[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 138 (Tuesday, September 1, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H5418-H5423]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1940
REALITY OF THE MATH
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr.
Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of
the majority leader.)
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I wish I had the magic ability to find
the powerful words to try to explain the difficulty of the finances,
the reality of the math, and the threat to the Republic, but we are
going to try again.
How do I get my fellow Members, the public, the administration, and
the
[[Page H5419]]
people around me to basically look each other in the eyes and say: Here
is the reality of what is going on.
Think of this: In the last 5 years, U.S. debt has gone up by one-
third. As of, I think it is the last day or so, the 30-year bond is at
the highest interest rate in 25 years. We will borrow $1 trillion every
130 days. So every 130 days, we are clicking off another $1 trillion.
Mr. Speaker, think about this: This coming January, we are going to
hit the debt ceiling again. It was only a couple of years ago that we
actually raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, and we have already
almost burned through it. I think as of yesterday, we were borrowing
$89,980 every second.
We are going to walk through some of the charts and some of the math,
and I beg of anyone who is crazy enough to watch this, is detailed
enough, is actually caring enough to watch this, I need you to open up
your mind and bathe in the math with me, not the folklore.
Let's actually start to walk through some of this. I have used this
chart over and over to sort of open up the discussion.
The numbers are actually already out of date because we are this far
into the 2026 fiscal year, and the math is actually uglier than we
expected it to be, but the reason you should see this: See the blue
area here? That is all your Member of Congress gets to vote on unless
we have a reconciliation budget. We have been using the reconciliation
budgets, functionally, to spend more money because of the dysfunction
in the U.S. Senate.
When you start to look over here, Medicare, Social Security,
Medicaid, other things that are in the formulas, and interest, I need
everyone to understand something: Social Security is the number one
spend in our government and probably will come in about $1.6 trillion.
Interest may come in as high as $1.3 trillion this year, becoming the
second biggest expenditure in our government.
Medicare will be about $1.1 trillion.
Medicaid will come in at about $1 trillion, Medicaid and ObamaCare
subsidies.
Defense, the thing that is in the Constitution, will come in at
number five. Your government is an insurance company with an army.
I beg of you to think about the math. If you are one of the people
saying that it is all waste and fraud, yes, there is a bunch of that,
but it is a fraction of this total. The primary driver, if you just
listen to those numbers, when interest will be $1.3 trillion this
year--and I am going to show you a couple of charts--in a decade, 9
budget years, interest will be the majority of the borrowing. We will
be borrowing money to have enough cash to pay the interest.
I have done speech after speech behind these microphones talking
about interest fragility, and it seems no one knows what the hell I am
talking about.
Have you paid attention to what is happening in the bond markets over
the last couple of weeks? It is happening all over the industrialized
world because we are all on a borrowing binge. Interest rates are
starting to move up to points where it is absolutely uncomfortable.
About 1\1/2\ months ago, I did a presentation here and showed you how
you want to deal with affordability on housing, and I showed you the
academic paper that basically said that interest rates are a full
percent higher in the United States than they need to be because of the
borrowing from the Federal Government.
If we don't figure out a way to start to convince the bond market--I
am going to say this multiple times. If we don't start to convince the
bond market that we are going to start being fiscally responsible, the
future starts to look really ugly.
Let's actually walk through a couple of these things. Have you ever
heard someone start to talk about the death spiral? Look, it is not
that hard. You borrow lots of money. You basically have to refinance
it, so you are constantly subject to whatever the new interest rates
are, and I am going to show you some charts that show much of the
refinancing--because we have to refinance $10 trillion to $11 trillion
this year, and a lot of that was originally borrowed at much lower
interest rates. It is not only the borrowing of today.
You are going to borrow $2.2 trillion to $2.3 trillion publicly to
raise some $100 billion internally. That is where you borrow money from
the trust fund, Social Security, Medicare, which those trust funds are
gone, functionally, in 6 years. The $10 trillion that has to be
refinanced is now subject to the higher interest rates of today.
That is interest fragility because you start hitting an expectation
where those interest rates drive you up, so you have to borrow more
money and borrow more money. You basically end up in the death spiral
because now you are borrowing money, and this even happened last year.
We had a couple of months where we had to borrow money to have enough
cash to pay for our borrowing.
Does anyone care? Are we actually allowed to talk about it? Is it
just because around the hallways around this place, there are armies of
lobbyists, armies of people showing up in our offices, and they
functionally want one of two things: Give me more money or regulate,
control, push my competition so I have sort of no one to compete with.
Washington, D.C., is a protection racket. It is a protection racket
for business models and bureaucracies that don't want to reform, don't
want to compete, don't want to deal with that economic model we all
learned in high school, creative destruction, where someone does
something better.
Do you remember Blockbuster Video? If they had shown up here, maybe
if they had hired enough lobbyists, we would have slowed down the
internet so that Netflix wouldn't have put them out of business. That
is how perverse this place has become. Where are my free market
brothers and sisters?
Look, some of these are going to be really thick, but it is important
to understand. The interest rate movements, do you see these spikes out
here? These are all the different countries--U.S., this one is Germany,
Japan, U.K.
Understand that the industrialized countries, we all have a
demographic problem. We don't have enough young people, and we have
borrowed stunning amounts of money to maintain the benefits. All over
the world--and the reason I am showing this chart is that if one of
these countries, like Japan, was having trouble a couple of weeks ago
and starts to hit a cascade event--I know there is probably no one out
there who actually paid attention and remembers things like the Tequila
Crisis of the 1990s. Cascade events start to shoot up those interest
rates, and when you are carrying a total of $40 trillion in debt, $32
trillion to $33 trillion of that we have sold, $10 trillion of it we
have to refinance every year, do you understand the danger you have put
this country in?
We come behind these microphones all day long. We talk about the
things we are angry about, worried about, this and that, what is really
good politically, you know, set off some dopamine hits. I know this
isn't what we like to talk about in our elections.
It is also the thing that will bring this Republic down if we don't
get our act together. Let's actually have some real fun here.
An increase in dependency on the market-based--the reason I am
showing you this chart is one of the things that is happening around
the world and been happening to U.S. debt for the last couple of years
is a lot of the Federal Reserve banks of different countries have been
sort of holding their amount of U.S. debt steady as we are still
borrowing more money, meaning more and more of our debt is being
purchased by bond houses, trading houses.
If you actually are someone who is crazy enough to watch bond futures
and how many basis points they move, this is one of the things that
should scare you. The debt is being purchased by those who trade it,
pledge it, buy options on it, sell it.
{time} 1950
There is an argument that we have much more fragility. When the
central Bank of Japan or Germany or someone else buys U.S. debt, they
are holding it basically as an offset to their own currency, and it is
stable. We don't have to worry about them throwing it into the market.
A whole portion of our debt today is in play, so those of you who
used to say: I don't want other countries buying our debt--I can show
you chart after chart. We buy their stuff. If they
[[Page H5420]]
are willing to buy our debt, it pushes down our interest rates, and if
it is their central banks buying it, it actually makes our debt more
stable.
Let's actually start to understand how dangerous what is going on is.
U.S. 10-year yields are among the highest in the G10. I will tell you,
today Greece can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than the United States.
Start to understand this: The only country right now in our 10-year
bond as a peak of the G10 is Great Britain. They pay a higher interest
rate. We hit 4.8 today. We are the red chart here. When you start to
realize Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands,
Switzerland, Japan--but Spain and Greece also are selling 10-year bonds
cheaper than the United States. I believe we are like 13 or 14 in the
debt stack of industrialized countries. Meaning, the market has decided
they are more creditworthy than the United States even though we are
the reserve currency of the world.
Doesn't that set off some alarm bells to anyone with an intellect?
So, more charts. Let's see if I am making a point yet. U.S. 10-year
yields are among the highest in the G10. You start to take a look at
what is going on, and we are up here. You must understand it is not
only the bonds we can sell, but the interest rates carry. There is a
risk premium. In the bond market we call it a term premium on U.S.
debt. Shouldn't this actually drive us crazy?
If you actually look at the compounding piling of new debt being
sold--remember, in the United States this year--and we have a fairly
decent economy--for every dollar we are taking in in tax collection, we
are spending $1.40. It is actually better than last year. Last year for
every $1 we took in, we spent $1.43. Mr. Speaker, $1 in, $1.40 out?
Come on, people.
Yet, I see polling. None of this is an election issue because we have
a public that wants things. I am sorry. I have done all these budget
presentations in my own State. I love my State. I represent one of the
greatest districts on Earth, but I have even done some in other places
around the country. The number of times I will spend 45 minutes with
these slides showing what is going on, showing data that a child born
today--so I have a 4-year-old we have adopted. It is the greatest joy.
My wife and I, I cannot express how blessed we are. My little boy who
just turned 4 about 3 weeks ago, we need 104 percent of his lifetime
earnings just to pay the pensions of the Federal Government.
Is that moral? Is that what our country has become is basically screw
the next generation? I want every dime I can get my hands on? This is
the morality of what this country is. There are dozens and dozens and
dozens of things we could be doing, but this game of sitting here and
saying, well, I am going to save a million dollars here, because I am
going to be speaking here for almost an hour. During that hour we are
going to borrow about $320 million.
We will often have debates here where during the time of the debate
we will have borrowed substantially more than everything we debated
trying to save. We are borrowing about $7.5 billion a day--$7.5 billion
a day. We have had some days where we are borrowing $8 billion. Some
days we are borrowing $7 billion. It is close to $90,000 every second.
And yet, time after time after time when I do those presentations
around the country, the first hand that goes up is someone that says: I
want more money. I want more benefits; I want more this.
A few years ago I did a presentation on the debt and deficit and
demographics. Remember, the primary driver of our debt is our
demographics. I would love to blame the Democrats. The things they did
in the Inflation Reduction Act now we are still paying the price for
because there was a report a couple days ago about what is happening in
Medicare part D and the explosion of some of the costs there. It is
great. And we have done things also. But it is demographics.
We as a country basically, and the entire industrialized world, we
haven't had enough children. We have functionally gone 30, 40 years
without having enough children.
So think of this: In the next year or two we will have fewer people
under 18 than we had 20, 25 years ago but double the number of people
65 and up. God knows, I will be one of them. In some of the reports, I
think--one I got from Manhattan Institute a couple years ago--was
basically saying for every dollar I will have put into Medicare I am
going to get about $6, $7 back in spending. And most of Medicare is
borrowed--excuse me, most of Medicare comes from the general fund.
This is the reality.
Are we allowed to tell the truth about math or at this moment is
there someone on a blog saying: I am going make crap up about math
because it hurts my feelings. It is not about feelings. It is what
comes off of a calculator.
So let's actually walk through a little bit more there. Estimated
annualized cost of refinancing. This is something that is really
important. If you can't convince the debt markets that we are
creditworthy, that we belong having lower interest rates--all this has
to be refinanced, and we are refinancing it now at higher interest
rates. This is what we were borrowing before. Remember back in 2021
during parts of COVID or even a bit after the 2008 financial debacle,
interest rates stayed very low and we spent and borrowed and borrowed
and borrowed.
Guess what. We have to refinance it now.
Now, often we are refinancing things that were coming in at half of a
percent, 1 percent, and now we are coming in at 5 percent, 4.5 percent.
Remember, today's 10-year bond hit 4.8 today. The bond futures, if you
actually go and look at it right now, are predicted to be over 5
percent by the end of the year, on the 10-year.
You do realize what that means? That means over 7 percent mortgage
rates on a 30-year debt.
Does anyone care?
I know these types of charts are almost impossible to read and
impossible to see, so come back over here. Do you see the light purple
compared to the darker purple? All I am trying to show you there is
that most of the future financing is driven by interest, not the actual
debt.
The CBO number for 2036, 9 budget years from now--and I am going to
show you the number that CBO gave us back in February is wrong because
of interest rates moving up. But back then in February, the number was,
in 2036, 9 budget years from now, you will have a $3.1 trillion debt.
Mr. Speaker, $2.1 trillion of it was just interest. Mr. Speaker, $1
trillion was actual structural deficit.
What happens in a world where the primary driver of your debt is
actually paying the interest on previous spending? The moral question I
want you to think about is: Is borrowing a tax hike? I am serious. We
have spent money. We are obligated now to pay interest on it. We are
pulling that cash out of the economy so it doesn't go into the
investment of you buying a house or a new business or those things. Is
it a tax hike? I would argue it is a tax hike with interest.
Now back to reality. The primary driver of U.S. debt and the debt
from the entire industrialized world is our demographics.
{time} 2000
Here is where the numbers need to start sinking in of how difficult
this math actually is. At current interest rates, the deficit grows to
$3.8 trillion in 9 years. Remember a moment ago, I told you the CBO
from February said 3.1 in 2036, which is 9 budget years from now? Now
it is 3.8.
David, where did $700 billion come from? It came from just the
changes in interest rates.
Do you somehow think magically the interest rates are about to go
down? It is not in the futures market. It is not happening in any of
the other countries. Look at what is happening in Japan. I believe
Japan today hit interest rates they hadn't seen in decades and decades
and decades. Maybe the entire world is tired of giving those who are
bingeing on debt a free ride.
Understand, these numbers should scare the hell out of you because
you are looking at a world where, in 2036--so 9 budget years--we take
in $8.3 trillion. Hey, yea. However, we spend $12.17 trillion, and that
is based on today's models.
Will there be a war? Will there be another pandemic? Will there be
another disaster?
Think about what is going on at this moment. I was in the Grand
Canyon this last weekend and watched the
[[Page H5421]]
floods. Is the super El Nino going to require spending? The last big
one like this, we spent $1 trillion around the world in damage.
Are we going to ever have anything like that? Are we going to have
another earthquake? Are we going to have any fires?
There is this concept of fragility both in interest rates and when
you run, pretending that everything is going to be fine--we are just
going to follow the law as it is. When you see CBO numbers, remember,
Congressional Budget Office is required to follow certain rules. That
is one of the great scams here.
Do you follow what we expect to happen or do we say, hey, remember
the paygo? The rule is: Hey, if the spending stops in 5 years, you
don't have to count it against future deficits, so we do that with
things. Hey, we are going to just do this, and then, boom, it is going
to go away. You notice that it never happens.
Please, I have one or two more boards here that I want you to
memorize if you care. If you actually look at current interest rates,
debt to GDP grows to 162 percent in 10 years. If you do total debt--
remember, this is total debt--so you are over 100 percent of debt to
GDP.
Remember, the U.S. economy is basically estimated to be about $32 to
$33 trillion. Right now, we are close to $33 trillion in publicly sold
debt. That is when we sell it to your pension plans, sell it to your
retirement account, sell it to a nice family on the other side of the
world, sell it to another sovereign reserve bank.
However, if you do also the internal borrowing--when we borrow money
from the trust funds, we have to pay it back with interest. The rest of
the world actually calculates their debt that way.
When you hear us say, well, we are only at 101 or 102 percent of
debt, that is publicly sold debt, not debt we owe. We are at 127
percent right now. In 9 budget years, we will be at 162 percent.
Now, here is why that should set off alarm bells. I am going to give
this to you in two ways. Understand, when you pay your taxes on your
income, here is what we call the FICA tax, this is your payroll tax,
this is the Social Security tax, this is your Medicare tax, this is the
unemployment tax, this is disability. Those are designated for certain
uses. The other part of your income tax, the corporate income tax,
tariffs, excise taxes, those things are over here.
If I say I segregate the things that are going functionally to your
retirement and your unemployment, segregate those, of the other types
of taxes this year, 29 percent will just pay interest. This year. In 9
budget years, 10 years from now, 2036, almost half of nonpayroll
taxes--once again, your Social Security, your Medicare, unemployment,
those things--almost half of the taxes this country will collect will
be just interest.
Is anyone starting to see the problem? This is what you call interest
fragility. This is where you start to burn down. This is where you are
chasing your tail, where you are actually having to raise taxes or
dramatically cut spending just to be able to cover your bonded
indebtedness.
How many care? Well, the bond market finally has woken up and is
starting to care.
Let's actually walk through--this next one, if this doesn't scare you
half to death, you aren't listening.
We took a look. AEI did a model, Columbia, University of Minnesota,
the Penn Wharton Budget Model basically built models saying, hey, when
you hit this level of debt to the size of your economy, the interest
you are producing makes it so you hit a death spiral. Basically, their
models crash.
We have models crashing at 154 percent. Do you remember the last
chart I just showed you? It was maybe two charts ago. It said in 9
budget years, in 2036, you actually have over 160 percent of debt to
GDP. You already have models saying we have crashed, the economy no
longer works.
I hope it is wrong, but I need you to understand, this isn't decades
from now. This isn't your great-grandkids who are going to figure out
how you screwed--excuse me--what you handed them. This is now. This is
in the next decade. What the hell is wrong with us?
Let's save that here because this is the point I am trying to make.
This is here safe, we basically have enough cash flow to cover our
interest and our obligations and still be a decent credit risk.
However, when you start to hit 2035, you have enough models--how long
is 2035 from now?
In 2035, you are basically walking into what is technically referred
to as a crisis zone. That is when any damn thing, something goes wrong
on the other side of the world--we have a hurricane, we have an
earthquake, this and that, the credit markets, the debt markets start
to get nervous, start to raise our costs.
Remember that joke you have heard over and over? How did you go
bankrupt? Slowly at first, and then suddenly very fast.
Understand how bad these numbers are. In 2050, we are basically what
we refer to as the default zone. You have such a debt and interest
obligation that you have functionally no capacity. This number isn't
even 2036, it is 2035 the models say we start to step into the danger
zone.
This is somewhat assuming that today's interest rates don't continue
to go up on us.
Those of us who are children of the 1970s and 1980s, today's interest
rates are still low compared to that. My first house, I had a 12
percent mortgage on it. Yet, I try and try and try to do things. Let's
have a deficit commission, let's deal with it.
David, we can't talk about that, voters will get cranky. The voters
want free stuff.
Really? You are willing to burn down the Republic? Does anyone do
math?
For my liberal friends here who say: Why don't we just raise taxes?
Go onto the internet, there is this amazing thing called the internet.
Go look up the Manhattan Institute. Look up Riedl, an economist, who
did a great paper about a year and a half ago, basically took every tax
hike that the Bernie Sanders and the Warrens of the world and shows it
basically will raise about 1.5 to 1.78 percent of GDP.
I am going to say this multiple times, Mr. Speaker. Just to cover the
deficit, you need 7.7 percent of GDP. If you don't have a 7.7 percent
growth in GDP right now, you cannot keep up with how fast the debt is
growing.
Interest this year, interest this year just will be 3.2, maybe 3.3
percent of the entire economy, so that interest is growing faster than
this economy is.
However, Mr. Speaker, we are really not supposed to tell people the
truth about that, so I beg of you, everyone who just heard that, please
wipe it out of your memory.
{time} 2010
Mr. Speaker, if this doesn't terrify you, then you are not paying
attention or you don't do basic math.
I beg of you, Mr. Speaker, net interest is a share of revenue and GDP
in 2056.
Now, why is Schweikert saying: Hey, that is 30 years from now?
I would love to sell bonds that are long into the curve. Mr. Speaker,
you buy a 30-year bond today, did you notice over the last couple weeks
we have had a little bit of a problem?
We have had the Treasury basically offering to do a twist. Twist is
where you borrow short term and spend it over here by buying longer
term bonds to try to create a shortage there so the interest rate goes
down. When there is demand for a bond, then the price goes down. When
there is not enough demand, Mr. Speaker, then you have to pay a higher
interest rate.
In 2056, that is 30 years from now, the calculations from the
Treasury itself, so the Treasury is trying to sell you a 30-year bond,
the Treasury itself says that we are over 250 percent of debt to GDP.
I am going to go out and buy a 30-year bond today because I trust
this place that we are going to get our fiscal act together.
When we get down to the last couple of boards here, we are going to
start to talk about what fiscal consolidation is. That is because
people keep throwing out these fancy words and don't explain what it
means.
I beg of you, Mr. Speaker, take a look at this chart. In 30 years, my
4-year-old son will be how old?
Thirty-four. It is not hard math.
Hopefully, he will just really be getting his life and his economics
going. Hopefully, starting to consider having a family, the things that
I dream of for him.
[[Page H5422]]
Mr. Speaker, 11.3 percent of the entire economy will be just interest
from the Federal Government. Noninterest will be another 22 percent of
Federal spending. Add that up in your head, Mr. Speaker. We are
basically saying: Hey, we are going to have to have 35-some percent of
the entire economy, 34 percent of the entire economy will just be
Federal spending.
However, every model we have basically says that we are only going to
be about 18, 19 percent of the entire economy taking in taxes.
Does anyone see a math problem?
Time after time after time I have been here, and we play tough. We
negotiate for a deal. In 2011, we were going to actually do
sequestration. Then the very next day, I cannot tell you how many
Senators said: David, we need to break the sequestration. I need more
spending on something. I want a new aircraft carrier. I want this. I
want that.
Take a look at the number of times we have done debt deals, Mr.
Speaker. Do you notice the curve still goes up?
It is because spending is an addiction, and it buys us votes. It buys
us love, and we screw our kids and our own retirement. Remember, how I
showed you a little while ago, Mr. Speaker, how some of this is now
hitting in the next 10 years?
How many of you intend to still be alive and maybe in your own
retirement in the next 10 years?
This isn't generations away from now. This is us.
There was a comment the other day that, well, we are just going to
start taking the general account. That is basically, right now the
Treasury is holding almost $1 trillion in cash. I assume they are
building up cash from everything, from having to pay tariff refunds to
the fact that this coming January we are back up against the debt
ceiling. If we don't raise the debt ceiling, we will do what is called
extraordinary measures where you basically are spending some of your
cash reserves and reaching into all sorts of other accounts and
spending them. And you do owe that money back.
I was told: David, we are going to just cover things off of the
general fund accounts.
Mr. Speaker, you need 41 of them.
Really?
We say things and we hear things like this. They are told this on
cable television, on the internet. We will get people who will call us
and say: David, if you just took care of waste and fraud, then we would
be fine.
Then you send them the paper saying: Hey, there may be a couple
hundred billion dollars of waste and fraud.
Let's talk about that for a moment. We are borrowing about $2.5
trillion this year. Understand, Mr. Speaker, when we say waste and
fraud, fraud over here is criminal. Waste is much more uncomfortable to
talk about. I can show you paper after paper after paper, Mr. Speaker.
Let's talk about Medicaid. It is the Federal-State program with which
we are supposed to be helping indigents and poor people.
It is perverse to say this, Mr. Speaker, but do you know States
actually have an economic incentive to look the other way with things
that you and I would consider almost criminal or waste?
That is because it is Federal cash coming into their State
stimulating their economy. So when they do things like a bed tax, which
is basically a three-legged stool on a disproportionate share where you
will actually look the other way. But David, it is cash coming into our
State. But we are borrowing it.
My State of Arizona, 45 percent of the entire State's budget--when
you look at the total spend, Mr. Speaker, not what is appropriated from
the legislature, total spend--45 percent comes from the Federal
Government. We borrow most of that money.
We are borrowing money over here. You don't see a problem, Mr.
Speaker?
Now let's talk about the fancy term that is being thrown around: We
need to do fiscal consolidation. Yay.
How many of you know what the hell that is?
We have countries like, I think I actually put a couple of them on my
charts, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, but there have been others that
did what is called fiscal consolidation. Basically they cleaned up
their finances.
Greece has been doing it now for one decade, and remember, once
again, Greece can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than the United States
because its future creditworthiness is better than ours.
The average of these countries is about 85/15, that means 15 percent
new taxes, 85 percent cuts in spending. What we learned is we always
have to do the cuts in spending first. That is because when we think
about our President George H. Bush, he made a deal saying: All right.
We are going to do some fiscal consolidation. We will allow these taxes
here to go up, but we are going to cut all this spending.
They did the taxes. They never got a dime of the cuts. Mr. Speaker,
you always have to do the cuts first. The cuts don't have to--there is
so much of our government we could revolutionize: The cost of
healthcare, if we legalized technology, if we do things better, faster,
and cheaper.
Yet here today we had some of my brothers and sisters here introduce
a piece of legislation that basically made adopting technology to
reduce the price of healthcare illegal, because that is what the
lobbyists want.
Why don't they care about the future?
Do they not see the math?
Every single workday I have been texting out something we call the
daily debt. I have been doing this for years. I am blessed to chair the
Joint Economic Committee. I am number four on Ways and Means. I have
been doing the investigations of the fraud. We send this out. I have
had more Members of Congress cancel it than subscribe to it. The excuse
is: I don't want the negativity, David.
It is not negativity. It is called math.
My reason--and this is almost hard to understand--is these different
countries, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand that did fiscal
consolidations, the underlying message in here is they cut spending.
Once they had met those goals, they did changes in their tax system to
get rid of leakage, but they did the cuts first.
Debt reduction in the United States has been and will be possible
with fiscal consolidation. We can do it. There are ways to do it, but
you have to see what is happening over here. That spike in spending and
borrowing isn't a new bridge or new military spending. It is
demographics. Our brothers and sisters have earned benefits. We owe
them, and we are not willing to do the things to do it better, faster,
and cheaper.
I have done presentation after presentation over the years of the
unified theory: How do you maximize economic growth? How do you
maximize fairness? How do you maximize the future to be stable?
There are a lot of inputs. You have to have really uncomfortable
conversations, Mr. Speaker, talent-based immigration, the adoption of
technology, the redesign of smart regulations, instead of bureaucratic
regulations. Stop the leakage where States basically are scamming parts
of our expense sharing. We have laid out all these steps as a unified
theory because it turns out one of them doesn't get you well.
We introduced a piece of legislation over 1 year ago: MedPAC. It is
this big binder that is on every Congressman's--actually it is probably
in their trash can. We get it a couple of times a year. This was the
organization that was designed to keep an eye on Medicare, particularly
Medicare Advantage.
{time} 2020
These are the experts. We pay them. They will tell you there is a
trillion to almost $2 trillion of leakage just from Medicare Advantage.
I like Medicare Advantage. I have some simple suggestions: Stop the
risk scoring and make it a true capitated model; get rid of the
ObamaCare-type of star ratings, where you basically make it a true
capitated model where you are paid to help people stay healthier.
What if it is a trillion dollars over 10 years? What if it is $1.5
trillion? We had a preliminary score on a piece of legislation. We came
in at $1.84 trillion, making it the single biggest savings bill in U.S.
history, and I can't get another Member of Congress to sponsor the bill
because you have to get your head kicked in by the lobbyists from the
insurance companies.
I would argue it is free market. When we use the term ``waste and
fraud,''
[[Page H5423]]
you have to understand the waste is how we design programs.
I guess we would rather borrow $90,000 a second, put your retirement
at risk, and basically live in a world where every dataset says our
children will be the first American children to be poorer than their
parents.
Yes, you have technology, AI, synthetic biology, all the things,
automation, but remember, you also have a country that is at basically
zero population growth. We can make the math work, but once again,
unless you are ready to deal with the reality of the math, just to
cover the current growth of debt, you need a GDP that grows 7.7--not
3--7.7 percent a year.
How do I get our brothers and sisters who are in positions of power--
whether it be us here in Congress, the administration, the think tanks,
the groups out there that just want more money--to bathe in the truth?
I guess for many of them, saving this Republic isn't worth it. I am
going to go down fighting for this. This is an amazing country. We have
done more good for the world than any country in human history. If we
don't get our act together, we are going to bring down the world
economy with us.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back.
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