[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 22, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H5169-H5172]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRUTH ABOUT MATH
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr.
Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.)
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, let's try something I have never done
before, but I also need to sort of lock something down. Mr. Speaker, if
there is anyone from your staff watching--and we said we would make it
public--
[[Page H5170]]
my team and myself were made a promise today that when we get back we
are going to sit down with a couple of the committee chairs and some of
my joint economic economists because we have been sitting on pieces of
legislation for over a year to cut spending and borrowing, without
removing services.
There will be lobbyists who will yell and scream. There will be
activists who make their money. Mr. Speaker pro tempore, over and over
and over around here, we spent the last few months--as a matter of
fact, I came behind this microphone probably half a dozen times talking
about waste and fraud and walking through all the things we found.
How many bills have we moved through here that actually take those
things on? Turns out it is harder than you think because the fraud, as
it turns out, it is fairly easy to identify. It is a little hard to
stop. Often, it is money that has already gone out the door, so we have
to hunt someone down, try to collect the money, and put someone in
jail.
When you hear the term ``waste,'' it is often our fault. We designed
a program that has leakage, or certain companies have found ways to
take advantage of it, certain bureaucracies.
I will give you a simple example. This is going to make sense in a
moment. In New York City, in the last 5 years the number one job
creator turns out to be a Medicaid program for home visiting. Think of
that. The number one job creator for half a decade in New York City is
a Medicaid program. Even when the leftist Democrat Governor of New York
says, yeah, it is fraud, maybe we could do something together.
We have worked over and over and over to try to write bills. Many of
them are very uncomfortable because they are complex. They require
changing things in what we call entitlements. They are moral, and they
are necessary. I hope I am not a fool.
One year ago, when we actually did part of the One Big Beautiful Bill
Act, the Family Tax Cut Act, yes, we had an obligation to extend the
tax policy and do some of the pro-growth things. When we came back,
many of us thought we had negotiated an agreement that when we did the
second reconciliation bill, we were going to start to save the future
of this country, save the future of the economy, convince the bond
market we weren't going to continue to borrow ourselves into oblivion.
It turns out--and this isn't solely the Speaker's fault--it was
really hard to convince a lot of our Members how difficult it is to go
home and tell the truth about math.
Mr. Speaker, if your staff is out there listening, I expect you and
this institution to keep your promise to our team, that we are going to
take these bills seriously, we are going to bring in the leadership
from the committees, and we are going to pound it out how we move them
forward. There is a reason--I am sorry, I don't mean to sound like a
melodramatic jerk.
{time} 2040
How many of you get our daily debt? The Joint Economic Committee
actually built a system where every single day, every workday, we reach
into the Treasury's management system where they have these charts and
graphs, and we capture what was borrowed today, what was brought to
market today, and what was sold today.
Who in this room, the handful of us who are here and hopefully the
thousand televisions we are on, understand over the last 12 months--if
I do the last 12 months average, $93,763 is what we are borrowing every
second. Every second, we are borrowing over $93,000.
I understand some of these numbers bounce up and down because we also
had some refunding issues after the last debt ceiling issue a year ago,
but in the last 12 months, we, as a government, have borrowed $2.948
trillion if you just want to do this fiscal year.
Here is the publicly sold debt, and over here is the money we borrow
from the trust funds, which we do pay interest back. We have to
intellectually be honest: It is borrowing.
Often we quote what we borrowed from the public because that is in
the public bond market, but when we borrow from the trust funds--Social
Security, Medicare, railroad, retirement, everything else. We pay an
interest. We owe it back.
We are now at $2.022 trillion in borrowing this fiscal year. This
total year, the original projections were $1.6 trillion, $1.7 trillion.
We are heading to borrowing $2.3 trillion. I know it is hard to see 12
zeros. I know no one cares, but just understand, this is really crappy.
Maybe we all understand this number. At the current rate of total
borrowing--remember, net borrowing is borrowing from the public. Gross
borrowing is borrowing from the public and from the trust funds. Anyone
want to take a guess how many days it takes us to borrow another
trillion dollars? It is 123 days.
Every 123 days, we are ticking off another trillion dollars. Total
U.S. debt as of today is $39.660 trillion. By the end of this summer
work period, whatever we want to call it, we are going to be at $40
trillion.
Doesn't this make anyone pucker up, or is the joke that is often said
here, never near a microphone because we would be an idiot to say in
front of a microphone, no one ever gets unelected by spending too much
money because the public wants it.
In 6 years, when you are on Social Security and you are getting a 22
to 24 percent cut in your check, and we double poverty of seniors, 7
years from now when we double the number of baby boomers who live on
the street, maybe some of this will make sense, that we should have
done something much sooner, but math is math.
Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons I am a little exercised this week--
and you have been in conference with those things. I accept I have been
a bit of a jerk. I am just trying to find some way to be heard. I have
been doing the same damn thing behind this microphone for 15 years, and
it has only gotten worse.
Something is wrong when--I am number four in Ways and Means. I chair
Oversight in Ways and Means. I chair the Joint Economic Committee. We
have a handful of Ph.D. economists who are just smart, yet I walk into
a room of my brothers and sisters, Democrats, even Republicans, with my
charts and almost get booed because we don't want to hear it.
We are going to bring down this Republic, and it is not going to be
some mob coming over the border. It is going to be our own fiscal
insanity.
Remember, in about 25, 26 months, the majority of our spending, not
tax collection, spending, will go to our brothers and sisters who are
65 and up. We are functionally an insurance company with an Army.
Last year, for every dollar we took in taxes, we spent $1.43. If you
do the basic math, and forgive me, I did this off the top of my head.
If I make a mistake, send me an angry text like everyone else. I think
right now, so far this fiscal year, for every dollar we are taking in,
we are spending $1.47.
I am sorry the staff has to sit here and hear an idiot like me
constantly coming back up behind this microphone and saying the same
thing week after week, but what do we do to cut through?
I am going to show a couple boards here. If you are the public and
run into a Member of Congress or someone running for Congress, look at
them and don't say, what more are you going to give me? I want more
money. Ask them, how are you going to save the country? Because about a
week ago, our team met with, I think it was the Penn Wharton Budget
Model, and the paperwork and the discussion I had with them after, I
walked out of the room and my stomach hurt.
They had numbers where in 14 years we hit a wall. They had numbers
saying 12 to 14 years--I am going to show you that I have it even
sooner on some of our data--interest is the number one expense of this
government. It surpasses Social Security. There was a discussion if we
go with current policy--and we are going to talk about that, current
policy, not current law, because this is the scam we keep doing here.
We keep extending our spending and extending these things. The
current policy in 14 years, the United States actually can't sell any
more bonds. We have hit the wall. We hit a debt spiral. I have been
here 16 years.
All right. Let's do this. Let's run through these boards.
Everyone has seen this over and over because, traditionally, I start
with this one. This is just the pie chart. If you
[[Page H5171]]
see what is in blue, that is what I, as a Member of Congress, typically
get to vote on. Do you see the red? That is actually on autopilot.
I need you to understand Social Security is the number one spend.
Interest is the number two spend. Medicare is the number three spend.
Medicaid and the ObamaCare subsidies are the number four spend. Defense
is number five.
How many times do we get liberals saying if we just cut defense, we
will balance everything? No. Interest will be bigger than all of
defense this year.
It is not that hard. When we talk about these reconciliation bills,
and now we are talking about possibly doing a fourth one, and that is
what I am banking my sanity on is most of this red--now, you don't get
to do anything on interest. Interest we owe.
Remember, this is net interest. Gross interest is actually closer to
like--sorry. We will be close to $1.280 trillion because we owe the
interest back to the trust funds.
The other parts here are what we call mandatory. We owe Medicare. We
made a deal. We owe Social Security. We made a deal. Does that mean we
can't do things to revolutionize the cost of healthcare and Medicare
and make it more accessible, more efficient, more price effective?
When we think, we actually will spend $350 billion over the next 10
years in duplicative MRI scans, X-rays, ultrasounds, CTs. How about
this crazy idea of: Hey, I got a scan. Put it on your phone so when you
go to your next doctor, they hit the button and it is there on the
screen.
There will be an army of lobbyists who work for companies that make
money on the duplicative scans, and they will fight us and embarrass
us. Maybe they will hire social media stars. I tried do a reform and a
fix on some of the things we saw from the MedPAC report where it was
costing us hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, not fraud.
The Department of Justice may actually have an opinion on this one.
It was on Medicare part C. We call it Medicare Advantage. The next day,
some marketing firm defending one of the insurance companies was hiring
social media stars to beat the crap out of me for talking about trying
to fix the bleeding of Medicare Advantage.
That is one of the reasons we get so cowed around here. We are trying
to explain why we are trying to save these systems, and there is so
much money in that waste. Part of that money goes to beat the crap out
of us to stop us from reforming government.
{time} 2050
Let's actually walk through something, just a simple concept. A week
or two ago, I did a presentation here showing you the academic
literature and the things that our economists have worked on showing
that government borrowing has made your mortgage one point higher.
Today, when you go out and try to get a new 30-year loan and it is,
what, 6.7 today, it would be 5.7 if we weren't grabbing so damn much
money out of the marketplace.
We are partially responsible, if not substantially responsible, for
affordability in America. But when we go home and do a townhall or
meetings, it is person after person that wants more money from us.
Maybe Congress is just basically representing the interests of the
public. They don't care about the bankruptcy, the stress, those things.
Technically, governments don't go bankrupt, but basically what we are
going to have to do is monetize this debt.
Don't laugh at me. My wife and I are the same age. We have a 4-year-
old boy. He was here a couple of weeks ago, cute as can be, just turned
4. For his fourth birthday, he wanted to go to work with Daddy. We need
104 percent of his lifetime earnings, every dime he will ever make in
his life, plus another 4 percent, just to pay for Federal Government
pensions: Social Security, Medicare, military. That is 104 percent.
This is what we have done to our kids.
Now, part of it is because we have so few children and so many of us
that have gray hair. It is called baby boomers. It is just math.
So I'm trying to explain a simple concept. We do more borrowing and
spending, but we also have this thing called leakage. That is where we
have misdesigned programs, and outsiders, businesses, insurance
companies, bureaucracies have figured out how to bleed those programs
because we screwed up on their design and haven't been willing to go
back and turn around and fix them.
We end up having to borrow more money. When we borrow more money, we
push up interest rates. When we push up interest rates, we have just
made everything less affordable. We have created this doom loop. The
only way to break it is to convince those markets we are not just going
to keep borrowing like crazy.
Then we have these charts, and I keep trying to explain this. There
is this concept--it is a big word--interest fragility. Interest goes
up, and it beats the ever living crap out of us.
Think about what has happened today. Today, I believe the 10-year
bond closed at 4.65, 4.67. It is functioning at pretty close to the
highest it has been in a year and some of the highest it has been in
many years.
Let's play a game here. Let's assume that it is 60 basis points, 70
basis points higher than the average we were having before. Remember,
you are going to keep having people say: Well, the reason the interest
rates are up is because of the war in Iran. They were ticking up before
that because of the worldwide battle for capital. Other countries are
also bingeing on debt. We have data centers and other things coming to
market bingeing on debt.
We are all competing with each other. Because when you borrow money,
you are borrowing from the world's pool of savings. It could be your
savings account, your pension, a family in China. We all put our moneys
into our banks and savings institutions and investment institutions.
That is what is referred to as the world's savings pool. Ray Dalio
talks about this repeatedly.
The problem is our need for the savings or the need for the borrowing
is now starting to outstrip the world's excess capital. When that
happens, interest rates go up.
When you take a look at what we are doing right now, for the fun of
it, let's just say it is only 60 basis points and it is over the next
10 years. Just that bond interest rate we have had recently over the
last couple of months, it is $2 trillion of additional interest over
the 10 years.
It is called interest fragility, little bits of interest increases,
and you are basically borrowing $40 trillion. That little bit kicks us
in the head, and that is how you start to head toward that interest
debt spiral.
Let's actually dig into this: 30-year Treasury yields are approaching
their longest stretch above 5 percent since 2007. It is here. It is not
some theory of mine. You know, Schweikert is an idiot. He is going to
talk about interest fragility. No one cares. Ta-da, it is here.
I can show you some interest rate future contracts out there. Jamie
Dimon, I think it was yesterday--and I am reading a third-party
article--is basically saying he would not buy long-term U.S. debt, the
tens, twenties, thirties. Should that tell us something? Because
expectation is interest rates are going to go up, because when interest
rates go up, the existing bond crashes in value.
You have got to understand. It is here. It has begun. If we as a body
don't start to convince the bond market that we are starting to get
control of our ravenous borrowing, that bond market is going to run
this country. Because--what was it--Carville basically said in the
nineties, talked about how the bond market basically shaped policy.
Our debt is dramatically bigger today, and our competition for
borrowing--how do I put this?
Mr. Speaker, how many of us believe the United States is the most
creditworthy country in the world? We have the most liquidity in the
markets. We are the reserve currency, though we are starting to lose
that because of the way we treat our currency and the way we borrow.
When Greece, Spain, and these sorts of countries can sell a 10-year
bond cheaper than the United States--Greece can sell it substantially
less expensive. So can Spain. When Italy can sell a 10-year bond
cheaper than the United States, should we start to worry?
Last I looked on one of my industrialized countries list we were like
number 13 on the credit stack.
[[Page H5172]]
You have got to understand what is going on here. This is one of the
ones that just stresses me out. Maybe I shouldn't drink so much coffee,
and maybe I should double up on my hypertension medicine.
But outside of that, let's take a look here: Gross interest will
surpass Social Security in 2037. This is 10 budget years from now. Our
math is now saying--now, when we say gross interest, that is the
interest we are paying back to Social Security, Medicare, all of the
trust funds, and what we have to sell to the public. This is baseline
policy, not current law, baseline policies. We have been doing it. I
need you to think about something. This is with no wars. This is with
no pandemics. This is with no disasters. In functionally 10 years
interest is our number one expense of the United States Government.
Someone out there help me have the language to move people's hearts
and their intellects. This is terrifying. I know we are not supposed to
tell our voters this because we are supposed to happy-talk about how
much more we are going to give them.
In 6 years and 2 months, the Medicare trust fund is gone. If you are
in healthcare, your hospital is getting a 12 percent cut. How many are
going to get to see their doctor at that hospital?
During that time, the spend on Medicare goes from $1 trillion to $2
trillion. It is demographics.
One or two more boards and then you will be rid of me.
More than 30 percent of the Federal revenues will go towards interest
in 9 budget years. We have actually done a stressor on this. So the
math right now--and this is sort of baseline policy--in 9 budget years,
you pay a dollar of taxes, and 31 cents of that--so this is all taxes.
This isn't just income tax. It is not just tariffs. It is all taxes,
and 31 cents of that dollar--and in my model because I had a couple of
other stressors and slightly higher interest rates built in, but this
was using the CBO baseline interest rates, which were already above, it
was 33 percent.
{time} 2100
Are you ready in 9 budget years to have 30 to 33 cents out of every
dollar just paying interest? This isn't crazy. This is actually already
in our numbers. It is just that no one dives into them and digs through
and goes, oh, dear Heaven, how could this be our country?
We are going to avoid actually having the conversation until we get
back and the Speaker will keep his promise to our team that have been
working on this for a couple of years now of optionality. Yes, it will
drive the lobbyists insane. It will drive some of the groups insane and
some of the bureaucracies insane because they don't give a damn about
the future of this country. What they care about is their current
paycheck. I am going to save the future of this country, or at least
give it one more shot before I leave here.
These two are really, really important and absolutely dystopian, and
I know it is hard to read.
Interest costs are projected to eventually consume more than half of
all revenues. Not tax revenues, not income tax. All revenues. But here
is the punch line. I know this chart is a little hard to read, so I
don't know if the camera can pick it up.
When we are saying the 50 percent, it is just the red baseline. If
interest rates were to go up to 5.2 percent--Mr. Speaker, what is the
30-year bond at right now? It is pretty much at 5.2 percent. I know
that is not our blended rate, but you see the elevation.
At current interest rate models, which is actually at 4.2 percent--
which I believe we are now well above because the 2-year is at 4.2
percent.
Functionally, let's take a look here, and it looks like by about
2041, which sounds like a long time--it is about to become the 2027
budget year. It is not that long from here--it is half of all revenue.
If interest rates go up, this is actually the collapse of your
Republic because you will owe more interest than every tax receipt,
every tariff, every corporate tax that everything we sell can produce.
The interest load takes us over. It is called the death spiral, and we
are not that far away.
Some of this starts to hit where you are hitting 80 percent, 90
percent in 14 years from now. You have to understand that those higher
interest rates actually just brutalize us as a country.
Mr. Speaker, and to the team, last board. I do wish you were allowed
to applause and be happy for these things.
This is Federal interest costs under various interest rate scenarios.
Look, this is a little more the way--if you and I were playing
economists, we actually don't do dollar amounts. We do percentages of
GDP because the GDP can grow. But often it is inflation so when we
actually start to look at the actual numbers, we actually, right now,
estimate this year's borrowing--now, think of this.
The Treasury Secretary, the Budget Director, our own budget team, we
all said that we are going to--actually, hundreds of us, I think,
actually cosponsored a piece of legislation. We are going to only
borrow 3 percent of GDP because we are going to grow at 3 percent of
GDP, except we have a problem. As of today, interest is at 3.1 percent
to 3.2 percent of GDP--not borrowing. Interest is already over that
target.
Does anyone pay attention to the actual math, or do we just tell each
other stories? But when you start to see the gradual interest rates, we
are actually starting to hit a world where I am believing a model where
a decade from now, we could be having 11 percent of the entire economy
just be interest.
Remember, CBO's numbers from the beginning of the year--and the
numbers are worse today--had us, in 9 budget years, total borrowing in
2036 being $3.1 trillion, $2.1 trillion of that just being interest,
and the math is worse today.
We are not going to pay it off, but we can stabilize it. By
stabilizing it, the growth of the economy, those things, we have to get
through the baby boomers. It is just math. It is not personal. I am not
saying something to hurt someone's feelings. It is math, and I know
Congress and much of our politics now are a math-free, fact-free zone.
The bond market will live in facts, and, eventually, it is going to
kick us in the head unless we can do some tough things to convince it
that we are creditworthy.
Mr. Speaker, I am yielding back because I think I used my half hour.
I apologize if I hurt someone's feelings. Please send me a note. I
already have prewritten apology notes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________