[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 20218-20220]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       OUR ECONOMIC GROWTH FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, as we try to get the boards to line up, 
we are only going to do three of these today.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the things I wanted to do tonight, and we did it 
during sort of the debate earlier today--I hear lots of the discussions 
from our brothers and sisters on the left about the tax bill, and we 
often tease that this place is often a math-free zone, but I wanted to 
actually go a little bit bigger on why this tax bill is actually so 
crucial to every American, whether you be on the left, on the right, or 
just out there working as hard as you can and not thinking about 
politics.
  The chart I have right on the side, this is what our nonpartisan 
Congressional Budget Office has come up with as our economic growth 
future. If you take a look over here, you will see 1.8 percent GDP 
growth for the next 10 years. But we then skyrocket up to just, 
actually, if you saw the details, just slightly under 2. And then the 
next decade, so 30 years from now, we fall back down to 1.9 percent GDP 
growth.
  Why this is crucial is, as baby boomers are retiring, we have lots of 
promises. You have heard discussions, just even someone that was behind 
the microphone 40 minutes ago, on the other side, talking about 
Medicare.
  There are estimates out there that, over the 75-year actuarial 
window, Medicare is $105 trillion underfunded. It is the largest 
unfunded liability we know in America and, possibly, the world. This is 
what happens when you are growing at 1.8 percent GDP.
  If you love people, if you want this society to have an opportunity 
to keep its promises to our seniors, to our kids, to that working 
family, we must have economic growth.
  I talked about this earlier today, a terrific editorial in The Wall 
Street Journal over this weekend, saying, hey, from the left's eyes, 
they think about equality, income inequality, and from the Republican 
side, we often

[[Page 20219]]

sound like accountants. And I am sorry, but the math is important.
  We think about economic growth because, if you look at the next 
chart, I just want you to sort of look at the very, very end. You see 
this sort of gold line, green line, the other green line. Do you see 
the separation? That is income inequality. It has grown dramatically in 
the last decade.
  We have also grown at only 1.8 percent GDP the last decade. Slow 
economic expansion is where you get the income inequality.
  If the left here actually cared about the very issue they talk about 
all the time, they would be embracing tax bills, regulatory bills, 
things that would actually expand the size of this economy so everyone 
has a fighting chance. But you find the politics of division very 
powerful around here.
  Look, we all get the joke. We understand that so many of our brothers 
and sisters on the left, they are terrified, or their base is angry, 
however we want to define it. You can't let the Republicans have a 
victory, particularly on rewriting the Tax Code for the first time in 
31 years, even though, if you actually look at many of their records in 
the past, they have all stood behind microphones and said the Tax Code 
is abysmal. It stifles economic expansion; it hurts hardworking people; 
and, in a low-growth environment, with this crappy Tax Code, this is 
what you get. But the politics are so uncomfortable that, for a lot of 
our friends, it is more uncomfortable to vote for something that 
actually might be seen as a Republican victory.
  So I wish I had an elegant way of begging my friends on the 
Democratic side, saying: Just think about it as giving every American a 
fighting chance because, if we start to grow, you actually get paid 
more; you have more job opportunities; you can save money for your 
retirement, for your kids. Because where we are at today and where we 
have been the last decade, we are in real trouble.
  You actually look at some of the nonpartisan groups, and even some of 
the partisan groups, on their analyses of what the U.S. debt structure 
looks like, there are many of these models that, in about 15, 18 years, 
they collapse, our debt to GDP.
  What that means is, when we say, ``Here is the size of our economy, 
gross domestic product--here is the size of our economy, and here is 
the size of our debt,'' in just a few years, we actually surpass the 
amount of publicly sold debt.
  This is not where we are borrowing from our own trust funds. The 
publicly held debt passes the entire size of our economy, and it keeps 
going and going and going and going. That is status quo.
  Please understand, the status quo has many of the models collapsing, 
much of this economy, in about 15, 18 years because our debt is so huge 
it consumes everything.
  Social entitlements right now are about three-quarters of all of our 
spending. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, that includes benefits 
of other welfare programs, earned and unearned, that is three-quarters 
of our spending, and it is going to become dramatically more.
  So if you are someone who actually cares about health research, if 
you actually care about education, if you care about the national 
parks, if you care about the military, if you care about our relations 
around the world, all those are getting squeezed because of, 
substantially, the demographic curve we are already in, the growth of 
those populations, and our attempt to keep our promises.
  If you care about keeping our promises, you care about the economic 
growth; and the tax rewrite is one of the key elements in that. And, 
yes, it is going to also require thinking through immigration. It is 
going to be thinking through regulations. It is going to be thinking 
through the adoption of technology.

                              {time}  1900

  But understand, you can't stand around here and give speeches about 
income inequality and then support the very policies that actually 
create it. The intellectual inconsistency around here is so 
frustrating.
  This is a really interesting board, and why it is so important is 
that I ask for everyone to stop thinking about the actual debt number 
and think about it as its ratio, as its percentage, as its burden on 
the size of the economy.
  If we have a $20 trillion economy and $20 trillion of debt, we are at 
100 percent of debt to GDP. Our economy is actually a bit bigger than 
that, but if you actually look at this red line, that is entitlements.
  Do you notice all those years where it is flat?
  That is actually not because we were spending less money on 
entitlements. What that is about is we were growing as an economy. Yes, 
we were still spending more money, but we were growing faster than the 
growth in that spending.
  If you care about fairness, if you care about opportunity, if you 
care about the ability to save, if you care about income inequality, 
you have got to step up and do those things that are difficult--and 
they are very difficult--that will maximize economic expansion in this 
country, because the difficulties that are coming in the next decade in 
our inability to have enough resources or enough borrowing capacity to 
continue to pay is devastating. We need this economy to continue to 
grow.
  As we walk through this, I want to actually walk through also a 
couple of observations. And forgive me, but this is one of those 
opportunities where you have a few minutes to share.
  I hold a seat on the Ways and Means Committee. It has been 
fascinating. On occasion you will hear folks say: Well, this was rushed 
through.
  Well, except it was built on about a decade's worth of work. If you 
look at all the years that Dave Camp, the previous chairman of the Ways 
and Means Committee; and then the chairman after him, who happened to 
be Paul Ryan; and now the chairman, Kevin Brady, there are volumes and 
volumes of documentation. There are volumes and volumes of hearings and 
data. And there has got to be hundreds of hours of video out there of 
different hearings, both the whole committee and the subcommittees have 
done, in just trying to understand what affects economic growth, what 
works and what doesn't work.
  An observation. How many people in the last couple weeks have you 
heard walk up behind these microphones and use the early 2000s as an 
economic example of a tax cut?
  Now, understand, that was just substantially a basic income tax. It 
wasn't rewriting parts of the Tax Code. What so many folks forget to 
tell you, if you go back to 2002 and you actually look at what we call 
the baseline--and I am sorry, this is going to geek out a little bit--
baseline is our model of what we think revenues are going to look like 
and what spending is going to look like over the next decade. Then you 
look at those things that are referred to as the Bush tax cuts when 
they finally expired.
  You do realize the revenues--the revenues--that came into this 
government were $77 billion higher than the projection, yet you will 
hear people get up behind the microphone and say: Well, these didn't 
pay for themselves.
  But that is not the math.
  Now, this government spent a lot more money than was projected. We 
had wars, we had bailouts, we had storms. We have had all sorts of 
things. We spent a lot more money. But if you actually look at the 
revenue line when those 2002 tax cuts expired, there was $77 billion 
more in revenue than was projected.
  Is that because of the tax cuts?
  Partially. Maybe. But there were lots of other effects in the 
economy, adoptions of technology, and all sorts of things. But the 
basic rule of thumb is: Here is where we thought we would be, and we 
were $77 billion over that.
  Back to this concept of: Are there tax cuts that pay for themselves?
  Absolutely.
  Are there tax cuts that don't?
  Absolutely.
  And that was one of the really gut-wrenching parts of this 
discussion. If you actually spend some time looking at a nonpartisan 
group like the Tax

[[Page 20220]]

Foundation and look at a lot of their modeling, they would come back to 
us and say: Hey, you could spend this money on something that is great 
politics, but you get almost no economic expansion from it. Or you 
could spend that same money or something over here that turns out not 
to be great politics, but is really good for the economy and really 
good a few years from now and someone being able to find a job, someone 
being able to be paid more, someone being able to save for their 
retirement or their kids.
  How do you get up in front of an audience and say, ``I know we would 
love to have this because this gets me reelected. But for that same 
money, our society, economically, will be healthier, bigger, wealthier 
a few years from now if you put that money in expensing, in certain 
types of business tax cuts, because that expands the size of the 
economy''?
  That is something a lot of folks haven't thought about as they grind 
through the technical details of thousands of thousands of pages of the 
Tax Code. Parts of the Tax Code are absolutely an economic document.
  How you make us competitive in the world again? How do you maximize 
economic expansion? How do you maximize opportunity for everyone to 
have a good-paying job?
  But a Tax Code is also a political document. These are things that 
are very popular. These are things that get us elected. These are 
things that certain special interests line up at our door, walk around 
the hallways. If you actually saw the hallways over the last few 
months, I didn't know there were that many lobbyists in this town, all 
advocating for something for their business, for their State, for their 
community. All are honorable. But you have got to understand, when we 
put together a few-hundred-page bill and grind through it month after 
month after month and make a change here and a change here, and then 
realize the interactivity when they actually model it turns out this 
idea blows up this idea, the number of hours that have gone into making 
this math work are stunning and it is a really good document.
  Is it everything all of us would want? No. Being a Representative 
from Arizona, I believe it is really good for my State.
  But the thing I care most about is it being good for our country. I 
believe the tax bill, the tax reform, is fair to individuals. It is 
simpler. It is going to also deal with the hemorrhaging we have of 
corporations--and these are big corporations--leaving our country, 
hiding their profits overseas, and moving their expenses to the United 
States.
  Is that fair?
  Of course it isn't, but that is what the current Tax Code allows.
  If you hear someone saying, ``Vote `no' on this bill,'' if you hear 
them saying, ``We prefer the status quo,'' understand what they are 
saying: We want to live in a world of absolute mediocrity, with almost 
no economic growth, no opportunity to save, have higher salaries and 
higher opportunities. We are happy having, in a decade and a half, a 
debt crisis in this country.
  And what they are also saying is they are okay with the hemorrhaging 
of American industry leaving this country because of the tax arbitrage, 
where they can get a better deal in other parts of the world.
  That is the absurdity of some of the arguments you have heard around 
this body.
  So back to my fairly snarky comment: We get the joke. We understand 
there are many out there who are terrified of Republicans getting a win 
here. But I want to argue that this is not a win for Republicans. It is 
a win for our society because, if we start moving away from that 1.8 
percent economic growth that our congressional budget has projected for 
the next decade, we have a fighting chance to financially keep our 
promises, to have a strong military, to have that money for our 
education, to have that money for healthcare research, and for you as 
an American citizen to see your salaries increase, see your ability to 
save, and know you have a brighter future.
  Mr. Speaker, just as an idiosyncrasy, over the last couple months, I 
have been keeping a little bit of a notebook of many of the comments 
that have come from my brothers and sisters in this body, some 
supporting the tax bill and making claims, many opposing the tax bill 
and making claims.
  I am going to make a mark in my calendar, 1 year from now coming back 
behind this microphone, and we are going to open up that journal and we 
are going to read what was said. Hopefully the American people at that 
time will understand this is political rhetoric and this is actually 
based in math. And that math, I am desperately hoping and desperately 
believing, is going to be great for our country.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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