[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 82 (Thursday, May 14, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H3521-H3524]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          OUR ECONOMIC FUTURE

  (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. 
Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.)
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, I am actually going to try something 
that we have done over and over.
  I apologize; I have had a lot of coffee. If I start talking like a 
machine gun, just start waving at me.
  I am going to try one more time to communicate to the thousands of 
televisions we are on around the campus. Hopefully, there are still 
staff, interns, and others who actually care about our economic future. 
Maybe there are a few Members. Maybe there are actually some really 
smart people out on C-SPAN, because I am often remarkably impressed 
when these floor speeches go up on YouTube or other things at some of 
the comments. I am also heartbroken about the thousands of Russian bots 
and other things that may crop up.
  Let's do some basic reality, and I am going to walk through some of 
these numbers.
  As of today, for the last 12 months, so more than just within the 
fiscal year, the last 12 months--so I pick up the tax cycle, and I pick 
up everything else--we are borrowing about $87,000 a second, every 
second of every day.
  Yet, I will go home and give a speech. I am leaving this place. I am 
running for Governor in Arizona. I will speak in front of people, watch 
their faces when I try to explain, here is what the math is, here is 
what is going on.
  My 3-year-old son that we have adopted--a miracle, absolute miracle--
this government needs 104 percent of his lifetime earnings just to pay 
Federal pensions, not the military, not the rest of the government; 
just to cover Social Security, Medicare, military retirement, just the 
pension benefits.

                              {time}  1920

  Madam Speaker, we need his entire lifetime earnings plus another 4 
percent. Is that moral?
  Didn't we have one of our Founding Fathers say a generation should be 
responsible for its own debts? Yet, we will have borrowed about $7.5 
billion, $7.7 billion today. Let's actually walk through some of the 
things that are actual math, a couple of the solutions.
  My tense frustration around here--and I accept a whole bunch of our 
Members are lawyers. Bless their precious hearts. Could they buy a 
calculator? Because it is beyond Republican versus Democrat. I think we 
have much better fiscal economic growth ideas, but it is demographics.
  In 1 year from now, we will have fewer people under 18 years of age 
than we had 20 years ago but double our brothers and sisters who are 65 
and up. In 29 months, 29 months, over half the Federal spending will go 
to those 65 and up. Are we allowed to tell that truth?
  This is the report from the Treasury that was put out about 3 weeks 
ago. I know we all as Members of Congress grabbed it and read some of 
the projections in here, but some of the math in here made it very, 
very, very clear, except you had to work the graphs and play with the 
calculations and numbers because sometimes it is really uncomfortable 
telling these things when you actually had numbers, 30 years from now 
the United States having about 250 percent debt to GDP.
  When you actually took a look, if you do State and local debt right 
now, we are over 126 percent debt to GDP. When you actually start to 
look at other reports of the solvency issues in regard to Social 
Security, Medicare, is it moral that in about 6 years and 3 months the 
Social Security Trust Fund is empty? In 6 years and 3 months, if we 
follow the law as it is written today and don't fix things, those on 
Social Security will get a 24 percent cut.
  The math says in the following year we will double the poverty of 
seniors. We will basically double. We will double the number of baby 
boomers that live on the street.
  Madam Speaker, in a little over 6 years, the Medicare Trust Fund is 
empty and hospitals in your district and my district take a 12 percent 
cut. How many of them will remain open? It is the math.
  How many times, for anyone who is crazy enough to watch us, who has 
actually watched the people coming behind these microphones, have 
actually heard Members of Congress get up and say the greatest systemic 
threat to our society, to our culture, to this Nation is our debt and 
demographics? Why aren't we willing to have a conversation about it? 
Why aren't we willing to tell the truth?
  Yet, a couple of weeks ago we had a balanced budget bill, and, 
actually, I think it failed, but it is part of the scam we engage in. 
We all go out and vote for it and say, ``I voted for a balanced 
budget,'' but I am never going to tell you how we are going to get 
there because the actual path is really hard.
  I have come to the floor multiple times and done entire presentations 
on the MedPAC report. Those are functions of the models and auditors of 
Medicare. There is a thing called Medicare Part C, Medicare Advantage. 
I absolutely support it, but I want it to be the model that was 
originally designed by Senator Frist in 2005 that said we are going to 
build a model where it is capitated care. We are going to try to 
incentivize the insurance company to make its money by helping the 
population be healthier instead of constantly scoring people as sicker.
  This report basically says there is about a $1.5 trillion, $2 
trillion over 10 years. We won't call it fraud because it is not. They 
are following the rules. We are the idiots that wrote the rules. Part 
of those rules were changed during Obama Care.
  If I came to you, Madam Speaker, and said I can find you $1 trillion, 
$1.5 trillion, $2 trillion, we have a piece of legislation to align 
that program with the incentives to keep people healthier. Our 
preliminary score was $1.84 trillion, and the calculation said it would 
actually help the population of seniors on Medicare Advantage, which is 
55 percent of the population, be healthier because the insurance 
companies that manage the program would be incentivized to make you, 
help you, work with you to be healthier.
  I can't get a single other Member of Congress to sponsor the bill 
because it has the word ``Medicare'' in it, because, God forbid, we 
tell the truth around here.
  Let's actually do some more math. Here is another report that was out 
on the dispatch. It is a long format, leans conservative, leans real 
free market, but talking about even if we use current CBO math, my 
little boy who is 3 years old today, when he turns 33, the United 
States will have a couple hundred trillion dollars in debt when my 
little boy is 33 years old, and that was using the previous CBO 
numbers. The problem is the previous CBO numbers are now wrong.
  Since February until today--since February until today, you have 
about what they call 40 basis points of increase in interest rates. 
Okay, big deal. Forty basis points of interest if it sticks for the 
next 10 years, that is over $1.3 trillion in additional interest.
  Let's do this again. Social Security is our biggest spend in the 
Federal Government. Okay. It is an earned benefit. You earned it. We 
owe it. We are going to spend about $1.6 trillion this year.
  Anyone want to guess what the second biggest spend is? Interest. If 
you do

[[Page H3522]]

the interest that we owe to those who bought our bonds and the money we 
have also borrowed from the trust funds, we are going to pay over $1.2 
trillion, $1.3 trillion this year just in interest.
  Okay. What is the third biggest expense? Medicare, about $1.1 
trillion, and Medicare will double, double in spending over the next 7 
years. So it goes to $2 trillion.
  Number four is actually Medicaid and Obama Care subsidies, ACA 
subsidies.
  Number five is actually defense. The thing that is actually in the 
U.S. Constitution is the number five in our spending stack.
  Let's actually have a little fun. We are going to take in about $5 
trillion, $5.25 trillion in tax receipts. Okay. Let's say we made a 
deal. We are only going to spend what we get. Okay. So I just covered 
Social Security, 1.6. We are going to cover interest, about 1.2. We are 
going to cover Medicare, about 1.1. We are going to cover Medicaid and 
ACA subsidies, about 1. You basically right there have spent every dime 
of tax receipts.

  Your government is basically an insurance company with an army, and 
the army is on borrowed money. The rest of the government is on 
borrowed money. When we send money to the States, my State of Arizona, 
our appropriated budget is about $17.8 billion, $17.9 billion. Total 
spending is closer to $73 billion, $74 billion.
  What is that differential? Well, almost half the spending of my State 
of Arizona is actually revenue sharing, programs, matching things that 
we send from the Federal Government, except that money is borrowed.
  If you are a State government, are you prepared for when this place 
can't even afford to meet those obligations because everything we are 
doing is on borrowed money? It is important to think about.
  I have done entire presentations here talking about the concept of 
interest fragility, and no one cares until the moment you have a failed 
bond auction.
  Now our experts are actually saying that the age of lower interest 
rates probably isn't coming upon us. You do realize the 2-year 
instrument of United States debt has been hovering about 4 percent. You 
go, oh, why are you talking about math? The Federal funds rate is down 
here.

                              {time}  1930

  We always say, well, if the Fed would lower interest rates--once 
again, basic economics. The Federal funds rate is only on what they 
call the short end of the curve. It has very little effect on the 10 
years and up. The 30-year bond went over 5 percent this week. It is the 
highest interest rate in 19 years.
  Does anyone talk about it? Remember, we borrow money. The world is 
borrowing money. The Chinese Government and other governments are 
bingeing on debt.
  The industrialized world has gotten old. We have much of our 
population that is moving out of its productive years and moving into 
its retirement benefit years. We have a society all over the 
industrialized world where population is flat or shrinking.
  Our Census Bureau, a couple of weeks ago, put out an abstract. If you 
actually read through their tables, they had the United States highly 
likely sometime in the next 5 years going negative--United States going 
negative on population growth.
  I showed that slide in a speech I gave last week at home, and I had 
this woman say: ``Yay.'' I said: ``Okay. You think there are too many 
people. Fine. How do you want me to finance Social Security and 
Medicare and all the other benefits?'' She just stared at me and said: 
``Well, tax rich people.''
  Now, this is a Republican meeting. I just happened to have in my 
binder a chart that showed her that we can take every dime from those 
rich people, and you pay for the government for about 8 months or 9 
months.
  Then, I asked her: ``How would you like to finance things?'' All I 
got was this stare because, look, when you have a world where people 
get their news from this thing, when much of what people know is either 
doomscrolling or clickbait, I beg of you--this is important. This is 
the survival of our Republic. We have made it 250 years. Do my kids 
deserve to be in this country? Does this deserve to be another American 
century? It can be.
  I have done presentation after presentation after presentation on how 
we can crash the price of healthcare; how we can adopt technology to do 
things better, faster, and cheaper; and how we can stabilize debt. 
Remember, all the rage around here about 2 months ago was that we are 
going to pass a motion to borrow only 3 percent of GDP. Love it.
  Madam Speaker, at this moment, we are pushing--I think 3.4 percent or 
3.5 percent of GDP is just interest from the Federal Government. You 
tell me what spending you want to cut, and then you tell me what bonds 
we are going to pay off.
  There is a math experiment that is very simple. Remember how we 
passed a balanced budget amendment a couple of weeks ago, but no one 
was willing to tell you how to get there. If, next year, we wanted to 
balance the budget, I can do it. You have to cut half of Federal 
spending. If you do the feedback effects in the economy, you would have 
to cut one-half of Federal spending.
  I need you to think about what I am saying here, so let's do this. 
This is as we built the budget. Do you see this blue area, nondefense 
discretionary, defense? That is the only thing a Member of Congress 
gets to vote on, unless it is a reconciliation budget, and then we have 
been wasting those because we have been unwilling to tell the truth and 
do the cuts that are required, to start to tell the bond market that we 
are serious to bring down interest rates.
  Once again, the way you bring down interest rates: convince the bond 
markets that we are incredibly creditworthy, that we are doing the 
things that are not inflating the economy by pumping all sorts of 
borrowed spending into the economy, and, therefore, raising interest 
rates by raising inflation.
  The rest of the red is on autopilot. The problem is that if you want 
to look at the pie, every dime of defense is borrowed. Every dime in 
nondefense discretionary is borrowed, and a big chunk of--choose 
whatever you want--is borrowed.
  How long can we keep doing this? Seriously, how long can we keep 
doing this? I chair the Joint Economic Committee. I am No. 4 on the 
Ways and Means Committee. I chair the Oversight Subcommittee. I have 
been doing all the waste and fraud investigations I can, whether it be 
hospice care, particularly in L.A. County--it is trying to expose the 
things going on in New York, the organ procurement fraud, all the work 
we have done on trying to fix the misalignment in Medicare Advantage.
  Yet, the armies of lobbyists up and down these hallways--many of them 
are wonderful people--the armies of people from our home districts who 
come into our office who tell us how much they want us to cut 
spending--no, they don't ask us to cut spending, do they?
  I will do a presentation to my own people from Arizona and say: 
``Here is what we are up against.'' They will say: ``That is very 
interesting. Now, will you listen to my request for more spending?''
  The other one that is even more perverse is that we get businesses 
that come into our office and try to explain how they want us to 
regulate their competition.
  I thought we were the free market party. I thought we were the party 
that believed prosperity was moral, that the way you help our brothers 
and sisters be less poor is an economy that works, that allocates its 
resources where you maximize prosperity.
  Are we doing that right now? The math basically says that when you do 
the adjustments for inflation--now, a lot of this is the inflation from 
4 years or 5 years ago. The people in my State are still poorer today 
than they were 5 years ago.
  Wage growth hasn't even gotten close to catching up. Where is the 
fixation on the people who we claim that we care about and love? We are 
conservatives. We are supposed to love people. We are supposed to 
believe in freedom. We are supposed to believe in prosperity, but we 
are so busy selling shiny objects so we can get on cable news or be a 
YouTube celebrity or a Twitter celebrity tonight, we make crap up. We 
do salacious things. We throw out things where we have never told the 
truth about the underlying math, or we know that the math doesn't work.

[[Page H3523]]

  My Joint Economic Committee did our report, the Republican side, and 
we did something really hard. We spent months working on this. We 
talked about a unified theory: Here is how we bring prosperity back. 
Here is how we bring wage growth back. Here is how we start to 
stabilize the U.S. debt.
  Yet, you have to be willing to tell the truth. Yet, the troll army: 
``Well, they talked about talent-based immigration.''
  I also talked about ending H-1B visas because of the misallocation in 
wage suppression and going to a model that would actually increase 
wages, but you have to be willing to read the report. Yes, it is 
hundreds of pages, and there are fancy formulas in there that, unless 
you had advanced calculus, you are not going to get the math, but we do 
the explanation under it. The rest of the reading is actually pretty 
easy.
  The reason we wrote this is that we are trying to make the point that 
we can do this. There is a mathematical policy way that we can bring 
back prosperity. We can bring back actual affordability, your 
retirement. My kids have a chance.
  Other than six of us and half of those reading it to try to find a 
way to attack us, and the other half because they don't have a life, 
please, someone out there read the Joint Economic Report from the 
Republicans. We worked hard on this. The math, in some ways, is 
brilliant. The policies work, but there are things in there that are 
controversial.
  You are going to have to talk about automation, accepting technology, 
bringing the benefits of possible automation, labor substitution to 
grow the economy, two things to raise up wages.
  It is possible, but we have to tell the truth, and we have a real 
situation in our country.
  I know this chart is a little hard to read, but I have a simple point 
I am trying to make. If you go back to 2019, all the way to April, 
where we are at right now, and you basically take a look at all nonfarm 
growth, it is actually up only about 4 percent.
  What is way up here that has had a 24 percent growth? What has had 
the 17 percent growth? Those are, functionally, employment from welfare 
programs. This is like, I think, in Medicaid, visiting family members, 
getting signed up, and getting paid for it. This is essentially welfare 
services in healthcare.
  The problem with healthcare is--what is it?--about 67 percent, maybe 
even more, of healthcare dollars come from the Federal Government. In 
my State of Arizona, last year, we produced only 24,000 new jobs.

                              {time}  1940

  Every single one of those new jobs was in healthcare and welfare 
services. Private-sector jobs actually fell. Last month in Arizona, we 
lost about 10,800 jobs. Private-sector jobs shrank. We are now either 
47th or 45th from the bottom or to the bottom in affordability in 
Arizona. Of my three wage categories, two of the wage categories went 
down. They lost--not even inflation adjusted, the raw number--they lost 
salary structure.
  Why do we care?
  Look, you try to explain the basic math on these things. Do we care 
and love our brothers and sisters? We are tracking this, and I am 
trying to get better data. This chart is a little hard to read, but 
those little tops you see with the orange and the yellow? Those are 
delinquencies. Those are delinquencies that are starting to grow 
economically in our society, people who are having trouble making their 
mortgage payment, people who are having trouble making their car 
payment. I don't think this even has student loans in it.
  The fact of the matter is, we did some really good things in the tax 
policy last year, but we haven't done all the other things that are 
required from us to get the economy roaring to open up markets.
  Look, when it is illegal in the United States to modernize a port--we 
have the least efficient ports in the industrialized world. I know that 
is uncomfortable because I just made a union mad by saying that, but 
the fact of the matter is we care about pricing. We care about supply 
chains. We care about inflation. We care about affordability, but then 
we are going to basically do the very things that stop the efficiencies 
in our economy.
  Maybe we could legalize the very technologies, the very things in our 
world that would make the world more prosperous. Are we too busy 
pandering to the last group of lobbyists that came into our office?
  Look, a local example, just because I care about this: I used to be 
the Maricopa County treasurer. Maricopa County is the most populous 
county in the United States. All right. I was the tax collector. I was 
the investment officer. I was the bank. So I had a really good staff. 
We did lots of great things.
  If I walk in tomorrow and say, all right, let's get rid of the income 
tax in my State, that is great. I love it. It is about 31 percent of 
the budget that is appropriated. Okay. Tell me what you want to cut. 
Tell me where we are going to move, because understand, if you wanted 
to make that up and say we are just going to cut it on the income tax 
and move it to the property tax, you just doubled grandma's property 
taxes.
  Is that your plan? Is that what we are actually going to do?
  Now, we have actually offered ideas to lower the cost of government 
where we think we can cut that rate down by a third, 40 percent, but 
you systematically have to have a plan to do things. It is the same 
thing here. We talk a big game, but you notice we avoid telling the 
truth about the details of what it takes. And I think the public, the 
voters we represent, the voters we claim we care about, have gotten to 
the point where they are tired of the fraud. If you are going to give 
us an idea, tell us how you get there. Tell us the math.
  I have used the sarcastic comments behind this microphone a dozen 
times. I work in a math-free zone. If you are going to make a proposal, 
maybe we should try something new, Madam Speaker. If we are going to 
make a proposal, demonstrate how you are going to get there. 
Demonstrate how the math actually works.
  There are ways to make it happen. Nothing is easy, but it is doable. 
Lay out a plan.
  Look, we have been doing presentations around Arizona on how we could 
crash the price of our Medicaid system. It will take a couple years, 
but through technology, helping our brothers and sisters be healthier, 
we think we can remove hundreds of millions of dollars in spending.
  We can end fraud in much of our government programs tomorrow by 
simple adoption of data systems. So think about this: One of the great 
perversities--and actually part of it is in this MedPAC book. If you 
look at it, we pay fraudsters, and then the current government model is 
we hire auditors, and then we hire lawyers. How often do we ever get 
any money back? How often do people actually end up in jail?
  May I propose a suggestion? Stop letting the damn money go out the 
door in the first place. The pay and chase model is from a different 
century, a different decade. We have the technology today, whether you 
want to call it AI, algorithmic, the fact of the matter is someone is 
requesting benefits. Their data doesn't match.
  These hospices that were popping up all over L.A. County, the first 
time we start to look at their data, we knew they were a fraud.
  The fact of the matter is we have the technology today; we can stop 
the waste and fraud in government. Maybe the public would start to 
believe in us again if they knew their money wasn't going to 
fraudsters.
  We can do that particularly at my State level where we had, what, 
$2.8 billion in sober living home fraud that could have been caught, I 
have been told, by a $1,500 simple accounting AI package. It would have 
seen it immediately, and it would have saved $2.8 billion. Is that 
Republican or Democrat?
  Now, I know it upsets the people that are the auditors, the people 
that make their living, but this needs to be about the taxpayers and 
about the American people. We have ways to fix these things.
  Why don't we have the intellectual gravitas or whatever fancy word we 
want to use around this place to actually try and do it instead of 
continuing to do the trite?
  Madam Speaker, I appreciate you tolerating me, and I did mention I 
have had a lot of caffeine already today.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

[[Page H3524]]

  

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