Economic Anxiety
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for his steadfast devotion to highlighting for the American people the state of our fiscal health, which is not good, and the extent to which we are complicit in it.
I would just point out that this thing that the gentleman from Arizona is talking about is so central to everything we are trying to deal with right here, right now, in Congress, and if we don't fix that, then we will have failed.
I want to be clear to my Republican colleagues: If we do not fix this scheme, this scam--the gentleman didn't misspeak. It is a scam. If we don't fix that, we will have failed.
Let me ask the gentleman a couple of questions.
Prior to the existence of Medicaid, there was no Federal subsidy at all. This scheme couldn't have possibly existed in this way.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. So Medicaid was created, and Medicaid was created to ostensibly provide an avenue to healthcare for the poor and vulnerable, right, as a broad statement. Is that true?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. It was supposed to then be a shared arrangement between the States and the Federal Government, correct?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Now, fast-forward, and the current vulnerable population-- what we call the vulnerable population--the indigent, the poor, those who need it, single moms, people who are sick, the frail--that population, even under today's law, gets a Federal--we will call it a match; it is really a formula--a match of 50 to 70 percent, depending on the jurisdiction. Is that correct?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Let's fast-forward. What we are really talking about--for everybody at home watching C-SPAN, all 14 of you--we have a situation where ObamaCare expanded the Medicaid population, and it expanded it massively to a population that is much bigger and much more able- bodied, i.e., healthier.
Now, you would think is that good or bad? I have my problems with it facially, but even if you were going to do it, would you then say, as it does, that that population, the healthier, able-bodied population, should get a 90 percent match from the Federal Government? Because that is what is happening. They get a 90 percent rate for that expanded population, then layer on top of that, and this is what you are now dealing with.
The gentleman's chart that The Wall Street Journal did, where you have the provider taxes, you have this high rate that they are able to collect, and they are juicing it using the provider taxes. They get this 90 percent Federal dollars, and then they are openly--California, for example, has stated they are gaming the system to get Federal dollars to use that to subsidize illegal aliens and people who are not the vulnerable population and, frankly, put it in their general budget. That is what the gentleman is talking about. That is the current state of affairs.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I don't want to take away any of his thunder.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, the question I have for the gentleman: When I graduated from law school at the University of Texas in 2003, the national debt was somewhere in the $6 trillion range, $6.5 trillion dollars. When I came to Congress, when I was campaigning to come to Congress, it was just over $20 trillion. That was 2018. Today, we are pushing $37 trillion. Is that roughly correct?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Correct.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Now, I bring that up because nobody at home understands that. You are doing a good job trying to put it in context.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. You are trying to explain it about the amount of money we are borrowing per family or taxpayer per second. Yet, to put it in stark terms, what we are talking about with the debt and the deficits, what it really means is the inability to afford a house for the average American, right, because the impact that flows from it is, as you alluded to, higher interest rates, an inability for the Fed and for Congress to continue to borrow and print money because of what you are describing worldwide. The ability to have people to buy, our debt goes down.
The cost of debt is going to go up, the interests are going up, inflation is going up, and the average American family is going to take it on the chin. That is what we are talking about.
The reason I bring that up is because our colleagues, as you point out, run around here saying: I need more money for the program. I need more money for--fill in the blank. I need more money for Medicaid. I need more money for SALT. Why? It is because they feel like they have a political interest in doing so.
I am sure the gentleman had, like I did yesterday, the farm bureau coming into your office and needing help. Guess what? I understand why they need help. It is because we, the Federal Government, have messed up their lives quite vociferously.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. We distort, and so they want help. I get it. Yet, what do I do? Do I vote for food stamps?
I am a cancer survivor--you know that--and I have cancer groups coming in and asking for money. I look at them, and I say: Well, can you go find some way to pay for it?
A lot of my colleagues don't want to do that.
I will close with this. President Reagan had a great quote on ``The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,'' a late-night show in the 1970s, before he was President, in which he said:
Every program that a politician brings forward should have to come with a tax increase attached to it.
Why is that? Was President Reagan pro tax increases? I know the gentleman from Arizona knows that not to be true. President Reagan believed in tax cuts and more money in the pockets of Americans to create wealth and to create economic growth.
Yet, why he said that was because we promise things that we can't deliver. We promise things that we deliver that are fake because we are doling out money and printing money to pay for programs. Then, on the other side of the ledger, we never want to say: We need a tax increase to pay for it because we rightly understand that tax increases constrain the economy. In other words, in short, we put ourselves in the box we have created.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Correct.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Correct.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Yes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Yes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Yes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Yes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Yes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Would the gentleman yield on that?
One of the things that I have been saying in this building for the last several months is this debate about what we call, I think somewhat wrongly and incorrectly, ``mandatory spending,'' because it is not mandatory. We have just chosen to put it on autopilot. It is automatic spending. It is not mandatory.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. I have been saying in this building repeatedly that the math has to math. The math has to add up.
Would the gentleman agree that that is the fundamental and core problem in this town when we are talking about the state of affairs?
For example, we in this process have taken Medicare off of the table politically. The President has asked us to take Medicare off of the table. We have taken Social Security off of the table because, by law--
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY.--we are not allowed to touch Social Security in the reconciliation process, and then interest is off of the table because you have to pay it. You can't just magically not pay the interest. That adds up to what? It is about 47 percent of the total fricking budget. It is half the budget.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Correct.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. I have done it before.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Right.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Right.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Yes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. If the gentleman is asking a rhetorical question and the gentleman does not have his--
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Yes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. I will yield back.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source