Our Nation's Economic Outlook
Floor Speech
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Mr. BRECHEEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I couldn't stand for a more important topic. This is what I believe is the greatest domestic threat that is facing this country. Our national debt in our last 40 years of inheriting prosperity from our parents and grandparents, and in the last many years we have been borrowing and stealing prosperity from our children and grandchildren because of an insatiable appetite for spending other people's money, which is the easiest thing to do in a manner that is not in line with our revenue.
There is a Founding Father who gave us a great warning. Thomas Jefferson told us, he said you should not allow your leaders to load you with perpetual debt. It is the same Thomas Jefferson who years later would make the comment which he defined in Latin terms as the ``abusive state of man.'' He said: `` . . . the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.''
Our liberty as a Nation is in jeopardy. We hear trillions of dollars that are, you know, tossed around, and I don't think we really understand the size and scope of a trillion dollars. If I stood on this floor and at a second at a time I laid a dollar bill on this podium and I didn't stop to eat or sleep, taking a second at a time to lay out that dollar bill, it would take me 11 days--you would get tired sitting in that chair, Mr. Speaker--11 days watching me count out a million dollars.
If I was to lay out a dollar at a time on this table a second at a time, the time to lay it out and retrieve my hand, it would take me 31 years to lay out a billion dollars if I didn't stop to eat or sleep.
In order to get to a trillion dollars, it would take me 31,000 years, 31,000 years if I didn't stop to eat or sleep a second at a time.
We know what has happened in 2022: 40-year high record of inflation. The average Oklahoman spent $7,000 more than they did the year prior to buy the exact same goods and services because of devaluation of the dollar.
That is the tip of the iceberg. That is what we see. That is what people are feeling. What is under the water that we can't see is this collision course that we are headed toward, this gigantic iceberg of the mountain of debt in our unfunded obligations.
Our national debt at $31.5 trillion, every man, woman, and newborn child, if you take that number and you divide it, every baby, including babies that open their eyes today and take in their first breath of air, owe $94,000 just to pay off that $31.5 trillion. They will pay it off through a lower standard of living. It is a hidden tax that we are going pass on to our kids because of our selfishness.
$1.4 trillion has been a number that has kind of been in my head for the last few days.
The CBO number, the Congressional Budget Office number, said that this year's deficit is $1.4 trillion. We will overspend $1.4 trillion this year.
If you go back 40 years ago to 1983, that is exactly the size of our gross national debt in 1983. It was $1.4 trillion. It took us 200 years as a nation to get to $1.4 trillion. This year, we will overspend in 1 year that amount.
CBO is also giving us projections about where our interest rates are taking us. Within 7 years, what we spend that will be flushed down the toilet just in interest payments is going to match what we spend on the entire defense of our country.
If you take that interest rate out to 10 years from now, it is also $1.4 trillion. There is the number yet again.
In 1983, after 200 years, the size of our gross national debt was $1.4 trillion. This year, we will overspend by that amount, our annual deficit.
Ten years from now, that will be just the interest that will be flushed down the toilet, the annual debt service payments 10 years from now.
That is a 50-year spread of $1.4 trillion. We are in trouble.
Our current gross national debt-to-GDP ratio is 129 percent. There are only 11 other countries in the world that have a higher debt-to-GDP ratio than we do, and these are the small countries, the small countries that aren't a world leader, a shining city on a hill.
Economists are predicting that Medicare will be insolvent in 2028. They actually bumped the number to 2028. We are only going to be able to pay out to 90 percent. There will be an automatic 10 percent cut in 2028 to Medicare if we do nothing.
In 2033, the actuaries are telling us Social Security becomes insolvent. There will be an automatic 25 percent cut to Social Security. Without anyone changing anything, that is what we face.
When you add the liabilities, the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Social Security, what we owe veterans for pensions, Federal employees for pensions, other trust programs we have stolen out of over the last many years, and you add in addition our $31 trillion, our sum total is $120 trillion of unfunded liabilities debt. That came out last year with very little fanfare. Only the Heartland Institute picked it up.
That $120 trillion total, they said if you put it against all assets in America, if you assessed it against the valuation of all property, all land, all homes, all stocks, and--they even said this--down to pieces of furniture, it is 86 percent of all wealth in America right now.
You will remember I talked through how long it would take to get to a trillion dollars. It would take you 31,000 years if you counted out a dollar at a time. It would take you 3.7 million years to get to $120 trillion if you didn't stop to eat or sleep and you counted out a dollar at a time.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department in its February 2022 report that I just cited, in order for us to pay this all back, another way of looking at it, if every household would just send a million-dollar check to your Federal Government, that will make us square with the house as a nation.
Thomas Jefferson wasn't alone. Benjamin Franklin warned us, if we can gather it from his conversation with Elizabeth Powel when this Constitution was put together. When he was asked outside by Elizabeth Powel, as one of the leading members of Philadelphia society, after weeks of putting this Constitution together, she said: What have you given us, a republic or a monarch?
His response was: We have given you a republic if you can keep it.
That is important because Article IV, Section 4, of our U.S. Constitution guarantees to every State a republican form of government and to protect them from invasion.
We will stay on the republican conversation, the republic form, for a moment. Why is a republic important? Our Founders in that study, in the Constitutional Convention, they looked at all forms of government. They spent weeks. A republic was different--they knew it--than a democracy. Benjamin Franklin also described democracy. He said it is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch, but liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
What we are talking about is the liberty of this country. We are trading our liberty for debt and dependency. Liberty means something.
In the constitutional preamble, it says: ``We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.'' It is a mission statement. We have a duty to live up to the mission statement that was handed to us 200 years ago, and we are missing the mark.
May God help us obtain the courage to put our national interests ahead of our own personal self-interests and squarely face these problems that are addressing the American people.
I will end by saying this: Martin Luther King, Jr., had a statement that my old boss, Tom Coburn, kind of tweaked, and he shortened it. It is this: Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right?
It is right to secure the blessings of liberty, not just for ourselves but our posterity.
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