Actual Solutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to just do a couple of very simple things here. I will walk through that. I believe there are actual solutions. The problem is they are hard, and it is one of those occasions where I think we play this game. We talk around each other because we talk our book. We talk what gets us elected. We talk what raises us money. We talk what enrages our base so that they are more politically involved. The fact of the matter is a substantial amount of that is just a boldface lie.

For anyone who is really interested just in sort of the academics of what goes on here, I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. If you have your search engine, look up ``AI Review of Congressional Speeches.'' There is an academic group.

This is in like Nature, so it is a peer-reviewed article going back over 140 years of congressional speeches. It basically says that the use of facts has absolutely crashed. If you actually read it, it has crashed. We now talk about our feelings and intuition because that is how we manipulate people.

Mr. Speaker, it is in Nature publication right now. Go pull up the academic article. That is what goes on behind these microphones day after day after day, is we have people who tell stories. We tell about our feelings, but we don't seem to actually bother doing something called math. The family slogan is: The math will always eventually win.

I am going to do this a couple of times here.

We are in the middle of the reconciliation budget battles, the propaganda, the things that get said that are true or not true. My argument for everyone here is that there is a way to pay for lots of this. It still doesn't save us.

As a country, we borrow about $6 billion a day right now. Next year, we are going to borrow about $7 billion. I am going to show you some charts. In 9 budget years, we are borrowing about $10 billion a day. The vast majority of that is demographics. Turns out it is not Republican, not Democratic.

One of the great lies here--and I have done entire presentations here where I took a whole hour a while back where I did every tax hike that the left has proposed and the scores and its economic factors. Actually, we did a bunch of the cuts in spending and those things, Republicans.

These tax hikes came out to 1.5 percent of GDP. Our cuts came out to about 1 percent of GDP, a big 2.5 percent. Looks like we are going to borrow 7.3 percent of the economy this year. And in 9 budget years, Moody's says--I am going to show this board a couple of times--we will be borrowing 9 percent of GDP.

Now, I am sorry. Most people--David, we don't know GDP. What do you mean by that? Just understand the scale is--so often, the solutions are never meant to hit you with a dopamine hit. They are meant to manipulate you. When I say ``you,'' I mean the voting public, often our staff, trying to even manipulate each other. We have spreadsheet after spreadsheet around us talking about what is going on.

My point I am going to come back to, Mr. Speaker, I have introduced legislation to fix what MedPAC has talked about now for years, back when the Democrats controlled all this place, now that the Republicans control this, but we are all too scared to actually read something that is in a big binder that actually has math in it that would be hard and difficult because, let's be honest, it is really hard putting a couple of hundred pages of facts and details in a tweet.

The fact of the matter is that MedPAC, The Wall Street Journal series, and the ProPublica series have gone over Medicare Advantage. If any of you have your phone and like tracking stories, put in ``Medicare Advantage fraud'' right now. You will see at least five major articles from The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, and some of the others. In some of those articles, if you actually add it up, it is $100-plus billion a year in fraud.

We have introduced a piece of legislation. The preliminary number is around $1.7 trillion to $1.84 trillion, making it the single-biggest reduction bill, I believe, in modern history--actually, in history at all.

So, I just got you $1.8 trillion. We have also introduced a talent- based immigration bill. If you want to hit the GDP growth numbers that we keep talking about, that the left has even talked about, and that the President has talked about, you can't do it without a talent-based immigration system. Read the literature.

As even the President has said, it is insane. We educate people, and then we send them home to compete with us. Are we out of our minds? Do a talent-based immigration. Keep people.

I am going to show you another chart in a moment that is saying that we have to deal with the reality. If the primary driver of debt in America is demographics, it is functionally Medicare; in a few years, Social Security, when the trust fund is gone; and interest.

If you go back 20 years ago, the number of 18-year-olds we had then compared to the number of 18-year-olds today is almost identical. The number of our brothers and sisters who are 65 and up has almost doubled in that 20 years.

Are we allowed to tell the truth about our brothers and sisters? Those of us who are baby boomers with gray hair have changed the math in our country. When I was a kid in the 1970s, for every dollar that was spent on people 65 and up, there was $7 spent on young people. Today, that is reversed. Today, we spend $1 on young people and $7 on those over 65. It is the deal. It is part of our societal commitment.

Fine. Keep our promises. The way you keep your promises is to know your math because, at some point, you have to finance it.

So, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Part C, deal with the waste and fraud issue from the insurance companies managing it. Make it so the incentive is to help our brothers and sisters be healthier instead of making billions and billions of dollars scoring people as sicker. Read the articles.

Turns out, I think this bill the Democrats would like, the Republicans would like, and people who do math will really like. Talent-based immigration is great for long-run economic growth. It actually fulfills even things the President talked about on the campaign trail.

The third one is functionally our bill that I have done for years and years around here. It is called the forgotten funds bill. Now, in some ways--got to be honest--this isn't new money. It is cash we have borrowed and have given to agencies, but they haven't been authorized or haven't spent it.

Mr. Speaker, off the top of your head, will you raise your eyebrows a little bit if we call this SF 133, so it is money that has been appropriated, sitting in their accounts, so it is cash. We are paying interest on it because that money was borrowed. We estimate that it is over $1.5 trillion.

If you grab that cash and realize you don't have to pay interest on it anymore, talent-based, MA reform, you just paid for our reconciliation bill and put some more money in the bank.

My point is that if we would actually think about policy, the modernization, doing things better, faster, cheaper--next week we are going to do a--I think one of our Democratic colleagues a couple of moments ago was attacking some of the--we will call it the DOGE cuts. Last year, for every dollar we took in in tax receipts, we spent $1.39.

When I go home, people say, David, I need you to balance the budget. Great. Tell me what 40-plus percent--because you have to deal with the economic effects--of government you want us to cut.

The fact is, with just the movements in interest rates this year, it is approaching a couple of trillion dollars in additional interest over the next 10 years.

Look, no one needs another speech from me doing interest rate fragility, but the fact of the matter is the bond market is on the cusp of running this country, except that is really hard to explain to our voters. If you are a Democrat, you don't want to explain that because you want to keep handing things out and doing the lie that we are going to tax rich people. Then, you show the charts saying, okay, it just takes care of weeks of borrowing, and that is it for an entire year.

Those of us who run around saying we are going to just cut waste and fraud, got to cut waste and fraud--I am going to show you some charts. We need to redefine, redesign, modernize, and use technology on how we deliver services.

Let's walk through a couple of things. What is the real reason we are doing the reconciliation budget? It comes down to one thing, at least for me. Our taxes are all going up next year.

In my district, it is over a couple of thousand dollars for an average family. In some of my ZIP Codes--look, I represent a fairly prosperous district; I represent Scottsdale and Phoenix--it is over $3,000. For my average, it is a $2,062 tax increase next year.

I have been really happy to hear how many of my brothers and sisters on the other side have gotten behind the microphone and talked about how they don't want--small businesses in my district will be hit with a 43 percent tax hike, and that is the law. That is already coming. They are going to give us ideas on how we keep this from happening?

If you think like an economist, this is sort of maintaining today's policy instead of what is in the law, where everyone's taxes go up. It maintains consumption, but you don't get the same type of economic pop of doing things that create investments in productivity and those things.

This is your reason that we have to battle through this, and the absolute absurdity I get from some of our brothers and sisters out there, you can't cut--this is just heresy. It is brutal.

We are baseline going to spend $86 trillion over the next 10 years, or we are talking about reducing. It looks like we are not going to hit the number which will enrage me. It is $2 trillion. You see the stack of coins there. That is $86 trillion over the next 10 years. That was baseline spending. All we are talking about cutting is functionally 2.2, 2.3 percent of it.

Then I think of the rage, of the theater, of the protests, and of the nasty text messages. You don't realize that just a couple ticks in interest--I think I can almost do the speed math in my head. If I had 70, 75 basis points, it is more than all those cuts.

If we went back to the interest rates we had in the early 2000s, I think that would add another $3 trillion, $4 trillion over 10 years of just interest. The theater around here is about telling stories. It is emoting the emotion, but damn it, does anyone own a calculator?

Mr. Speaker, what was it, 10 days ago, 2 weeks ago, Moody's downgraded the United States and part of the point--because I know we all read it because it was such a big deal. You subscribe to Moody's, you downloaded the report. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for letting me have a Bloomberg Terminal. I chair the Joint Economic Committee so we bathe in the math.

In 9 budget years, we are spending--9 percent of the entire economy is borrowed, and that is based on our baseline. I said that twice. In 9 years, the borrow will be $3.8 trillion.

Mr. Speaker, most of that growth is interest and healthcare. I am sure we are all around here trying to revolutionize the cost of healthcare by curing people, by using technology, doing it better, faster, cheaper, helping our brothers and sisters live healthier, instead of in misery with their chronic conditions. So often the debates behind these microphones are about needing to spend more money to help you maintain your misery instead of curing it.

The complete lack of vision around here of the morality--when you realize couple of the great studies from a few years ago is the number one contributor to income inequality in America wasn't education; it was healthcare. It was the health of the population.

What happens when your brothers and sisters have diabetes, when they are crashing repeatedly? It turns out if 33 percent of all American healthcare is just diabetes, if 47 percent of all American healthcare is obesity, why wouldn't we take those on?

Yeah, it means doing some very difficult things. It means having a brutal discussion about agriculture policy, nutrition support, and how we are going to deliver healthcare through our clinics and other things. It is really great economics, and the morality of having people live longer, be healthier, be able to have families, family formation.

We are going to show a couple numbers here. If you have 7 million prime-age males missing from the economy, and one of the datasets says it is not drugs; it is actually obesity and other things, what do we do incentive-wise to help our brothers and sisters, particularly those prime-age males, get back into the economy and participate in the society?

In 9 budget years, we will go from borrowing $6 billion a day to borrowing $10 billion a day. Why doesn't this just set people up saying, okay. I don't want to raise my brothers' and sisters' taxes. We need to do some things to get the economy to continue growing and get investment back in productivity.

That is why you do expensing, research and development expensing, and other things of that nature because you need the investments and productivity because we have got to raise wages.

Now, we are going to do a little economic geekdom. Remember the previous few years where we had high inflation? Most of America is poorer today than they were 4 years ago, and that is basically inflation. Your dollars, your salary became worth less.

In my district today, if you don't make about 27-plus percent more than you did 4, 5 years ago, you are poorer today. You are not magically going to make the cost of everything in your life go down, particularly in an environment where interest rates are going to be higher because we are borrowing so damn much money. It is not just us. Germany is backing the debt markets. The world is bingeing on debts. If you think interest rates are going to come crashing back down you are delusional. The world has only so much savings.

What do we do, Mr. Speaker? Well, you do things so you invest to create productivity. The incentives within the tax code, regulatory code to invest in things so you can raise wages.

Remember after 2017, one of the datasets we had, I think it was 68 percent of all the corporate tax cuts that enraged the left went to workers' wages.

It turns out that the way you make our brothers and sisters whole from the years of inflation is you have got to get the growth. You have got to get productivity stepped up.

In this chart--and please understand, this one upsets both Republicans and Democrats. I have even had people in my own party saying, David, you have got to stop telling people the truth.

Even just a little beyond baseline, that is if we had no legislation at all, what took us 240 years, we are almost going to double in the next 10.

Let's think of that. The day we were all re-elected or elected last November, public sold debt, so this is debt that is auctioned off--the Japanese own some, the Chinese own some, but we own most of it--was around $28 trillion. We will almost double that in the next 10 years.

We have to deal with reality. If you are going to rage at me because I said the bond market is going to be running our country soon, don't rage at me. Crack open an article about bonds and the stress and bond vigilantes and term premiums and what all these things mean and what happens when just clicks of interest rate consume every available dollar that you and I might want to invest in medical research or the left wants to do whatever the hell they want to do and it is going to be consumed by paying interest.

Demographics, which is the primary driver of our debt, is not Democrat or Republican; it is just who we are. We have a shortage of young people. There are lots of us who are baby boomers and we are going to continue to lie our backsides off. If you keep looking at the charts and just understand, the 65 population has nearly doubled in 20 years, while the number of 18 year olds is basically the same.

You would think these would be the types of data that we could all get together and say, all right. That is math. It is what we are. It is indisputable. It is math. It is Census Bureau. It is from census data from the Biden administration, so as a Republican using it, it isn't partisan, it is just math.

How do we keep our promises as a society, as a country, as a population that used to, at least, make an attempt to be moral? How do we keep our promises in--what is it--7 years now, the Social Security trust fund is empty.

Basically, meaning, if Social Security follows the law, my math a couple weeks ago was a 21 percent cut in Social Security checks across America. So 2033, it is gone. Mr. Speaker, 2034 is the first year with the 21 percent cut meaning we double senior poverty in America.

We are going to double senior poverty in America. How many Members have you seen come behind these microphones and talk about the morality of, guys, 7 years from now, let's double senior poverty, and then, let's do everything we can to talk about it. By the way, the solution you get is to just raise the cap. Okay, raise the cap. Do you realize just eliminating the cap on Social Security at that time covers only 38 percent of the shortfall?

The first full year, our math last year we did was $609 billion or $608 billion. It is almost two-thirds of what the entire defense budget is. That is 7 years.

We should have been working on this 15, 20 years ago, but the fact that an idiot like me gets behind the microphone and even uses the word, it will be an attack ad next week because, God forbid--this place cares more about winning the next election than doing what is right, doing what is moral, owning a calculator. This place is absolutely perverse.

Here is another thing. Let me enrage my brothers and sisters because so much of what we are having to deal with in this reconciliation budget--look, I hope the scorekeepers are wrong. I hope the Joint Committee on Taxation economists are wrong. I hope the Ph.D.s over at CBO are wrong. Because much of it is extending current tax policy--what we get today--instead of what is in the law, where just individual taxes go up--what?--$3.1 trillion over the next 10 years, and add in the passthroughs to small businesses and those things, add in another several hundred billion dollars.

That is the law. It is coming. Just extending that, you don't get a huge pop in growth, but you do maintain consumption. Where you get the growth is some of the other things--the expensing, the research and development, those types of things, a couple of the tweaks we are trying to do, and also the incentives to invest.

If our brothers and sisters are going to say we are magically going to grow at these sorts of rates, I wish they would actually give me a reference, give me a credible economist, maybe a guy, a gal, someone with a Ph.D. in actual economics.

I chair the Joint Economic Committee. I have a handful of Ph.D.s. These are the numbers they come up with.

Back to solutions, we have introduced a bill. Our first number was $1.76 trillion in savings just reorganizing and redesigning the incentives within Medicare Part C, Medicare Advantage, as everyone knows it, where you are incentivized to keep your brothers and sisters who are on the program, you make money by helping them be healthier instead of scoring them as sicker.

Our preliminary number from CBO wasn't $1.706 trillion over 10 years. It turns out they gave us $1.84 trillion as a preliminary guess. Hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, we will get an official score.

Is this Republican or Democrat? It is just fixing the waste, fraud, and misalignment in the program.

Look, I fully expect within minutes I will have attack ads in my home district beating the crap out of me, and I am in a 50/50 district. Maybe it is an occasion where a few more of our brothers and sisters here take a risk, particularly those in overwhelmingly partisan districts. They can afford to tell the truth. Try it. If an idiot like me in a 50/50 district will get up and tell the truth about the math, why will no one else here?

Do the charts. These charts aren't magic and secret. They have been in the MedPAC report for most of the last decade if someone would just bother to open it up, crack the binder, and read it. You can see the savings and alignment. The model that comes back is that seniors on Medicare Advantage will be healthier because the incentive is to keep them healthier.

We have to do some designs. We have to say that you should be within one plan for maybe 3 years, so there is an investment in helping you be healthier. There are things we did in there to make it work. The bill has been introduced. Yet, if you look at the total spend over the next 10 years, it is still $14.67 trillion as the baseline spending over the next 10 years.

We are just trying to deal with what article after article has basically said, that this is fraud. If anyone else has their phone in their hand and wants to look up something, look up the number of criminal cases that are open right now. The Wall Street Journal--the Justice Department, I guess, has been leaking. It is no longer civil suits. It is criminal suits, saying people are going to go to jail.

Has there ever been a moment where particularly the left and the right can get together and say that we need to fix the incentives in this program? Also, it is great economics, good healthcare, and great vision for the future. No, David. You see, we care too much about winning the next election and beating the crap out of the other side.

Then, you hear some of the brilliant things that are said about Medicaid. Now, I need to disclose that it has been many, many years. As a child, I spent two terms in the State legislature. I was never going to run for office again. Because I was so tall, smart, and good- looking, I got to--well, it had nothing to do with the fact that I was the vice chair and my chairwoman actually had a brain aneurysm. Also, they had just indicted 10 percent of my State legislature.

Remember, the fastest way, Mr. Speaker, to move up in an organization is to have 10 percent of the people go to jail.

I was a 28-year-old kid in my State legislature, and I was chairing the health committee. Arizona does something very unique in our Medicaid system. We were the last State to enter Medicaid. We didn't enter it until the mid-1980s. I was actually a part-time page during the negotiations.

In Arizona, we do something odd. We buy managed care policies, so we functionally buy HMO policies for--the technical term is our indigent population. We actually do it really well. We were the first ones to do pharmaceutical benefit management and those sorts of things.

It is an interesting intellectual argument, and I wish we could actually have a little more highbrow discussion here. Should a State like Arizona be rewarded for how efficiently we deliver and the quality of our services compared to so many other States that are just ripped with fraud?

You start to see cumulative improper Medicaid. This is not Medicare. This is Medicaid. It is supposed to be healthcare for indigents. That is the law. Payments since 2019 are over $400 billion. If you actually look at the literature, people who have analyzed it--here is a Paragon study, written by a Ph.D. It basically says that Medicaid reported functionally half a trillion dollars over 10 years, but their analysis when you do all of it is $1.1 trillion of improper payments.

Think about that. If you just fix this, if you just fix this one issue, that covers everything that is being discussed right now in trying to reform Medicaid. This would require work and also reading a hell of a lot of accounting documents.

Look, I am going to run through these boards really quickly because I have already gone, Mr. Speaker, longer than I want. People forget that we actually had a time slot here where, functionally, we sort of stopped some of the measurements and some of the enrollment criteria. If you look at the overall rate of improper Medicaid payments, if you have a multitrillion-dollar system and it is 5 percent, it turns out that pretty much pays for what E&C did a couple of weeks ago. Are we willing to invest in the technology to go fix it?

Look, remember how I was just telling you in a previous life I actually helped--I was not there during expansion, but I was county treasurer years later where I managed some of the dispro share moneys. That is sort of the geeky talk.

This is a chart from The Wall Street Journal, and they just happened to pick out my State. I love Arizona. Look, if you get to represent Phoenix and Scottsdale, you are one of the most blessed human beings in life, but the point that The Wall Street Journal was trying to make in putting up this chart is that, in Arizona, we put money--$363 million-- back in the general fund because of the way they do their provider tax. They are actually making money from the Federal Government.

We idiots--excuse me, this fine august body, we borrow the money. We are borrowing money. A State is doing a provider tax. It covers their match, and then, they are sticking money in their general fund from our borrowed money. Why is this good?

Mr. Speaker, I am just going to skip to the last one because we need to tell the truth. With our great financial burden, we are elected. We are functionally the board of directors of the biggest enterprise in the world. We represent a quarter of the world's economy.

Does this body act like a board of directors? Do we pay attention to the math? Do we pay attention to how we take care of our customers, the American citizens? Do we pay attention to the reality?

Social Security, Medicare, and net interest account for 80 percent of the spending growth over the next nine budget years. If we do the 30 years, it is everything. If we do the 30 years, military and nondefense discretionary are scheduled to grow slower than tax receipts.

Are we even allowed to talk about these? Are we even allowed to tell the truth about the math?

Mr. Speaker, we have been collecting every article we can that talks about--and some of these are Republicans. Some of these are Democrats. Some of these are Conservatives. Some of these are just academic economists.

Here is one that talks about the growth of males of prime age in Medicaid. What is fascinating about this particular study is they spent an average of 6.1 hours per day, or 184 hours a month, on all socializing, relaxing, and leisure activities.

We get attacked for saying we are asking for work requirements. Understand how many States--my State already has an application in for work requirements. I think we already have work requirements--forgive me if I get this wrong--in ten others.

If we take a look at the chart, a number of the States had applications in. The applications were approved. Then the Biden administration took over, and something happened either through court or action here. They started rolling them back.

If I say right now there are 7 million males of prime age missing from the labor force, Mr. Speaker, if I come to you and say we want tax receipts to grow, that means we need participation in the economy.

If anyone wants to geek out, probably about 5 years ago the University of Chicago did an amazing study on what work requirements do in benefit programs. At the end of the decade, the participants are wealthier because they may get the benefit, but the work requirements changed their participation in the economy. It raised their skill set. They moved up in the economy.

In many ways, if we read the academic literature, those who oppose things like work requirements have to read the literature. They are crushing people. They are destroying their economic futures, their ability to learn skill sets, and how to participate in the economy.

Maybe we have people around here that permanent poverty--that level of cruelty--is what is built into their political manifesto. I refuse to believe that. I believe we all want the right things.

Page after page of this data is here. We will have these trite debates and arguments based on feelings. Then we will wonder why tomorrow is no better than it was today and the day after that will be no better than the next day.

There is hope. There are ways to make this work. There are ways to stabilize the debt. There are ways to make this society much more prosperous. Prosperity is moral. I am wondering if we are intellectually capable of actually doing the work.

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