[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11254-11255]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE NATIONAL DEBT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  One of the reasons I'm here today is, have you ever had one of those 
moments where you've been watching some television, you've been hearing 
some of your friends here on the floor, and the level of frustration 
starts to boil over, and you decide, look, I even need to get up behind 
that microphone and do a series of explanations of why I'm bouncing off 
the walls frustrated, and think about what we've heard just today.
  We had one Member come down here, meaning well and trying to find 
some way to tell his story, but treating the U.S. sovereign debt issue 
as a game. I heard the President today in a press conference once again 
throw out items like: Well, those corporate jets. Well, we need to tax 
the rich more.
  And here's the problem: The math just doesn't work. So I thought, 
okay, I have these boards in the office that I use for a lot of other 
speeches. It's time to bring them here to the floor and walk through. 
And, I'm sorry, I know I'm running two easels. I'm going to do this 
fairly quickly because I know I have some other friends of our 
conference that want to speak. But, first, let's do the big picture.
  This is our world today. This is a dollar bill. Today, every dollar 
this Federal Government spends, 42 pennies of it are borrowed. Get that 
through your head. Every time we send out a check, every time we pay a 
vendor, that dollar that we pay that vendor, 42 pennies of it had to be 
borrowed. Once you understand that, a lot of the other rhetoric you 
hear around here is just bizarre, if not bordering on silly.
  Let's actually bounce onto this next board. This one here is just to 
sort of help understand how fast our numbers are eroding and why we 
need to do it now. This is not the day we come to the floor next week 
and vote for something, so let's just raise the debt ceiling and we'll 
all have an honest discussion next month about the scale of the debt. 
We'll have an honest discussion some other day about what we're going 
to cut. You've got to understand, every--what is it?--7.2 seconds, 
someone now turns 65, and the money that this body, I think, had the 
moral responsibility to set aside for those baby boomers is gone. The 
most beautiful example I can give you of that is how many of you, when 
you think about it, have always heard from the politicians, oh, don't 
worry, Social Security's just fine. But didn't we just hear the 
President say, well, if we don't raise the debt ceiling, there might be 
a problem?
  Well, okay, which is it? Is Social Security just fine, or is it 
actually living on borrowed money? You can't have it both ways. 
Finally, I think the American people are waking up and understanding 
the scale of this debt and the crisis it brings us. So let's have a 
little interest here.
  Here we are in 2010. Here's where we are in four budget years from 
now, 2016. This blue line is mandatory spending. It continues to grow 
and grow and grow. I'm told in about 13\1/2\ years, this blue line 
consumes every dime of Federal spending. We are consumed by the 
mandatory spending. The entitlements consume everything we are as a 
people. But here's one of the rubs. If I look at even last year and 
this year, we don't take in enough revenue today to cover just the 
mandatory spending. So when you think about what we call discretionary, 
military, EPA, all the other alphabet agencies, all those exist on 
borrowed money. This is our world today.
  I've been struggling and struggling trying to find a way to say how 
do you help people understand the scale of these numbers? And then we 
came up with this idea, we'll make a clock. Everyone knows how to read 
their clock, I hope. Of course, the problem is, as one of my staffers 
pointed out, all the kids today are wearing digital watches, but we're 
going to try it this way. How many of you repeatedly, whether it be 
today or the press conference a couple of weeks ago have heard the 
President over and over and over and over say things like, those 
corporate jet owners need to step up and start participating more.
  Okay, fine. Let's say we all agree with that.

                              {time}  1400

  How much does that actually buy us? Think about this. We borrow $4.7 
billion every single day. This whole discussion over here where 
people--and we heard it just an hour ago from a Member and the 
leadership on the minority--saying, Oh, corporate jets. You've got to 
be willing to give up those.
  Okay. Let's say we do. What does it really buy us? Well, you'll be 
happy to know that we did the calculation to make it easy. It will buy 
you 15 seconds of borrowing a day. Work through this with me. There's 
what, 1,440 minutes a day, you know, out of those 24 hours. And we're 
having discussions about things that are 15 seconds. This is absurd. So 
let's actually go on to some of the other really brilliant suggestions 
that seem to be coming out here.
  How many of you remember about 6 weeks ago the majority in the U.S.

[[Page 11255]]

Senate, how literally hearing after hearing about those subsidies to 
Big Oil, and acted like if we get rid of these, they'll actually do 
something. We even heard it again an hour ago over here from the left, 
saying if we get rid of those subsidies, that's our first step in the 
balancing of this budget.
  So let's do the math. But let's actually do it my way. We wipe out 
the depletion allowance and all of these other subsidies for not just 
Big Oil but for all oil. It equals $2.44 billion a year. And just for a 
reference standpoint over there, I thought it would be fair for 
everyone to understand, that $2.44 billion that we call subsidies to 
Big Oil, there's $8.72 billion that goes to green energy. So understand 
the scale here.
  But right now we're only going to fixate on fossil fuels. What does 
that really buy us?
  I did it both ways for those people who like charts and for those 
people who like a clock. It buys you 2.2 minutes.
  So you see our little hand here? This whole discussion--and they act 
like it really does something.
  So we had the corporate jets at 15 seconds, now this whole discussion 
about Big Oil and taking away those subsidies. It buys you 2.2 minutes 
of borrowing a day. Think of that.
  This is what holds up around here as honest debate? These are the 
honest proposals that this government is throwing out and letting the 
American people think we're actually talking about, saying, Well, if we 
raise the debt ceiling we're going to go after these things, and we'll 
get rid of those corporate jet subsidies, and we'll get that Big Oil, 
and, yes, we'll have almost gotten 3 minutes of borrowing covered 
today. It's absurd.
  So let's actually bounce on to one of the other bits of discussion 
that bounces around here.
  We actually just heard it a little while ago, those tax cuts--do you 
remember those Bush tax cut extensions?--which actually now are the 
Obama-Bush tax cut extensions because the President signed them back in 
December under the lame duck session. We all remember that. And we hear 
the discussion we need to take those tax cuts away from those 
millionaires and billionaires. That will balance this budget.
  Does anyone out there actually pull out their calculator and do math? 
So I thought, Why don't we make a clock out of it. We'll make a slide 
out of it so we understand reality.
  If you remove the tax cut extensions for everyone--not just the 
millionaires and billionaires, let's just do everyone because math was 
easier to do that way--it buys you a whopping 28 minutes of borrowing a 
day. Think of that. I've watched people walk up to this well of this 
House, stare into this audience, this august body, and act like it 
would solve the problem.
  How can this place be operating under math fantasy? Twenty-eight 
minutes. And that's playing the assumption that it doesn't slow down 
the economy, doesn't raise up unemployment, and every dime actually 
comes in. But if we're willing to engage in that fantasy--because why 
not, the argument is fantasy--it takes care of 28 minutes of borrowing.
  So let's see. So far we've covered 15 seconds with the corporate jets 
and 2.2 minutes with going after all fossil fuels, and now we found 
another 28 minutes of borrowing can be covered if we wiped out what we 
call the Bush tax extensions that are really important to economic 
growth, but we'll just give it and just also pretend every dime comes 
in.
  Are you starting to realize we're barely at a half an hour of 
borrowing a day, and these are the types of proposals we're getting 
from the left on what we should do? You start to realize, where is this 
basis in reality?
  So let's actually go for a big one. Let's actually hop on--because, 
you know, I'm not a big fan of war. So I thought, hey, why don't we 
calculate the big kahuna. What would happen if we took in all that 
money from those corporate jet subsidies and all of that money from 
getting rid of anything that incentivizes fossil fuel exploration, and 
we also get rid of those Bush tax cut extensions and we're willing to 
slow down the economy and assume that every dime comes in, and we just 
didn't have any of the wars--we didn't have Libya, we didn't have 
Afghanistan, and we didn't have Iraq. They just all magically went away 
tomorrow. Because we've had repeatedly Members from the left stand up 
behind these microphones and tell us this would take care of the 
problem. We just wouldn't have that $1.6 trillion we're going to run in 
debt this year if we just didn't have these sorts of things.
  Once again, it's time to put some batteries in the calculator. If we 
pretend every dime of that all went straight to paying down the debt, 
it's 3 hours.
  And we've actually put these slides up on our Web site so people can 
actually download them and look at them.
  But I want to turn to my brothers and sisters on the left here and 
say, Okay, if I assume everything you're saying equals 3 hours, do you 
have any honest solutions for the other 21 hours a day instead of some 
of this silly rhetoric that I hear our President walking up to 
microphones and throwing things out and acting like, this is my 
solution to the American people?
  The American people need to understand the scale of this debt. It is 
going to destroy us as a people. For once you are seeing your Congress, 
at least on our side, stand up, be tough enough and say, We're going to 
use this opportunity to save our kids and our grandkids and we're going 
to save this Republic. Please, learn the numbers. Understand how 
devastating this is. It's time for the fantasy to come to an end and to 
start dealing with real math.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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