here that permanent poverty--that level
of cruelty--is what is built into their political manifesto. I refuse
to believe that. I believe we all want the right things.
Page after page of this data is here. We will have these trite
debates and arguments based on feelings. Then we will wonder why
tomorrow is no better than it was today and the day after that will be
no better than the next day.
There is hope. There are ways to make this work. There are ways to
stabilize the debt. There are ways to make this society much more
prosperous. Prosperity is moral. I am wondering if we are
intellectually capable of actually doing the work.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________