Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chair, this is actually an amendment that is brutal. It is not a happy place to go, but I am trying to be intellectually honest here.

Every dime we vote on as Members of Congress is now borrowed. Remember, Mr. Chairman, the last fiscal year we borrowed 8.4 percent of GDP. Every dime of military is borrowed; every dime of nondefense is discretionary, which is functionally what we are going over right now, and, what, $300 billion, $400 billion of Medicare. For my brothers and sisters on the left, their solution is often: Well, raise revenues.

Mr. Chairman, we are engaged in this insanity right now where we are borrowing money to send it to entities that have their own taxing authority.

I have been the treasurer of the fourth biggest county in America. I managed the bank, I managed the tax collections, and I managed the finances, or parts of the finances. I understand local government and the burdens there, but we had taxing authority.

Is it rational in a society, particularly with the higher interest rates, for us to borrow and then send the money to entities with their own taxing authority?

Mr. Chair, I understand both on Republicans and Democrats, we despise this because there are lots of things we like. There are things I like that I voted for for years now, but I just look at the math, and I keep wondering: Is it both moral or rational for us to borrow money and send it to entities that have their own taxing authority?

If these programs are so important, which many of them are, there is a solution. Those entities can actually produce the receipts and revenues themselves.

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chair, I think the chairman actually was generous. I think it is a lot more than a sledgehammer. This is like a small nuclear weapon. Partially that was the point.

Obviously, I care tremendously about IHS and have worked really hard on that. I am just trying to work through this. I want to put this in a moral paradigm. I have my 15-month-old sitting behind me, but this is no longer about the next generation. It is about your own retirement.

We have a math problem. It is a brutal math problem. One more time: We borrow every dime of discretionary; we borrow every dime of military; and now we are actually borrowing hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of what is mandatory. Some of this breaks my heart, but I don't seem to be able to communicate to my brothers and sisters how ugly the math is.

One more time: As of yesterday, we were borrowing $78,000 every second. $78,000 every second. For our friends on the left, they care about this. We care about this. It is just so hard to turn off the faucet.

The very last thing, and then I am going to sit down and shut up and go away. The debt is primarily driven by demographics. It is something we don't tell honestly, but we got old. If you actually look at from today through the next 30 years, 100 percent of the projected debt, 75 percent of it is Medicare, 25 percent if we backfill Social Security in 9 years when the trust fund is empty.

Do you see any of this debate--and I know this is small compared to the scale we are borrowing, but I have to find some way to get people to start understanding the scale of this math because the math always wins. Sometimes it takes a while, but the math will always win.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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