[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 50 (Thursday, March 19, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H2616-H2619]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MATH, MONEY, AND DEMOGRAPHICS
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr.
Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.)
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, we are going to actually do something
with a little meat on the bones today. I have to walk through the math.
Repeatedly, I have come behind this microphone over the last decade,
trying to walk through our Joint Economic Committee's, my office's, and
my personal unified theory. The unified theory is a fairly simple
concept: We have an incredibly complex problem.
Last year, for every dollar this country took in, we spent $1.43.
Yesterday, we hit over $39 trillion in borrowing. We have been
borrowing, so far this year, about--actually, if you do this fiscal
year, it is over eight, but over the last 12 months, it is like $7
billion a day.
You realize that yesterday we hit $87,400 per second in borrowing.
Our unified theory is, you can't just pretend and say, oh, we are going
to pass a balanced budget amendment, so everything will be fine. I am
going to show you in the charts where the math, where the money, and
where the demographics actually go, but you are going to have to do
lots of things. You are going to have to adopt technology. You will
have to adopt smart regulations. You will have to legalize competition,
which, remember, this place constantly uses legislation, rules, and
other things to basically stop competition.
Creative destruction is actually a basic economic principle of free
markets, except here in Congress. We are
[[Page H2617]]
also going to talk about--and this is the tough thing--we are going to
talk about moving to a talent-based immigration system because I cannot
make any of the rest of these numbers actually work in a society right
now where the United States is basically at zero population growth.
Last year, the preliminary number is that we grew maybe 400,000.
There is a chance this year we are even closer to zero population
growth. You have to embrace it. It is math. It is not Republican and
Democrat. It is not my feelings. It is math.
We functionally have the same number of 18-year-olds as we had 20
years ago, and double the number who are 65 and up. It is demographics,
yet we lie our heinies off about it.
Remember, yesterday--and I voted yes--we had a ``we are going to
balance the budget'' bill. Okay, great. Love it.
Do you understand, with the economic impacts, if you told me to
balance the budget tomorrow, I can, but you just have to tell me what
half of Federal spending we are ending. It would require cutting
Federal spending by 50 percent when you do the economic effects.
That is the reality, so we don't tell the truth around here. We use
these platitudes. It is great on campaign brochures, but it is crap
math. Let's actually start walking through reality.
Then, I am going to actually try to tell the truth about what the
Biden-era years of immigration cost us--millions and millions and
millions of low-skilled. The fact of the matter is--I am going to show
you the math, but I am also going to show you the math of what high-
skill, talent-based immigration does for the finances of this country.
First off, we have an updated chart here, and it still needs another
update because of interest rates being higher.
Today, only 25.2 percent of spending is voted on by Members of
Congress. Mr. Speaker, you and I only get to vote on this blue portion.
Everything in red is on autopilot.
Right now, we have net interest at $1.39 trillion. We actually
believe that is actually going to come in closer to $1.112 because of
higher interest rates and some of the refinancing demands, but this is
based on the CBO report from 2 weeks ago.
If you use our math right now, Medicare is coming in at $1.666
trillion. Social Security is number one. We actually believe interest
is number two. Medicare will be number three, but I need you to look at
my chart right now. Do you see this Medicare number of $1.63 trillion?
In 6\1/2\ years, we go from $1 trillion on Medicare to $2 trillion.
In 6\1/2\ years, the Medicare trust fund is empty. If you are a
hospital getting Medicare part A--remember, there is A, B, C is
Medicare Advantage, and D is drugs. If you get your resources from
Medicare part A, you are getting a 12-percent cut. That is the new
updated number from CBO.
{time} 1230
Mr. Speaker, in 6\1/2\ years, the Social Security trust fund is
empty. In 6\1/2\ years, you get a 24 percent cut in your Social
Security check. We will double the poverty of seniors in 6\1/2\ years.
For my Democratic colleagues who keep saying: Well, just raise taxes.
Okay, great. This happens in 2032. By 2033, to cover the Medicare
shortfall and the Social Security trust fund fall with the trust funds
empty, you have got to give us $638 billion, I think is the first year
of the shortfall. If defense is $1 trillion, start thinking about that.
It is like 60 percent of the entire defense budget is your shortfall.
How often are the conversations behind these microphones absolutely
vacuous because this place doesn't own calculators or doesn't have the
moral aptitude to tell the truth about the math and the misery we are
going to put on our brothers and sisters in this country if we don't
step up and fix it.
I am in a 50-50 district. For years and years, I come behind this
microphone. I introduce bills to fix the--MedPAC tells us there is
almost $1.7 trillion to $2 trillion in misalignment in Medicare
Advantage. Who is the idiot who lays out a bill to fix it and then
can't get a single other Member of Congress to sponsor it with him?
The fact of the matter is there is a way--you are not going to pay
off the debt. You are just trying to stabilize it. We have got a lot of
wonderful articles saying: Well, there is a group in Congress that talk
about holding the deficit to 3 percent of GDP. Our interest is over 3
percent of GDP this year.
The CBO report from 2 weeks ago says: In 9 years the structural
deficit of this country is $3.1 trillion; and $2.1 trillion of that is
just interest. So, yay, we have gotten the deficit down to $1 trillion;
but our interest load is so big.
Remember, Mr. Speaker, the primary driver of U.S. sovereign debt is
interest and our healthcare costs. Are we willing to have that
revolution in how we provide healthcare? Legalize technology. Push for
the cures.
Diabetes is 33 percent of U.S. healthcare spending. Maybe helping our
brothers and sisters be healthier turns out to be one of the greatest
economic benefits of society when 47 percent of U.S. healthcare is
associated with obesity. Maybe we should change the farm bill. Maybe we
should change nutrition support. Maybe we should actually think about
helping people be healthier. It is great economics, and it is good for
our brothers and sisters.
Oh, but that will piss off--sorry--yeah, lots of the moneyed
interest. That means the hospitals and the others who make money on
sick people. This place is absolutely immoral and perverse.
I find myself getting angrier and angrier. I have given up. I am
leaving this place. I am going to go run for Governor in Arizona. Maybe
I can save Arizona because I can't get my brothers and sisters here to
do hard things because it is hard.
I have a 3-year-old that we have adopted. I am 64. My wife is my age.
Maybe we are insane. It is the greatest gift God has ever given
someone. We need 104 percent of my little boy's lifetime income. We
need 104 percent of my little boy's lifetime income just to pay Federal
Government pensions.
In 33 months, over half of Federal spending will go to those 65 and
up. The math problem is we have gone 40 years and there are not enough
children. Mr. Speaker, you heard me a moment ago say we are
functionally at zero population growth. There is actually one analyst
out there that has us at negative population growth because of the
people leaving the country.
They come to me, and our hallways are full of people demanding more
money. Many of them are things we agree with and we love. We just have
to borrow everything.
Let's walk through just, first off, the reality of the math. Then I
am going to make the argument to move, to revolutionize our immigration
system to a talent-based immigration system that the rest of the
industrialized world has moved to.
Let's take a look. There were 3.6 million babies born last year.
Okay. Think of this. For every baby that was born last year, that same
year we put $600,000 on their credit card in a single year. That is the
ratio of our borrowing because we have so few children.
Our model is we are down to 1.59 fertility rate. France actually has
a higher fertility rate than the United States. Greece today can sell a
10-year bond cheaper than the United States.
Are we going to tell the truth?
Some of my charts are a little bit geeky. The basic principle of this
is here is our available workforce. Here is our labor force
participation. We are getting down. We are going to be basically
getting close to 61, 60 percent of our population in the labor force.
It is just demographics.
We had the baby boom. I remember back in the early 1980s I was
sitting in a statistics class. I had a professor back then; she was
talking about we need to get ready. We had this population bubble. How
did we know 40 years ago that we had a baby boom bubble?
Her model was not dour enough for the fact that starting in the
1980s, fertility rates in the United States--and now it has gotten
steeper and steeper and steeper. It is all over the industrialized
world. We have got to understand. This isn't just the United States.
The United States is just better off.
What is one of the miracles we have as Americans? We are the reserve
currency of the world. People want to trade in U.S. dollars.
The second advantage we have over the rest of the world is people
want to move here. They want to start businesses here. They want to do
their research here. They want to bring their talents here. How do we
leverage that to maximize economic growth?
[[Page H2618]]
If we are at a zero population growth and we need to make up for the
years of Biden inflation, the way we do that, the way we do
affordability is not somehow magically make prices go down. It is we
raise wages. We raise wages by--remember your high school economics
class? There are two ways wages go up.
One is inflation. That doesn't get us anything. It is productivity.
Wages go up by productivity. We invest in capital equipment. We build a
tax system that encourages investment. We bring in the talent that
makes us more productive as a society.
This chart is going to upset people, but it is vetted math. It is
vetted math. Take a look. These are the populations that deposit a 30-
year impact on the Federal budget. If you get over here, people with
STEM, with a master's, with a Ph.D., they functionally add about two--
let's get this right. That individual adds about $2.5 million in taxes
they pay.
We always talk about the DACA recipient with the Ph.D., but that is
not the mean. They are positive. But they are not positive by very
much. This is the abstract. You can actually see detailed methods to
look at this on, I think it is the Manhattan Institute. Their
immigration study actually has a whole thing where we can put in
someone with this education of this age--remember age is very sensitive
on these numbers. We can actually see what type of immigration system
maximizes the benefit to America.
Remember that if you want our Social Security, if you want our
Medicare, it is a moral, societal obligation we have to you. Help me
make the finances work. We need this as part of the unified theory to
make the math work.
Let's actually do something--this is my favorite chart of the week.
This will upset some of my Democrat colleagues, but it is called math.
Here are populations with less than a high school education. We
calculate over those 30 years they cost society about $100,000. They
cost. What happened at the border during the Biden years, the millions
and millions and millions and millions of people that crossed, each one
of those, on average, is going to cost us $100,000 over the next three
decades.
If we come over here, these are people with graduate degrees. We
collect over $3 million from them in taxes.
{time} 1240
Does anyone start to see just here on this chart the basic math that
if we are going to start to bend our debt curve, yes, we have to adopt
technology. We have to add competition in our society. We have to
revolutionize the price of healthcare, and we need to move to a talent-
based immigration system.
Remember, we are, functionally, the last country in the
industrialized world that uses a familial--a family--sponsorship model,
and for a lot of my religious groups: David, it is moral. We like being
able to sponsor our family. I understand.
Tell me how I deal with the bankruptcy of Medicare. Tell me how I
deal with the 24 percent cut in Social Security coming in 6\1/2\ years.
That is moral also, and there is a way that I can slow down this
hemorrhaging of cash.
Remember, Mr. Speaker, in the last 12 months, we have borrowed $2.77
trillion. We thought this fiscal year, we would come in about $1.7
trillion, $1.8 trillion. Running math right now is we are way off, and
are we heading toward a supplemental? Are we heading to other things?
Why is telling the truth so hard around here? Why is doing hard
things--well, maybe it is because they are hard things, answering my
own question.
I actually think that the voters understand that there is something
really screwed up out there. They may not understand all of these
details. They may not--look, I am blessed. I chair the Joint Economic
Committee. I am number four on the Ways and Means Committee. I chair
the Oversight Subcommittee. I have six--well, five--one is actually, I
think, defending his Ph.D. Let's call it six Ph.D. economists.
Most people in their life don't have a bunch of freaky smart people
shoving information into their head all day long, my one great joy in
this job.
There are solutions to stabilize the debt. We are still going to
borrow. It is demographics. Help me. Help us. Help our brothers and
sisters in this country. We have to do these things.
Oh, David, we can't talk about Medicare or Social Security or, Heaven
forbid, ever use the word ``immigration.'' The trolls on the internet
will say mean things about us.
So we are willing to have grandma live in poverty because we are
worried about trolls on Twitter? Is that really what we have become?
Look, tax revenues from a 30-year-old immigrant with a college degree
versus someone with just no high school diploma, income tax, we
functionally get $80,000. The person without the high school degree,
almost nothing. It is just you start to look at the economics. Stop
using the word ``immigration'' and only visualize people running across
Eagle Pass in Texas.
The fact of the matter is, also, if we can fix our system--and I am
going to show you some quotes from President Trump. President Trump has
talked about this repeatedly saying that it is insane that this country
educates people and then sends them home to compete with us.
How do I get this body to start actually understanding policy is
economics, and economics is math? You start to look at--this number is
wrong already. We were looking at saying, hey, you know, there is--
okay. I need to explain this. The 2025 deficit, we book as $1.7
trillion.
Now, you understand we played some games with it. We rolled the
student loans, pulled them back so we got a credit. There were certain
bills we owed. We paid them in October instead of the end of September.
So we played some games to lower that number, but I need you to look at
what was going on.
Mr. Speaker, 70 percent of our spending just went to net interest,
and 16 percent went to defense. Interest was more than defense last
year. Think of this: 2025 fiscal year, Social Security, interest,
Medicare, Medicaid, and it is Obama subsidies and defense. Defense was
number five. The thing that is in the Constitution was number five in
our spending stack.
The majority of our spending in 33 months--and I will be one of
them--will go to those 65 and up. I will say it again for, like, the
fourth or fifth time. It is demographics. We don't have enough young
people in our society, and the baby boomers are moving into their
earned benefit years.
Can we think we are just going to borrow all of the money? Do we
really think the credit markets are going to keep loaning us, like
right now, $7 billion today, $87,000 for every second I stand here?
We have debates on this floor that the money borrowed during the
debate is more than the entire debate was trying to save because we
want shiny objects because it looks good on social media. It gets me on
FOX News tonight, as the finances of our country burn down.
Look, estimated share of outlays by group--and this upsets people,
but I am trying to make a point. So I am a kid in the 1970s. Yes, disco
and bell bottom pants. It was not a pretty time.
At that time, the rough estimate is children, those under 18, got
about $7 of Federal resources for every dollar that went to 65 and up.
Today, that is reversed. That is just because of our population
dynamics, but it is going to get bigger and bigger.
The reason I grabbed this chart is to show that, in 2036, we will be
well--and it has actually happened. Our math is 33 months. The
majority, more than half of all Federal spending will be to those 65
and up, but take a look down here. For those under 18, we are going to
be under 6 percent.
Am I insane for coming to the floor and actually telling people the
very math that is in all of our publications? No one seems willing to
open up the binders and actually read them.
Look, I want to give President Trump credit. He has repeatedly stood
up in front of audiences, stood up in front of crowds, stood up in
front of the cameras and talked about the insanity of having a country
that is not attracting and keeping talent.
Before I do the President's quotes, I have a professor friend who
used to talk about this--and when I say ``used to,'' it is a couple of
years ago--the 1980s, the 1990s, the war had conflict over
hydrocarbons. We need oil.
Last decade, rare earths.
[[Page H2619]]
His model basically says that in this decade, next decade, and
probably the one after that, the world is going to compete for smart
people, people who are educated, people who have entrepreneurial
skills, people who have unique talents because there is going to be so
few young people, and those with the degrees that grow economies, that
create productivity, therefore raise our wages, we are all going to
fight over them.
Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, all of these countries have built
talent-based immigration systems. Do you know who hasn't shown up, Mr.
Speaker? United States because we are so terrified to have an adult,
professional, academic, economic-based discussion of we are falling
behind.
Talent is portable. Do you have a graduate degree? Do you have an
engineering or STEM degree? What is it--I co-chair the Singapore
Caucus. I think in 6 weeks, you can get status to live in Singapore.
Do you know what we do to that person here in the United States? We
send them home to compete with us, to another country. Have we lost our
minds?
Look, we have a whole bunch of boards from President Trump's quotes
talking about this.
{time} 1250
Because we are often intellectually vacuous when we are in front of a
camera, when we are talking to our folks at home, it is immigration. We
immediately grab the hordes coming across the border. I just showed you
that is costing us a fortune.
Months ago, we did an entire report that showed what President Biden
allowed to happen at the border will suppress wages for the working
poor for a decade. What they did made the working poor poorer in this
country for a decade. You hang drywall. Now, you are competing against
how many other people who hang drywall?
We have the academic research, the economic research, and the
economic modelling that make it clear that if we could flip over to
what the rest of the industrialized world is now doing, a talent-based
immigration system, it gives us a fighting chance. It raises tax
receipts. It raises wages when designed correctly.
As part of my last portion here, we have been working for a year with
our economists and some of my office staff to rewrite--and we are doing
some pretty radical stuff. We have been following the papers that say
the H-1B model actually does create certain wage suppression because
that visa is owned by an employer. If you want to get lobbied and have
people really angry, say that.
The fact of the matter is that a model that allows the talent to get
a job sponsorship, but you are portable within the economy, gets rid of
that wage suppression.
I believe we can move to an economic model that grows wages and the
economy, and helps us stabilize this insane growth of our debt. There
is hope, Mr. Speaker. It just requires us to do hard things and stop
living behind folklore and start living behind a calculator.
That is my pitch, Mr. Speaker, and I yield back the balance of my
time.
____________________