[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 87 (Thursday, May 21, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H3719-H3721]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           UNSUSTAINABLE DEBT

  (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. 
Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.)
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, have you ever had a moment where you 
think back over the last dozen years, and you really, really miss 
something we used to call the Tea Party?
  Do you remember, for those of us who were involved in that, what was 
the premise? The premise was fairly simple. We cared about the fiscal 
status of our country and following the Constitution.
  Today, a dozen years later since the Tea Party was basically put out 
of business, do I have any of my brothers and sisters out there who 
actually care about what is going on?
  My preference is when I do these sort of weekly presentations, I put 
my Joint Economic chairman hat on or my Oversight and Ways and Means 
hat on. This time, I am just going to try to be the guy who cares about 
financing the U.S. debt and what the hell is going on right now.
  Often, when I do these, I like to say: Here is the problem, and here 
are some solutions. This time you are just getting problems, and then 
the reality of what it means. I am going to do this three or four times 
in this presentation, so if anyone is listening, think about this: From 
February until this week, the movement on U.S. interest rates, if you 
do it over 10 years, it is over $2 trillion of additional interest. 
That is not $2 trillion we get to spend on a new aircraft carrier or 
building roads or helping our brothers and sisters get healthier. It is 
$2 trillion to the bond market.
  I have come behind this microphone for a decade and a half. I have 
been criticized by many of those who actually care about the economics 
of the country, I have been criticized for saying the bond market very 
soon will be the dominant player in this government.
  David, how can you say things like this?
  It is happening.
  Let's start with this slide that we keep doing because the math is 
wrong now.
  A couple years ago when I used to do this, discretionary outlays were 
27, 28 percent of spending. Now, it is down to 25 percent of the 
spending. This is all a Member of Congress votes on unless you have a 
reconciliation budget, and you see how well we are doing on those right 
now. So nondefense and defense. Basically, the other 75 percent of 
spending is on autopilot.
  You get these folks who come in here--we did one about 3 or 4 weeks 
ago where we basically said: We are going to do a resolution to balance 
the budget. There were no ideas with it, there was no discipline with 
it, there was no telling the truth with it, but we did a resolution so 
we can all put it on our political brochures and say we voted for a 
balanced budget.
  The economists I have on the Joint Economic Committee, we were 
spitballing some of the math on that, I can balance the budget next 
year. I have got to cut half of U.S. Federal spending.
  Last year, for every dollar in, we spent $1.43. So far this fiscal 
year, for every dollar in, we have spent $1.47. Now, that will balance 
out a little bit because there is a spike in there from last year's 
debt ceiling when we had to refund many of the accounts, but when you 
look at this chart, there is something really important to get your 
heads around.
  I am running for Governor in Arizona. I have given up on this place. 
As I am traveling around the State, I will do part of my presentation 
on what is really happening in the Federal Government and why it is so 
important to get the finances of your own State really solid because 
some of the revenue sharing that goes to the States--which is almost 
half my State's budget, our total spending--is going to start to dry up 
because every dime we send to the States is borrowed.
  Do you see this number over here, interest? Our calculation says 
right now the interest this fiscal year, the one we are in right now, 
will come in over or around $1.2 trillion. Stop and think about what I 
am sharing with you. Social Security, $1.6 trillion; interest, 1.2; 
Medicare, about 1.1. Remember, Medicare doubles in spending over the 
next 6 to 7 years, and in 6 years the trust fund is actually gone.
  Number four is actually Medicaid and ObamaCare subsidies. Defense, 
the thing that is actually in the Constitution, is number five on our 
spending stack.
  When we go home and we sit there with our constituents, and we do 
things like happened today to me--so we are doing a Ways and Means 
markup, and there were good, simple bills that should have been 
bipartisan, but every Democrat had to get their little video of 
attacking the President, so we had to sit there for several hours. 
Okay, great, that is the theater of what we do here in Congress now.
  However, down the hallway and in the basement, a Republican Study 
Committee was trying to do a debt fraud forum. They had some really 
good people there. They had people who had been working on the issue of 
waste and fraud, and they had one gentleman who has written some really 
amazing articles. He has researched where he found millions of dollars 
of fraud. My problem is I was actually doing the math of what I was 
listening to.

[[Page H3720]]

  Mr. Speaker, how long does it take us to borrow--not spend, borrow--
$1 million? Every 12 seconds, every 12 seconds, we borrow another $1 
million. Everything that was being discussed in the room didn't even 
actually add up to a whole minute worth of borrowing.
  Here is the problem in this place: Because of the financial 
illiteracy--sorry, I withdraw that, that is being a little mean--the 
lack of batteries in the calculators around here, you will see Members 
come behind these microphones on both sides: We are going to save $1 
million, $10 million, $20 million on this, and we will have borrowed 
more money on the debate on the piece of legislation than the bill 
saves.
  Yesterday, we crossed over $90,000 every second in borrowing. We will 
borrow over $7.7-plus billion today.
  Is anyone listening? Do I say it in a way that is not understandable? 
Is there another way I can make my charts so it is absorbable?
  Are we a society where the desire for government spending--because 
there are tens of thousands of people from home, from lobbyists, others 
walking up and down our hallways, in our offices all day long telling 
us how much they care about the debt and deficits, and then they demand 
more money.
  We can stabilize the debt. We can convince the bond markets to give 
us lower interest rates.
  For those of you who are watching, and you think, well, we will just 
have the Federal Reserve lower interest rates. It doesn't work that 
way. God.
  Do you remember your high school economics class? The Federal 
Reserve, the Fed funds rate, the open window policies basically are 
what we call the short end of the curve. They basically influence those 
things that are 2 years and shorter.

                              {time}  1940

  Your mortgage is based on the 10-year instrument. That is a market 
rate, and it is based on the borrowing of excess savings that is loaned 
to sovereigns, your mortgage, and everything else, from the entire 
world. It is not just financed from us here in the United States. It is 
the entire world. The entire world--at least most of the industrialized 
world--is bingeing on debt.
  You have to understand: We have to convince the world debt markets 
that we are going to tame inflation, that we are creditworthy, and that 
we are going to get our act together.
  There is a report that came out just about an hour ago--honestly, I 
have only read the first half of it--that basically was doing the 
calculations that even publicly sold debt, in 9 budget years, will be 
over 126 percent of debt-to-GDP. We just passed 100 percent.
  Does anyone care? In slightly over 6 years, if you are on Social 
Security, you get a 24-percent cut in your check. That is the law. In 6 
years, the Medicare trust fund is empty. In a little over 6 years, the 
Social Security trust fund is empty. Does anyone care? Is anyone here 
willing to tell the truth?
  Yes, you will have the other side beat the crap out of you. You will 
have some of your own people in a primary saying: He talked about 
Social Security and Medicare. I am just trying to save it.
  For the idiots that go around saying, ``Well, we will just raise this 
tax,'' understand that, in 2033, to cover the shortfall of the Medicare 
and Social Security trust funds is over $638 billion just that year, 
just to cover the first year, and then it goes up and goes up and goes 
up.
  It is demographics. We don't have enough children. We don't have 
enough young people. We don't have enough young workers in our society. 
It is math.
  Your country basically is at zero population growth. The Census 
Bureau, about a month ago, did a report. If you dig through it, 
sometime in the next 5 years--I think the benchmark was 3 years--the 
United States at current policy goes negative in population. Those 
people go, yay, we are going to get smaller.
  Fine. You figure out and tell me how I am going to finance Social 
Security and Medicare. You tell me how I finance the debt. You tell me 
how I am going to convince the bond markets not to keep raising our 
interest rates.
  I know how to do it. I have come behind this damn microphone how many 
times and talked about the unified theory of you are going to have to 
adopt technology, and you are going to have to revolutionize the cost 
of healthcare. That is one of the things we are about to talk about.
  You are going to have to move to a talent-based immigration system so 
the population you bring into the country maximizes economic growth and 
tax collections. You don't have a choice anymore. You can't import mass 
poverty anymore.
  There is a way to stabilize the math, Mr. Speaker. We would just have 
to do everything at once, and we would have to do hard things.
  Two days ago, I had a couple of Ph.D.'s--I think they were from Brown 
University--visiting. One of their researchers was meeting with my 
economists from the Joint Economic Committee. All we focused on was 
what was going on in Medicare, not Medicaid, the benefit we promised 
our seniors. We were talking about the hundreds of billions of dollars 
that--you hear some people come behind the mike and say that we will 
call it waste and fraud, but it is legal because we screwed up the 
laws, the rules, the mechanisms, and the reimbursements.
  Is this place willing to do the hard things? Let's just walk through 
one simple conceptual idea.
  We did a research project a year ago just on duplicative scans. You 
have an MRI, an x-ray, an ultrasound, and a CT. The top end of the 
number was almost $35 billion in the United States in a year.
  You hurt your knee skiing. You go to the town and get an MRI of your 
knee. They send it. You go back to your home community a week later, 
and they do it again, instead of attaching that scan to your phone.
  I did a piece of legislation saying: Hey, when you can, attach the 
scan to an app or something so it is portable with you. That didn't cut 
your service. That didn't make you less healthy. It just potentially 
saved $35 billion a year, over almost $400 billion over 10 years. Is 
that bill ever going to get a hearing?
  The next day, I had lobbyists walking up and down the hallways here 
saying: David, you don't understand. Those duplicative scans are our 
profit margin.
  We have dozens and dozens of ideas and things we have scored and 
pieces of legislation to revolutionize the cost of government.
  Here is the fraud about talking about fraud. Please, someone quote me 
on this and attack me on it.
  Members of Congress, both on the left and the right, want free 
options. Oh, it was fraud from a foreigner. That way there are no 
constituents, no lobbyists, no one in our home districts making money 
on it. If you actually read the documents from our auditors, from 
MedPAC, from others that are doing their work, we know where there is 
hundreds of billions of dollars.
  The problem is, that money has constituents. There are people who 
make their living on it. They cover their investments on it.
  Look at how many times a handful of us have tried to provide options 
in healthcare, but it would change your business model, and the next 
day we get the crap kicked out of us.
  I worked on telehealth for years and years. I was never going to get 
a hearing on it because groups that made their money having you walk 
into the urgent care center, walk into their emergency room, would 
spend whatever was necessary to stop it. The only reason you have 
telehealth today is COVID, and it is still getting dialed back, access 
to that digital health.
  The fact of the matter is, today, you can wear a medical lab on you. 
The newest version of the Apple Watch is an FDA-approved medical device 
for the heart. As that technology gets better and better and the FDA 
approves more things, should that technology be allowed to prescribe, 
if it is statistically competent? Yes? No? It would help crash the 
price of healthcare. It would help dramatically raise access to 
healthcare.

  As we provide digital health and the ability to have communication, 
WiFi, those things, and broadband in most rural parts of our country, 
you could have revolutionary access to healthcare. There will be 
lobbyists in this hallway tomorrow trying to stop me and being angry 
because I even talked about this. Everything here is about the money.
  Remember, when you think about the pie chart of Federal budgets and

[[Page H3721]]

spending, your Members of Congress are only voting on 25 percent of it. 
The rest of it is a formula.
  Interest now is the number two expense in government. Medicare is 
going to double in spending over the next 6 to 7 years.
  It is demographics. Next year, we will have fewer 18-year-olds than 
we had 20 years ago, but double the number of 65 and up.
  In 28, 29 months, over half of our Federal spending will go to our 
brothers and sisters who are 65 and up, and I will be one of them.
  We are going to do what? We are going to do what? We are just going 
to make more promises? We are going to run more fake ``we are going to 
balance the budget'' bills with no plans.
  Let's actually walk through a couple of things that are also really 
uncomfortable. Debt financing costs double in 10 years. This is already 
where we are at.
  The CBO baseline budget from last February had, in 9 budget years, 
the U.S. debt--now, this is before the move in interest rates. This is 
even before some of the additional spending proposals that have come 
up. In 9 years, U.S. debt, borrowing, will be $3.1 trillion.
  Mr. Speaker, think about this point. That is $2.1 trillion of that 
borrowing in 9 budget years, 10 years from now, is just interest. $1 
trillion is the structural debt. The other $2.1 trillion is just 
interest coverage.

                              {time}  1950

  What has happened just in the movement of our bond markets in the 
last couple months, if this is the new benchmark for interest rates, 
could even come down. We are up about, what, 70 basis points since the 
low in February. That is over $2 trillion of additional interest over 
10 years.
  I know it is math. We are supposed to tell stories about crazy 
things, or bad people, or illegal immigrants. This is what is going to 
take down our Republic. This is what is going to destroy your 
retirement, Mr. Speaker. This is what is going to take my 3 year old 
and make my kids the first generation who truly lives poorer than their 
parents.
  Let's walk through just a little more fun with charts and math.
  Mr. Speaker, just for the fun of it, we are up over 60 basis points. 
We are actually closer to 70, but let's use 60 because some of the 
interest rates went back a little bit today. We say that over 10 years 
that is over $2 trillion on today's projected budget and spending and 
current debt.
  Now, if we plus up defense, if we plus up other things, then that 
number gets even uglier. But, right now, just structurally, it is 
called interest fragility. I am sorry. Someone may be watching and have 
a better word for it that is not so complicated because the other day I 
was at a meeting and I had to explain fragility.
  The bond market is about to run this country.
  When small movements of interest rates when carried out over the 
decade are a couple of trillion dollars in additional interest, doesn't 
this freak out anyone?
  Mr. Speaker, I was going to bring a bunch of charts and show: Hey, 
here is the sensitivity to interest rates, and here is what is going 
on.
  We habitually attack the Congressional Budget Office when they tell 
us things we don't like. It turns out when actually looking at the 
projections and what is happening, the CBO has actually been the most 
accurate.
  The House Budget Resolution is the second most accurate. OMB is a 
little too optimistic. And that is on the 10-year. When we look at it 
on--even looking at the 3-month, it is the same thing.
  There are only a couple of other points I want to make here, average 
interest rates by security type.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, you go: Who cares?
  This year, our government will have to refinance almost $11 trillion. 
We are going to borrow about $2 trillion, let's call it virgin, in new 
issuances. But here is your, remember that big word, Mr. Speaker, 
``interest fragility''?
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to show you a chart here in a moment where a 
bunch of what we do--there are these things called notes and bonds. 
They actually are just different names for different durations, but a 
bunch of our debt we keep very short. Now, that is actually what the 
Federal Reserve also does have an impact on, on the Fed's funds rates.
  However, the 2-year, right now, is over 4 percent.
  Guess what, Mr. Speaker?
  We have a whole bunch of our debt that every 30 days, 90 days, 6 
months, we have to come back to the market and refinance, so if 
something goes haywire during that time, we are subject to that.
  I think last year and the year before that, we had 3, 4 months where 
we had to borrow money to have enough money to cover other borrowing. 
Now, yes, tax receipts are cyclical because we are an income tax-based 
government.
  The reason I show this is these right here are notes. This is 
basically debt from, think of it as 5 years to 10 years, but you see 
this big thing here, Mr. Speaker, bills?
  Twenty-one percent of our debt, that is all short term, that is 
coming to market, coming to market, coming to market because it rolls 
off, and we have to refinance, it rolls off, we have to refinance, it 
rolls off.
  When we have this much that is short, bonds here are over 10, but 
even today, Mr. Speaker, the 30-year bond, the 20-year bond--remember, 
20 is sort of a stepchild so it often has a bit of a premium on it. The 
30-year I think was coming in at 4.1, 4.16, something like that. It has 
been a day or so since I looked at it.
  Mr. Speaker, do you care about your mortgage rate?
  What is it, 30-year conforming home loans are over what, 6, 6.5?
  We want lower interest rates. We want an economy that has more 
capital for plants, equipment, new technology and new jobs to make us 
more productive so we can raise wages. We can't have a government that 
chews up every damn dime.
  A child born today, and I know I have said this over and over, and I 
am waiting for the moment--the reason I say it is that no one seems to 
care about it enough to say: Well, David, that number scared the crap 
out of me.
  A child born today, Mr. Speaker, we need 104 percent of that child's 
lifetime income just to pay Federal Government pensions.
  Is that Republican or Democrat?
  I would just say it is absolutely immoral. We are going to squander 
one of our reconciliation budgets. A reconciliation budget is a way to 
get around the filibuster in the Senate. It has all sorts of rules 
coming from the 1974 Budget Control Act.
  I understand we have got to get the final portion of the DHS budget 
through, and I know we are having all sorts of fights on it, but why 
don't we do something simply moral on it and say: We have dozens of 
ideas and bills that don't take away peoples' service but could help us 
at least try to convince the bond markets we are paying attention to 
the debt and actually cut the waste and fraud and cut some of the 
spending and realign some of the programs where we would make peoples' 
lives better. But that would be hard, and we would have to say no to a 
bunch of lobbyists, and we are scared to death to do it.
  So those of you with kids, Mr. Speaker, give them a hug tonight and 
apologize to them for me--as I am going to do with my 3-year-old who 
graduated the first part of preschool today--for what I have done to 
his economic future. These numbers are so ugly. We have also done it to 
your retirement.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to find some other place to be angry, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.

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