[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 57 (Thursday, March 26, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H2769-H2772]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DRAINING THE SWAMP
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr.
Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.)
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I have a number of things to go over.
Mr. Speaker, do you remember over the last few years the number of
discussions we would have at home, saying drain the swamp? What was the
term, swamp critters?
We have been collecting a number of articles and trying to figure out
why it is so hard to actually do policy that makes our brothers' and
sisters' lives easier, better, healthier, and more prosperous.
I am starting to come to the conclusion that for so many of our
brothers and sisters who are at home who are watching Members of
Congress, and they somehow think this is the swamp, it is part of it.
We came across a number of stories that looked like they had been
properly vetted, where the lobbyist community is handing out money to
people. This was more on the conservative side, particularly some of
our conservative publications, handing them cash to write stories to
promote whatever that lobbyist wanted.
I have been behind this microphone before, and I have actually shown
repeatedly, here are influencers on the internet, more from my side,
here are some MAGA influencers that were taking money. Maybe we should
have caught it more quickly when it was the 23-year-old attractive
person talking about Medicare Advantage and saying: I am sure she is an
expert on Medicare Advantage.
It turns out we had a series of I guess it was the broker community
and those things in Medicare part C paying them to warp the information
for the American people to try to understand for those who of us to get
up here and try to reform this place, reform how we are trying to spend
our money, to try to take on the U.S. debt, that the swamp is now on
your information that is coming through this device.
You have to understand, Mr. Speaker, I actually have some articles
from 1 year ago. It turns out, some of the biggest snack food producers
were trying to stop Congress through social media influencers. They
were paying social media influencers to stop having a conversation
about GLP-1 semaglutides like Ozempic. That is how perverse this place
has become.
I have learned, and I truly believe this, that almost everything in
Washington, D.C., is actually about the money.
What happens when the armies of folks are walking up and down our
Halls here? Are they here because they want a freer society? Is it
because they are fixated on the morality of the prosperity of growth
and of opportunity for all people? Are they here to try to get us to
put up pieces of legislation that stop their competition and that stop
creative destruction in the economy, even though that is how you get
better, faster, and cheaper? Is it how they want us to hand them cash?
Mr. Speaker, I am going to show some boards from the Treasury's
detailed balance sheet. The level of financial trouble our Republic is
in is remarkable.
If anyone is watching C-SPAN over the last day or 2, how many people
have you actually seen coming behind these microphones that actually
care?
This is the chart I have typically started with, and the reason I do
this is to say: Hey, you see this blue portion of this board? That is
what we get to vote on as Members of Congress. Everything else in the
red is on autopilot. We only vote on about 25 percent of the spending
here in Congress. The rest is formula. It is mandatory spending.
{time} 1820
However, it is worse than that. A couple days ago, the Treasury, as
they are required by statute, did the sort of here is the balance sheet
of America, here is where we are financially.
Did anyone see the stories--you have got to read some of the geeky
sort of financial press--that America actually had negative?
Functionally, here is what was on the Treasury's balance sheets,
saying, hey, America, currently--these are current liabilities. These
aren't the unfunded liabilities for the future. These are current
obligations. We owe $47.8 trillion in current liabilities, and we have
$6 trillion in assets. This is from the Treasury statement.
Doesn't this terrify anyone? Is it still just a calculator/math-free
zone or is it more important that when the paid influencers, the paid
person on conservative media by a lobbyist is saying: Oh, they might
actually look at making us reform our program. We are going to hand
some money to one of these authors so they will say: Oh, reform is bad,
it's not Republican.
Of course, it is Republican. We believe in markets. At least we used
to.
Let's actually talk about how bad this math is. I am going to go
straight to the punch line. If you actually just do the 75-year Social
Security and Medicare obligations, you are at $88.4 trillion of
unfunded liabilities, and these numbers probably aren't dystopian
enough.
Look, a week ago, I did a whole presentation here, and we partially
talked about the unified theory of how we stabilize the debt. I have
seen the applause in some of the financial articles on CNBC, Bloomberg
saying: Well, there are some Members of Congress trying to do a piece
of legislation to get us to 3 percent of debt to GDP. Wonderful idea.
At this moment, just interest is well above 3 percent of GDP. So far
this year--so we are 6 months into the fiscal year--over 7.3 percent of
the entire economy is being borrowed by the Federal Government. But
don't worry, we
[[Page H2770]]
are going to do that 3 percent thing even though the latest GDP numbers
are below that.
If I had told you a decade, two decades ago that just the interest
being paid by the Federal Government on our debt is bigger than the
growth of the country, you would have thrown up your hands and said:
Well, it is all over then.
Yet, we look the other way because we are too busy doing the damn
shiny objects around here that will get us on cable news tonight or on
social media. We can do the shiny object, get some dopamine hits, maybe
get some people giving us money on text message fundraising.
We are heading to well over $88 trillion in liabilities. What do we
do?
I came here a month ago and showed part of the report that said a
child born today, if you use a 6 percent generational discount rate--
that might be a little bit high, it is a little geeky, but it is within
the margin--this country needs 104 percent of that child's lifetime
earnings just to pay the Federal Government pensions.
I have a 3-year-old. Our obligations right now require taking every
dime my little Matthew will ever earn just to pay the Federal
Government pensions.
Part of this, Mr. Speaker, is the math of demographics. We don't have
enough people. We don't have enough children. We are functionally at
zero population growth. There is a math set--I had some of the Heritage
demographers in my office today. They have a model that says in the
next few years we could actually go negative in population as a
country.
For some people, oh, yay, that is great, less traffic. Okay. You tell
me how I am going to finance Social Security. You tell me how I am
going to finance Medicare. In now less than 6\1/2\ years, the Social
Security trust fund is empty. In less than 6\1/2\ years, the Medicare
trust fund is empty. At that time, we double the poverty of seniors, we
will double the number of baby boomers who live on the street. That is
the morality now of this place.
Why am I the only idiot who comes behind the microphone and does this
every week?
Okay. God gave me a gift. I am pretty good at math. I will have
Members of Congress who see me in the hallway and turn around and walk
away from me because I am going to pitch them an idea of here is how we
save Medicare Advantage, here is how we save Social Security, here is
how we do this. I have pieces of legislation to do some of these
things.
Oh, David, you don't understand, we have been told by our political--
and this is Democrats, too--we have been told by our political
consultants we are not allowed to use those words because we might
actually have to explain what the hell is actually going on.
You have the same number of 18-year-olds today as we had 20 years
ago. We have double the number of 65 and up. I turned 64 a couple weeks
ago. Maybe I am pathologically optimistic. We have adopted a 3-year-
old, and I have a 10-year-old. Do they deserve to live better?
Every math set right now says our kids will be the first American
generation to be poorer than their parents. A child born today, my 3-
year-old, let's use my 3-year-old as an example. When my 3-year-old is,
I think it is 22, 21, 23, right in there, every tax, every one, every
single tax in America needs to be doubled just to maintain baseline
services.
Why am I the jerk that gets up and does math and people look at him
and say, oh, David, we are not allowed to talk about that. We will deal
with that after the next election.
Have you noticed there is always another election?
I have been getting that same answer for 15 years here: David, we
can't talk about that. It is mandatory spending. We can't go around and
tell the truth.
It is fixable. There are things you can do. We have presented over
and over and over and over ways you could crash the price of healthcare
using technology, the morality of cures, the morality of helping our
brothers and sisters get healthier, convincing the bond markets that we
are creditworthy.
Right now we pay more--so, Greece, today Greece can sell a 10-year
bond cheaper than the United States. That is what the world debt
markets think of us.
I could geek out and walk through what happened a couple days ago in
the 2-year auction we had and how badly subscribed it was. Maybe it is
the war, maybe it is other things. This isn't a game, and this is
somewhat unique.
Look, I have some books. I collect economic books. One of my books
talks about 5,000 years of economic history. There are lots and lots
and lots of stories of societies that built up lots of debt and
collapsed. Okay.
I could not find a story in there that walked through the economics
of a society that built up lots of debt and started to have fewer
people, zero population growth. Tell me how that math works.
We have a unified theory. I have been behind this microphone dozens
and dozens and dozens of times. I am saying, the adoption of
technology, synthetic biology, deregulation, smart regulation, a
talent-based immigration system--we basically have a dozen things that
have to go into this just to stabilize where we are in debt.
Mr. Speaker, do you think this place is intellectually prepared to do
anything that is difficult? We are going to go home and stand in front
of our constituents and talk about shiny objects.
Mr. Speaker, as of today, we are borrowing $88,000 a second. Mr.
Speaker, as of today, we borrowed, I think, $7.5 billion today,
yesterday, tomorrow.
{time} 1830
Maybe we just shouldn't give a damn about math, but it is going to
win. The math always wins.
Look, my staff wanted me to use this board to try to put it in
perspective of if it was your household. In your household you
basically earn $52,000 a year. This is the Federal budget right now,
but you spend $73,000 this year. If you do the accumulation beyond the
fact that you went 20 grand into debt this year, if you add up all the
years of debt for your household, and this would be your household as
divided by the Federal debt, it is $1.3 million upside down.
Next year, these numbers get worse and the year after that it gets
worse. Part of the reason is--help me grow the economy, help me find
how we balance our tax base.
I am a free market economist. I believe in as low taxes as possible.
But is borrowing a tax? This is a really interesting, intellectual
question that the left has to have and we on the right have to have. Is
borrowing a tax?
The family budget this year, you made $52,000. We are going to spend
$73,000, so we borrowed $20,000 this year. I am going to argue it is a
tax. It is just a tax with interest.
Are you and I going to pay it? Because the philosophy around here is
it is going to be our kids that are going to pay it and our grandkids
that are going to pay it, and I am going to argue the numbers are
eroding so fast.
Remember, 6.5 years from now, the Social Security trust fund is gone.
Mr. Speaker, 6.5 years from now, the Medicare trust fund is gone.
Just to cover that shortfall for the first year is $638 billion. You
run for United States Senate, this happens in your first term. This is
not way off in the future. It is here. Yet, when some of us have tried
to do the debt and deficit commission, we get these people coming in,
lobbying, beating the crap out of us on social media, on conservative
press, and now we find out they are being paid.
It is absolutely immoral what we are doing, and it is your
retirement, and it is my kids and every child out there. How is
accepting a society that says: Oh, screw it. We are just going to make
sure our kids are poorer, but at least we are going to get stuff until
the bond market decides they are actually in charge of this country. It
is almost there.
Let's actually do some more math. We have some new ways to try to
describe the scale of the problem. I know this is hard to read, but I
am going to do my best to make this understandable.
You actually see net receipts by category.
Do you see this dark blue here? That is individual income taxes. That
is one of the crazy things those of us on Ways and Means need to
actually start having a conversation on how we are going to deal with,
because we are seeing right now in the GDP growth we are
[[Page H2771]]
getting in the country, more of it is coming from capital than workers.
We are building big datacenters, automation, the technology, but it
is not necessarily from wage growth, which actually is a whole other
speech and freaks me out because we have got to raise wage growth to
make up for the years of the Biden inflation.
Then take a look over here. This is payroll taxes. This is the taxes
you pay for your Social Security, for your Medicare, for unemployment.
Part of the deep secret here, please don't tell anyone on Social
Security, an average couple retiring today gets about a $76,000 spiff.
Here is what we paid in, you get an extra $76,000. Horrible, horrible
rate of return. However, Democrats made sure that 20 years ago, 25
years ago when there was a temp saying: Could we build a little, tiny
15 percent sidecar, you can invest in the market. That would mean you
would have been dramatically wealthier today. They killed that. They
should be responsible for much of the poverty that is going to exist in
our senior population. It was Democrats that chose to do that.
The dirty secret on this portion here is that same couple for every
dollar they put into Medicare tax, they are getting $6 to $7 back. That
is one of the primary drivers of U.S. sovereign debt, that and
interest, healthcare and interest.
We got older, and we owe $39 trillion. $30 trillion is functionally
sold to the markets, but that other $9 trillion that we borrow
internally, we still pay interest on it. It is still a liability. We
still have to pay it back. These little slivers over here are customs
and corporate taxes. That is our receipts.
Here is our net outlays. You notice this little black box here? This
is all borrowed. This is what the taxes cover. A week ago, we had a
balance budget amendment, which I voted for, but folks had no
understanding that the economic literature basically says: If you want
to balance the budget today, you have to cut almost half of U.S.
spending. Understand that.
Last year, for every dollar that came in, we spent a $1.43. With the
economic effects, if you said tomorrow, David, I demand you balance the
budget. I can do it. Tell me which half of the spending you want me to
cut. Because right now--this is Social Security right here.
Actually, I think Medicare is here. Other mandatory, this is your VA
pension. Those things that are built-in that we are obligated to
formula.
You start to look over here, this is net interest. Remember, net
interest--actually, it should be gross interest. Total interest right
now is the second biggest expenditure in your Federal Government.
Defense is actually number 5. The thing that is in the Constitution is
number 5 on our stack: Social Security, interest, Medicare, Medicaid,
and ObamaCare subsidies and defense.
If you came in here right now and said: David, balance the budget. I
can do it. You tell me how much defense, nondefense, Medicaid, they all
have to go away, and because of the economic effects, this black line
moves in and you would actually have to start cutting Medicare.
It is math. It is not personal. It is just something that comes off
of a calculator and someone who is literate enough to actually look at
the numbers. David, it is really bad politics telling people the truth.
I am in a 50/50 district. Now, I am in one of the best educated
districts in America. It turns out you can get elected in a real tough
district. You can even get--don't tell anyone, but you can get smart,
educated Independents and Democrats to vote for you. They may not like
you, but they, at least, know you are intellectually credible. When was
the last time we actually gave a damn about being intellectually
credible around this place?
Net outlays for interest over 10 years. Right now, remember, I
mentioned just interest--and actually the number is higher than this--
my math is coming in at $1.2 trillion of interest this year. You are
well over 3 percent.
We are going to go down to 3 percent. That is actually what the
Treasury Secretary and others say. I agree, but we are borrowing 7.3
percent of the economy at this moment. You tell me what part you want
me to cut.
CBO's report, what was it, 2 weeks ago, basically says that in 9
years we are going to be borrowing $3.1 trillion a year. That is before
the war. That is before the request for supplementals. That is before
these new healthcare calculations. We are going to be borrowing $3.1
trillion. This is couple weeks ago, CBO report. $2.1 trillion of that
will just be interest, one will actually be structural deficit.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Arizona has 4\1/2\
minutes remaining.
{time} 1840
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Arizona has 4\1/2\
minutes remaining.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I apologize. I am going to talk faster.
No, I won't do that to you. As some of you know, I have a coffee
problem, and I have only had like nine cups today. I am not shaking,
and I am trying not to talk like a machine gun.
Mr. Speaker, I have this chart. You can find this chart if you really
care about it. It basically talks about interest fragility. What is
interest fragility? It is when interest goes up, interest rates go up,
and what that means to the debt.
When you start looking at a chart like this--so, think about this.
For 1 year, a 10-percent increase, so essentially 10 basis points, it
is about $4.1 billion. You start to see when you actually go out 10
years and start looking at, hey, if we had 1 point of interest--now,
this is on the base debt right now, publicly sold debt, not the full
debt, but the publicly sold debt. That comes out to $3.1 trillion, a
single point for 10 years.
What happens when the bond market has more influence and changes our
spending patterns more than this place does? I had people say--as we
were trying to do the big, beautiful bill, and then we were supposed to
do the second reconciliation to pay for a big chunk of it--but that
would be too difficult. We might have to talk about fixing Medicare and
Medicare Advantage.
Look, go read the reports that are stacked up on my desk that say you
have a couple of trillion dollars of waste, fraud, and misalignment.
The Wall Street Journal does article after article after article, full-
page things on it, saying, hey, the high grading, that is $100 billion
a year. We are going to do what about it, Mr. Speaker? Oh, but we would
have to explain it. What is wrong with us?
Unless we convince the world debt markets--remember, we are the
biggest debtor in the world. You want lower mortgage rates? Convince
the debt markets because the Federal Reserve only affects the short end
of the curve. Your mortgage is based off the 10-year. The 10-year is a
market rate, not a Federal Reserve rate. How many politicians around
here: We have to beat up the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.
That is on the 2-year, the short end of the curve, maybe even less.
Convince the debt markets that we are actually going to stabilize our
debt.
We have a 40-year cycle. Those of us who are baby boomers, to move on
to our reward before we get back to the more normal demographics--those
normal demographics may never come because the fertility rate in the
Western world continues to fall.
Look, there are things we can do. This is the type of improper
payments. I have been working on this for years. Stop the waste and
fraud in government. It is billions and billions of dollars. If you are
borrowing $220 billion to $230 billion every single month, we can get
rid of every improper payment. We don't even cover a month's worth of
borrowing. We still have to do this.
It turns out that the most powerful way to fix something like this,
Mr. Speaker, is not a whole bunch of new laws, not buildings full of
auditors, buildings full of lawyers. It is data scientists.
Look, I chair the Oversight Subcommittee of Ways and Means. We have
investigations going on into Medicare part C, hospice care, and organ
procurement. How are we finding these things? We hired a data
scientist.
Mr. Speaker, there is hope. There is a way to do this. We just need
to step up our game and become more intellectually curious and robust.
With that, maybe we can stabilize the future for your retirement and
our kids.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
[[Page H2772]]
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