Our National Debt Crisis

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy).

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, tonight. We are actually going to continue on a theme. I am going to try to dial back sounding like a jerk tonight, but I have been trying to make a point on the scale of the debt, the level we are at, the misunderstanding on its growth, and some potential solutions.

We are also going to spend a little bit of time tonight--and this is what I was sort of pre-apologizing for--I am going to show that some of my brothers' and sisters' ideas from the left on raise this tax, do this, do that, don't even count as rounding errors.

Let's actually start with some of the boards here.

I have shown this a half dozen times, and I keep showing it because this is what I have bad dreams about. If you live in a world of math-- and I know this is, functionally, a math-free zone--but when we finished the debt ceiling deal, we basically got some applause by economists saying you basically moved yourself from maybe 120 to maybe 115 percent of debt- to-GDP at the end of the 9 years.

That was the CBO number, but then some of the outside economists came in. Moody's Analytics said there are other things going on--the higher interest rates, the dramatic increase in spending in Medicare. Remember, the first 7 months of this year, we spent 16 percent more on Medicare. Next year's interest will functionally be three-quarters of a trillion dollars. We weren't supposed to hit numbers like that for years, but the one that took my breath away was when the Bloomberg economists--and these aren't slouches, they have a really good data system--said their model was coming back with higher interest rates, higher healthcare costs, lower labor force participation, and some of the other things we don't talk about because it doesn't really fit our scenario.

I am going to hyper-simplify this, and I have done this a handful of times, but I am trying to get the concept through. As part of the deal 6 weeks ago, this $700 billion that is in the nondefense discretionary, we are going to cut a hundred billion of that. Bloomberg economists basically say that the removal of that $100 billion is necessary, but it also slows down the economy by about a half a percent of GDP.

We don't seem to understand when we do policies like this, which we need to do, you also have to be adopting policies that backfill the growth. This place can barely walk and chew gum, and that is why this number here was so terrifying when the Bloomberg economists were saying, functionally, that 9-year window 10 years from now--and the reason we say 9 years is because we are already working on next year's budget and appropriations and spending--it is 130 percent of debt-to- GDP, $51 trillion of borrowing. If interest rates even go back to a somewhat more normal number, that is almost $2 trillion a year in interest.

That is functionally 9 years from now, and we are going to do what? We are not going to talk about it. We are going to be just giddy, and say, look at the hard work we did. We removed a hundred billion dollars out of discretionary.

I know my math is different than the Congressional Budget Office and at the end of September, we will find out which one of us had a better calculator; however, I have been right more times this year than they have. I know that is boastful, but I can prove it. Go back and look at some of my floor speeches and we have got the quarterly reports from Treasury.

I have us this fiscal year coming in around $1.84 trillion of borrowing. Why is that important? The 2023-fiscal year discretionary, Defense and nondefense discretionary included, was supposed to be a total spend of $1.836 billion; meaning, every dime of what you think of as government is on borrowed money this year.

When we go home and talk to our constituents, do we say, Do you know all of Defense, all of the Supreme Court, all of the State Department, all of everything you think of as government is on borrowed money? Is that what we do? How many times do we go home and we get someone that says we just got rid of foreign aid, and then I show them my chart that foreign aid is 12 days of borrowing. They just look at you with daggers, then say it is waste and fraud. But the Democrats do something that drives me insane when they say, just tax rich people more.

I am going to show you some boards here that basically show that is theater. It is not real math. Let's actually walk through some of the things going on right now, and I am going to go back and forth on some of these boards. There is going to be a reason why I am doing it this way. I spent the last 2 weeks, when I came to this microphone talking about obesity and diabetes--and that is a really dangerous thing sometimes to come and talk about, but diabetes is 33 percent of all U.S. healthcare. It is 31 percent of all Medicare spending. We need to talk about it. Our brothers and sisters in this country are dying, and we are afraid to talk about it.

I am going to spend the first part here sounding like an economist on steroids and I am going to try to explain what the cost is, then I am going to talk a little bit about just the simple morality of not doing anything.

Let's actually play a game here. Estimated deficit reduction for 2023, if you actually were just to take on obesity-related illnesses this fiscal year using current math, $283 billion.

Remember, the Democrats' tax proposal, the President's tax proposal was, we are going to go from 37 percent to 39 percent for top earners. That is a stagnant number. None of these are dynamically scored on the effects on the economy because if you made people healthier on this side, the economy would grow.

When you raise peoples' taxes, the economy shrinks, but the stagnant number is $30 billion. Just obesity-related spending will be $283 billion this fiscal year to the taxpayers and the Democrats, the President's tax hike produces 30 billion.

Does anyone see the insanity here? We basically did the math for everyone, saying Democrats would have to increase the top tax rate to 62 percent to raise the same amount of money as getting rid of obesity for people on government programs.

That is uncomfortable to talk about, but think about that. You basically have to raise the top tax rate to 62 percent just to produce the revenues of receipts for this population here. I am struggling, trying to find a creative way to get people to think about the path of having a healthier America is both moral and it is great economics.

Let's try it another way: Estimated deficit reduction for fiscal year 2024 to 2033, functionally, that is 9 fiscal years. We expect Federal spending on severe obesity, not the mainstream, to be $1.724 trillion. If anyone wants to see this report once it is officially voted on, this will be on the Republican side of the Joint Economic Committee, chapter 3. Read it. It is brilliant. $1.724 trillion over, functionally, that 10-year cycle, just for severely obese populations. These are for Medicare, Medicaid, Indian Health Services, veterans, taking care of our brothers and sisters, because of the illnesses that come with this.

You would have to increase the top tax rate to 49 percent to raise the same amount of money as getting rid of severe obesity. We are not talking obesity, just the severe obesity. Remember, last week, I brought the charts on how it is rated.

We are told, of the 4,000 human conditions, illnesses, misery, half of them are related to obesity. Are we willing to talk about it as we do the farm legislation? Are we willing to talk about it with some of the new technologies? I am going to touch on those that are available to us. Are we willing to talk about just what is happening with how many prime-age working males are not in the labor force? The number one thing we are seeing isn't substance abuse. It is close, but it is actually health related to obesity.

Let's try another one here. Let's see if I can make myself a complete pariah around here from telling the truth on the math.

Estimated deficit reduction for 2023, projected Federal spending on severe obesity, just that very top threshold, this budget year will be $115 billion. This is, once again, just in Medicare, Medicaid, Indian Health Services, and veterans. Democrats would have to raise the top tax rate to 47 percent to raise the amount of money just this population costs.

Am I at least making a point here that the discussions say, ``Just raise taxes. That takes care of it''?

Remember, what do we borrow per second over the last 12 months? $63,000 every second is what we have borrowed over the last 12 months.

One more of these. This is estimated deficit reduction between '24 and '33, the estimated deficit reduction, projected Federal spending on all obesity-related illnesses. Remember, this is a static number. There is also, we estimate, about another trillion-and-a-half that you would gain in productivity because these populations can actually come back and participate in society. Over that time, it is over $4 trillion that our government will spend.

Now, add in another $1.5 trillion on the economic vitality you gain, and you would actually have to have a marginal tax rate of the top earners in this country of 65 percent to come close to covering that cost. That is for one illness.

It is the illness that is the most expensive in our society because it is related to diabetes, kidney failure, heart attacks, and everything else. Am I sort of making the point? We are seeing over $4 trillion just in the disease, and the Biden tax proposal produces $375 billion over the 10 years.

For those of you who are not really good at math, $375 billion is a hell of a lot less than $4 trillion. This is the lunacy here, where the theater is so much more important than the reality and the math.

Let's actually walk through this. Joint Economic Committee Republicans estimate the cost of obesity over the 10 years--the 10 years we are about to start the budget cycle on--is $5.6 trillion. If you want to start to stabilize debt to GDP, can we at least have a conversation about this?

You start to see the mortality statistics in this country, the number of working-age people, people who should be actually living their lives, who are dying and are dying early.

I am going to show you a chart in a little bit of our young people and what is going on there.

The game of avoiding this discussion needs to come to an end because the economics and the morality of it are here. Let's pull our heads out and have time to actually have that difficult conversation.

Let's do the next one. This one is really interesting. The estimated economic cost is actually $2.6 trillion of growth in the GDP. This isn't spending. I just showed you a few trillion dollars of spending. This would be actual growth in the size of the economy and participation because our brothers and sisters actually are not sick. Their ability to come back and be a part of society, $2.6 trillion over that 10 years.

We worked hard on this math. We spent months vetting it. I will argue that it is incredibly conservative math.

Let's have a little more fun here. Maybe you just don't care. Maybe you are one of these people that, you know, sends in things to my office, and all you care about is you want more money for something. Fine. Do you at least care about your kids and your grandkids? I have two young kids. When I look around, I am terrified of what I see. We are actually looking at the growth of obesity amongst our kids. Do you understand what happens to their life, their life expectancy, their ability to participate in their society when you start to see numbers growing like this?

We are actually starting to see a world where, at the end of this decade, 12 percent of our children will be morbidly obese. It is uncomfortable to say, but that is the math.

In 10 years, half of our kids are technically--is this moral? Should we not talk about it? It is going on. This is the math. Understand what it does to the society. An unhealthy society doesn't grow, doesn't have economic vitality. Then, you start to wonder why all day long our hallways are full of people saying: ``I need you to spend more money on this. Because we can't find workers, we can't do this.'' Yet, we come back and show data that basically says there are 3.5 million prime-age working males that aren't in the economy. Then, the economists come back and do the stats. The demographer comes in and sits there and rattles off the numbers, and we start to realize the number one cause wasn't substance abuse. It was obesity. Am I starting to make a point here?

This is life expectancy for 18 years old and older by their BMI class. Do you understand functionally, in the last 4 years, life expectancy in the United States has fallen? Is that moral? Does anyone care? Even when you adjust for COVID, our lifespans are falling in this country.

It turns out, in digging and digging, the primary reason is this. We have this stratified by different ethnicities, different genders, but you start to actually see what we are seeing here in the numbers. You start seeing in some of our populations that the life expectancy is 66 years.

A little while ago, the Congressional Black Caucus took the first hour, and they talked about the morality of their issues. I would argue this is their issue. This is all of our issue, but no one else will talk about it.

Yes, there is some happy stuff coming.

Part of the point I have been trying to make over and over is let's just talk about diabetes. Thirty-one percent of all Medicare spending is just diabetes. One in four TRICARE dollars in the United States is just diabetes. Thirty-three percent of Medicare benefits are spent for folks with diabetes. Sixty-seven percent of the $327 billion spent on diabetes is by government insurance, and that is from way back in 2017. Today, it is dramatically higher, but that is the last year we could actually get the number.

Five of the top 10 part D drugs--this one drives me crazy. Remember, we are having all of this debate about all this money: You are spending too much money on pharmaceuticals. These part D drugs are driving so much of the debt and deficit. Half of those top 10 drugs, half of them, are drugs for diabetes.

Does anyone see sort of the trend here? Am I making sort of a flow of a concept? Is consciousness coming with us?

The Joint Economic Committee Republicans: Medicare spending will double, functionally being $22 trillion over the next 10 years.

I have come here for the last couple of years and brought the chart that basically shows, over the next 30 years, 100 percent of the $130 trillion of borrowing, all of borrowing growth, 75 percent is the shortfall on Medicare and 25 percent is the shortfall on Social Security if we choose to backfill it.

Remember, we are functionally 9 years away from the Social Security trust fund being gone, and in that same 10 years, the transportation trust fund is gone, and the Medicare part A trust fund is gone.

We dink around with stupid stuff around here, not taking seriously that the wheels are coming off. It turns out there are some things that are absolutely moral we could be doing if anyone here actually gave a damn.

A couple more of these concepts, and then we are going to do some of the positive side, some of the plan.

JEC, Joint Economic Committee, Republicans, project annual healthcare costs attributed to severe obesity. This is interesting. This is for the sick person. This is for the person with obesity--severe obesity, not regular. They spend another over $14,000 per year on top of their other healthcare costs. The problem is a huge portion of this population is also on government-paid-for healthcare.

Here is the one that I expect I will get the nastygrams on tomorrow, so let's have at it.

Joint Economic Committee Republicans annual increase of Medicare expenses caused by obesity-related health: $3,500 a year per taxpayer. $3,500 a year per taxpayer is functionally what obesity costs. That is me sounding like the accountant on steroids, but the math always wins. I am sorry if it is uncomfortable. Bless you, but the math always wins.

Let's actually come back and say I have actually convinced someone out there that maybe we should make America healthier and actually have an honest discussion about what is going on because these numbers have just gone skyrocketing over the last 10 years.

Let's talk about a couple of things here. This is just another example. I have brought a handful of these. This is a blood glucose monitor you can have on your body. It is fairly cheap and incredibly effective on stabilizing someone with a prediabetic condition.

We are about to have a pill for obesity. It is the next generation of these GLP-1s. It is coming. It is almost through the process. There is a whole series of other categories of weight-loss drugs that are coming that are remarkably effective.

Studies actually are sort of breaking down. It turns out that one of the most moral things we could do is use the technology we have.

If I came to you tomorrow and said: Let's make a plan. Maybe we should make some changes in the farm legislation--that is really hard to do. The lobbyists marching up and down the hallways won't be happy with it, but we have to do it.

Number two, go back to access for people to be able to manage their blood glucose.

Number three, maybe we should start to look at the accessibility for those who are on Medicare, Medicaid, Indian Health Service, and veterans who actually really, really, really, really have comorbidities, lots of diseases, substantially because of their weight or because of diabetes. Maybe the moral thing is to make these drugs available to them.

Here is part of the holy grail. I have come back and talked about it multiple times, and I have been mocked--sorry, I don't mean to be personalizing it. I do mean to be personalizing it.

FDA approves the first cellular therapy to treat patients with type 1 diabetes. Yes, there is finally one of them. There are a half a dozen of these that are in FDA-approval stages or tests, but the first one is fully approved now. That therapy can get the body to start producing-- excuse me, accepts a replenishment of islet cells. Do you see the flow?

If we actually said we need a healthier society--oh, by the way, it is amazing for what it does in bending the debt curve. Oh, by the way, it is moral. Oh, by the way, it would mean extra populations can come back into society and we might get productivity gains. We have a way to help people manage their prediabetes with some technology. We have some ways to help people get their weight down.

Oh, by the way, those people that do get their weight down, the 30 percent or so, and their body is so damaged that they can't produce insulin anymore, it turns out we can replace the islet cells in their body now. It is here. It is moral. It is optimistic. It is joyful.

When was the last time you had an idiot like myself standing here and sounding like an accountant on steroids, and saying, I actually have a solution. It doesn't solve the whole problem; it only solves a portion of it.

This would do more than all the jaw-moving around here that you have heard so far this year, and it is doable. Is this Republican or Democrat?

I will just argue it is the right thing to do.

Is this place capable, Madam Speaker, of actually doing the right thing?

Is it capable of doing something that is great math, it is morally wonderful, and actually would be really good for everyone?

Dear God, I hope so.

Madam Speaker, thank you for tolerating my tantrum, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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