Republican Budget

Floor Speech

Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the opportunity.

Under the Biden-Harris administration, America experienced wasteful spending, harming families and destroying jobs.

Tonight, in a very historic vote that we just completed; in order to combat those destructive impacts, House Republicans have voted to establish the congressional budget for the United States Government for 2025 and set forth the appropriate budgetary levels for 2026 through 2034.

Introduced by the very capable House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, this bill will pave the way for the passage of a single comprehensive bill which will deliver on the agenda of President Donald Trump. Again, it is Donald Trump promises made promises kept.

This budget resolution provides a framework for Congress to secure the border, unleash American energy, prevent the largest tax hike in history, create jobs, and bring common sense back to the government. Unnecessary and wasteful government spending will be eliminated, putting the American people first.

I am grateful for the leadership of Speaker Mike Johnson working closely with President Donald Trump for economic opportunity in jobs for all American families.

The Trump tax cuts have been proven to energize small businesses and to create jobs across the United States. The National Federation of Independent Business, NFIB, has made a difference in working with the administration for this progress tonight.

Additionally, large companies have expanded in my home State of South Carolina, anticipating the tax cuts which provide for citizens to have more money which they can use to improve their lives.

In the district I represent, I am very grateful that Michelin Tire Corporation of Lexington is the largest facility in the world, and this facility is producing tires for energy production across North America. President Trump has provided for an all-of-the-above energy policy which will create jobs.

It is also encouraging that Boeing Aircraft Company in Charleston is doubling its size. It has already been announced that there was the sale of $39 billion of 787-10 jets to Saudi, Arabia, as Saudi Arabia is developing a new airline, Riyadh Airways, which we know will be successful for our friends and allies of Saudi Arabia.

It is additionally encouraging, and I am grateful, that we have BMW success in South Carolina with the largest BMW manufacturing facility in the world along with Volvo in Summerville. It makes South Carolina the leading exporter of tires and automobiles of any State in the Union.

In addition to Michelin, we have Continental Tire, which is obviously German. We are grateful for their investment in Bridgestone, which is very important, and Japanese investment in the district I represent along with GITI of Singapore.

So over and over we have investments that are being made because of, I believe, significant anticipation of the vote that just occurred tonight.

In conclusion, God bless our troops as the global war on terrorism continues while the people of Ukraine continue to successfully stop war criminal Putin who is trying to resurrect the failed Soviet Union, killing so many people in Ukraine, additionally in Georgia, and threatening the people of Moldova. We know what war criminal Putin has done to oppress the people of Belarus and to address and try to disrupt the elections in Romania and the Republic of Georgia.

Open borders for dictators puts all Americans at risk of more 9/11 attacks imminent as warned by the FBI. President Donald Trump is reinstituting existing laws which are successfully securing our border to protect American families with peace through strength.

Today also marks the 100th day of the inspiring protest in Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia, where the people are protesting the rigged election that occurred on October 26 where war criminal Putin interfered in the elections and provided for, sadly, the institution of a new government which is not legitimate.

The legitimate government of Georgia led by President Salome Zourabichvili is so important to recognize as she courageously stands as a patriot for the people of Georgia.

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, first, is there a chance to get the amount of time that we are splitting so we have a sense of the run time here?

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. If we are all blessed, I won't use it all.

Mr. Speaker, have you ever had a moment where the first words in your head are: I am damned if I do and damned if I don't, but is there a chance?

For a decade, I have been coming behind this very microphone and walking through demographics, debt, and the deficit and trying to explain something that the left doesn't like and the right doesn't like, that almost 100 percent of the growth of the deficit for the next three decades is demographics.

We don't like saying that because it is harder to play the politics of blaming each other. There have been dozens of things said. That is just the nature of it in regards to the reconciliation budget resolution that was just passed.

I managed part of the Joint Economic Committee time, and my job there as the chair of the Joint Economic Committee is I represent the committee, and now I get to represent myself.

I worry, but the opportunity is having basically authorizing committees do what is necessary to save our future.

Mr. Speaker, a little while ago you saw a beautiful little baby here. Last week, when we were here, I had my 2\1/2\-year-old that we have adopted with me.

Here are some basic pieces of math. For my 2\1/2\-year-old, when he is 24, 25 years old, every U.S. tax rate has to have been doubled, all of them, just to maintain baseline services.

The whole presentation of walking through what happens when you get a moment to actually disrupt policy and do things that are better, faster, and cheaper--because I will argue the army of lobbyists, basically the rent seekers, if you remember your high school economics, who are around us all, despise the concept of reform. They despise the concept of modernization. That is actually some of the basic things I want to go over tonight, and I will try to do it efficiently.

First off, I know I used this board a little while ago, and I am sorry it is handwritten. I broke the printer. It is just simply making a point that for the average American at the end of this year, if we don't fix the expiring provisions, their taxes go up $2,853, and functionally 62 percent of all taxpayers will be subject to higher taxes.

Now, we actually have our friends on the left basically saying: You are going to give away to the millionaires and billionaires. It is not the distributional effect of 2017.

As a matter of fact, one of the great trivia points--and I actually had some fun with this one because it comes from my progressive analysis from a few years ago--is that after the 2017 tax reform, the U.S. tax regime actually became more progressive. There were lower rates, but it meant the top-tier of taxpayers were paying more of the Federal budget.

You walk through saying: Okay. Can I show you? Well, you gave money to corporations. Yes, but we can show you that the vast majority of that actually went to wages.

People forget many of the things we did to force the repatriation back of capital, intellectual property, expensing, and R&D expensing. As a Republican, don't ever tell anyone this: A bunch of that was in the Obama budget.

They were in many ways bipartisan ideas from back then because we were bleeding out productive capacity in this country. We were transferring productive capacity and our assets overseas because of our tax regime and the ability to compete.

Now, it looks like the reality of sounding like an idiot economist around here doesn't buy you a lot of friends, Mr. Speaker. Yet, the fact of the matter is the budget box that was just offered is an opportunity to--Mr. Speaker, forgive me, my asthma and my lung infection are going a little nuts right now--it is an opportunity to stop our taxes from going up.

What I am actually more interested in is what I believe are solemn promises I got from the leadership about many of the things I have come behind this microphone for a decade talking about as to how we can adopt technology and how we can adopt models to lower costs and yet cover our brothers and sisters and give them more access and more opportunity to be healthier, because the way we deliver services as a government is archaic.

Right now, Mr. Speaker, if you were designing a system, you wouldn't do it this way. We are all terrified of whether it be the bureaucracy and their lobbyists and their unions, you know, something the left has to deal with. Many of the businesspeople that have learned how to make money off these programs are a problem. They come marching into our offices all upset because we are going to change their business model and make them compete.

Guess what, Mr. Speaker. That might be what we just accomplished in this vote, which is less about fixing the expiring tax provisions, which we are going to do, but maybe it will also give us that window where we can change and improve the way we deliver these services.

I can't figure out why this place is so intellectually calcified that they are terrified of changing it.

Mr. Speaker, let's once again walk through some of our basic math. This is just a pie chart--yes, it is a pie chart--yay, we love pie charts--for the estimates for this fiscal year. Basically, I want to take a look at it. It is a little less than 75 percent, but it is close. Actually, it looks like that may be. What is seen in red is mandatory spending.

Well, guess what. The blue is all I get to vote on as a Member of Congress, and every dime of the blue is borrowed. What happens if I come and say: Well, net interest? Well, we don't get to vote on the interest. My personal math is closer to almost $1.2 trillion in interest coming in this year, but I have been doing a running calculation of a higher interest rate.

We don't get to touch Social Security. Social Security has its own trust fund, which is gone in 8 years. Then, all of a sudden, we have to figure out--what is it, the first full year of Social Security trust fund being empty is $600 billion or $609 billion, something of that nature. It depends on workforce participation at the time that is done. That makes the dollars we were talking about today tiny.

Well, we have Medicare, Medicaid, and some other mandatory programs, so why am I showing this? What is so difficult here? I know this is geeky stuff, but this is why there is such a fraud in the debates that happen around this place, is we don't treat the voters like they have an IQ. Stop talking down to America. I will argue that many of them are a hell of a lot smarter than people like me.

We don't get to actually put net interest into our reconciliation budget. As a matter of fact, there is nothing we get to do about it. There is some things we could have if we could actually work together on the way we sell debt, or maybe the types of interest.

Professor Shiller of Yale wrote an article 10 years ago about trills, which is an equity interest in tax receipts, and other things--there is ways to break up the concentration on debt, making society less fragile--are subject to possibly bond vigilantes.

Social Security, it is illegal. It is part of the 1974 Budget Control Act. It can't be touched. Yet, I saw half a dozen Members on the other side go behind the microphone and say: Whoa, Social Security.

What is a good word for an absolute untruth? Oh, okay. I will work on that.

What we have is less than half of the red portion that we can even work on in a reconciliation budget.

This is an incredibly important moment. Will the standing committees, which have gone years and years and not been able to actually provide improvements, redesigns, and modernization, be able to look at things like The Wall Street Journal's five-article series and also the ones this weekend on Medicare Advantage?

Mr. Speaker, one of their headlines said--I think it was actually more than a single-year period, but $50 billion of fraud. Are we allowed to work on that? Is that Republican or Democrat, or is it just time to find a better way to actually think about these things?

That is maybe what we just opened up, assuming that my own leadership and my own committee chairman are ready to do hard work, really difficult things that, just like that baby, just like my 2\1/2\-year- old, maybe we could save their future. Maybe I could save their retirement without ever cutting a service.

There have been a number of Members who have come up behind the microphone and said that we are cutting Medicaid, and we are cutting this.

Really, find me that word in here.

It doesn't mean it is easy. For the Energy and Commerce Committee, they have to find 4 percent of their entire committee's authorization over 10 years. Are Members telling me they can't find 4 percent of improvements in this place? Yet, the sound of Armageddon, that is why this slice is so incredibly frustrating. We are trying to save the future. I am not bouncing around. There is a linear thought here.

Mr. Speaker, believe it or not--promise me you won't ever tell anyone this--I was reading an article from The New Yorker that just came out. Don't tell anyone that, as a conservative, I actually look on occasion at The New Yorker: ``The End of Children.''

Realize that the Census Bureau of the United States says that in about 7\1/2\ years this country has more deaths than births. Tell me as a junior actuary, or someone who wishes he was smart enough to be one, how I make the math of the future work in a society that has a shortage of young people.

Is that Republican or Democrat? It is just demographics, but we are not allowed to actually do difficult things here because, Mr. Speaker, it would require math, and then the harder part is it would require us to tell truth.

So many people, like this very moment, there will be someone on cable television on the left and the right doing their talking, getting people's dopamine to hit, but it is not honest math. The math is really hard. It is really complex. There is a way to make it work, but we have only a couple more years, I believe, to provide the stability. Maybe that is what we just did a few minutes ago.

Once again, this is the single board that gets me the most hate mail. It also is the truth. This is the 30-year projection. If my colleagues look at the 30-year projection from the Congressional Budget Office--I didn't produce this. They did, and we believe it is already way out of date because of the change in interest rates--Social Security and Medicare and their interest carry are responsible for almost functionally every dime of debt from today through the next 30 years. It is $116-some trillion of debt.

The rest of the budget actually has about a $9 trillion positive balance because its growth is slower than the growth of tax receipts according to the Congressional Budget Office. This is the thing the left, in my particular case, loves to run hate television commercials: He dared to talk about saving Social Security, saving Medicare, reforming how we deliver services so they are stable and so people have a future.

If Members want to understand why this place is so damned toxic, those of us who are actually trying to fix things also write the attack commercials for the other side. It is a sickness, but the math is the math, and the math will eventually win.

Mr. Speaker, understanding what will happen if we don't modernize how we deliver services and, through that, start to stabilize everything-- it is not just the benefits, but it is the growth of debt, convincing the bond markets we are going to be stable so they don't raise our interest rates.

A couple of weeks ago, we showed a chart that, if this place does stupid things and we make the bond markets nervous and we were to get a one-point increase in U.S. interest rates, we showed that, in 9 budget years, the additional interest is bigger than everything we talked about today.

My colleagues have to start processing how fragile we have made our future, and Members will start to actually look that, if we don't start to actually use this opportunity to say that we are going to use the reconciliation to open debate, we are going to not raise people's taxes, but we will get to have a robust debate, discussion, and ideas with the left, the right, particularly those of us on Ways and Means Committee, Energy and Commerce Committee, those things, saying: Here is what the mix should look like.

Maybe we don't extend everything. Maybe we mix them up. Maybe we find where there is leakage. Maybe we find where there is economic growth opportunities. Bring proposals. Bring economics. Bring statisticians. The debate is on, and now we get to actually have an honest debate based in statistics and math and maybe a future because we so rarely do that around here.

We are going to publish a couple more versions of this in more detail. I am blessed to also chair the Joint Economic Committee, so I have people who are much smarter than I am.

My colleagues will be happy to know that all of our economists now bathe. It is a running joke, particularly if Members know economists.

We work through the math that said what would happen if you did both things and paid for as much of this reconciliation budget, the spending, the extension of the tax cuts as possible, and you do it. That is how you get your maximization of growth.

Turns out, if you don't do it, you actually get probably a small retraction, maybe a small recession, because people's taxes go up rather dramatically.

Remember, for the average family, didn't I just show you--$2,853. In a district like mine, it is somewhere in the $3,000 range. I have a higher income district. You also had the other thing. The most we can do to try to find ways to pay for that.

Turns out, there is this concept of capital stack. The United States Government is not the only one bingeing on debt. Look at China and other countries, this and that. As the demographics of the industrialized world start to functionally get really ugly, and we are having to provide services, the amount of savings is starting to be chewed up.

One of the benefits we had in the previous decade and the decade before that is there was fairly substantial savings stacks that went into U.S. sovereigns and other things. We expect, in the next few years, we will actually start to see that roll over. Then, you get the concepts of term premiums and those things. I know it is geeky, but the fact of the matter is, if you don't have a substantial modernization of government, you can't make this math work.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, my best guess is I will use about 6 or 7 minutes of it.

Mr. Speaker, do you remember the hair on fire comments that people said that mathematically had no basis? They are not actually in the budget documents. Let's understand the size of these committees are vastly different, but the one people were focusing on, E&C, the Energy and Commerce Committee, still has 96 percent of its spending authority within its jurisdiction. That is going to continue.

This little wedge here is what they are being asked to work on. I will promise you if I am given the chance, if my economic team is given the chance, and if leadership in Ways and Means and E&C will work with us, I can get every dollar of that by just modernization of delivery of services.

Remember, at one time, I worked on my State's Medicaid budgets. It has been a long time. I actually chaired for a little while my State's health committee, so I have some experience on Arizona, which has a very unique Medicaid system. We buy basically managed care policies for our indigent population.

It is remarkably good. It is remarkably efficient. It may have the highest satisfaction rate in the entire Nation. It is something worth thinking about.

Let's get down to the brass tacks here on a couple of last bits.

Look at the next decade of spending. We don't get to touch interest. We don't get to touch old age survivor fund. That is your Social Security.

Matter of fact, what we should be doing is having really interesting conversations, mathematically honest ones, not in front of the microphone, but probably in a back room with actuaries, on how we are going to save it considering the fact that Social Security's own actuary report says now, I think, in mid-2033, the trust fund is empty.

For my Democrat friends who keep saying what we need to do is just do a bunch more taxes and enhance the benefit, you do realize you just chewed up every dime of your seed corn, if that is a colloquialism, for everything else.

We have a chart we have brought here multiple times showing the proposals saying to take everyone over $400,000 and just raise the cap, so every billionaire pays their full Social Security, both the employer's side and the individual's side.

I think our math says that it only took care of 38 percent of the shortfall, helping folks to understand the scale and also the rhetorical solutions that are so often thrown out are not mathematically honest.

Then you come over here to discretionary. We can take a run at that. Do you know what discretionary is? It is defense. It is everything you really think of as government. Other mandatory and then Medicare and Medicaid basically sit in this area.

What would happen if our brothers and sisters on the left would actually, instead of defending the inefficiencies, the distortions--I despise using ``waste and fraud'' because I think everyone is against waste and fraud. Even if you read the articles, the ProPublica and The Wall Street Journal on the extortion of bad acts, if that is a way to phrase it, that are going on in these programs and the willingness to fix that, should that be Republican or Democrat, or should it just be our attempt to do good governance?

Remember, we are the board of directors for the biggest concern in the world. It is malfeasance the way we run this place. Our rhetoric is often completely intellectually vacuous. There are solutions.

For any of you who have staff, do you have a nice highlighted copy of the MedPAC report from top to bottom where they walk you through lots and lots of solutions? I will send you over the stack of The Wall Street Journal articles. I will even send you the ProPublica on durable medical equipment fraud and how there are ways the doc and I could simply fix that with about a three-paragraph bill. People would have better access and better health, and we would save potentially a hundred-plus billions just on that one line item over the 10 years.

I believe, Mr. Speaker, that is the opportunity we may have just unlocked. I also think sometimes I might be delusionally optimistic and hopeful. I am 62 with a 2-year-old. That is actually funny, but I don't think we have a lot more time to play this treadmill game.

For my brothers and sisters in the majority, we are going to have to carry this. We are going to have to do the hard things because the left has decided they want to burn us down. That is fine.

I wish I could be honest and say we didn't try to do the same when they were in the majority, but we are at a moment when the morality of protecting the society, protecting this country, and protecting the American Dream is growth moral. It is also the next generation not being, as the economists keep telling me, the first generation to live poorer than their parents because that is what is coming.

Let's use this opportunity to do hard things.

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