Dismantling California's Citizens Redistricting Commission

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from California for his remarks, and as I always say to Californians, don't take Arizona's water.

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

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to do a run-through of a couple things here. I am going to try to walk through some economics. Then I am going to actually try to walk through some warnings that are in the documents that are around us that very few people seem to bother to read. Then I am going to actually do some things that are hopeful because I think sometimes I am a bit dour, and I don't do enough of this.

First off, in August, Republicans are going to go out and tell the morality of people's taxes not going up next year. What we did in the reconciliation budget: incentives to invest in America, to build new plants of equipment, for working people to have some things to actually draw them back into the labor force, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, some of these things.

If you actually look at one of the reasons those things are in there, and we are actually starting to see some of the models of the economic side, seeing some very optimistic things that we think are going to change labor force participation, small changes.

The left will actually sort of do a bit of schizophrenia such as you cut spending over here, but too much of this money is borrowed. I agree too much is borrowed. I want to cut more spending, but then you attack us when we try to actually point out misalignment, bad acts.

What was the report that just came out a couple days ago, where we found 2.8 million of our brothers and sisters enrolled in subsidized ACA plans as well as Medicaid plans.

They don't want to talk about that because it screws up their pitch when you actually walk through what we see in the math. We know the American people believe and understand the morality and the great economics of encouraging those that are able-bodied, able to work to participate in society.

If anyone is a geek out there--it is probably 4 or 5 years old--the University of Chicago, four of their Ph.D. economists wrote a brilliant paper talking about: If you actually ask people to participate in society, in the economy, to take a job, even if you give them welfare or government subsidies, because they have an attachment to the economy, to work, at the end of 10 years, those who had the work requirements actually end up much wealthier and off of government support. It is the morality of learning to get up, building an attachment, learning skills, and moving up in an organization.

There was a time when it was actually the left's ethos, that the argument of work is moral. Somehow that left the Democratic Party.

Let's walk through a couple things. I have used this board for months now. It will probably be the last time I use it. Understand baseline over the next 10 years, according to Congressional Budget Office, we are going to spend $86 trillion. Think of the screaming and gnashing of teeth and protests that are all ginned up, you cut $800 billion from this, and a little bit from a couple other things, it was less than 2 percent of that spending.

Are you telling me that the left doesn't believe that if you are spending $86 trillion as your baseline spending, and understand--I am going to show you some of the charts and how much of this is basically demographics. We got old. Our healthcare costs money.

I am going to show you a couple charts that I really want folks to understand. But for the American people, when you see someone from the Democratic Party behind a microphone saying, they cut spending. It is this off of the base of this. It is the lack of understanding.

One of the points that you keep trying to make over and over again is, was it the Democrats' plan that they wanted to raise taxes on everyone? Because that was automatic; that was coming at the end of this year.

Your taxes were going up back to the pre-2017 tax reform. Every once in a while, you will get someone who says, well, you shouldn't have extended the tax policy for the highest income. Okay. That is a tiny, tiny portion of the total dollar amount. When they had control of everything, they didn't do it.

But just from a point--and this is more for everyone to understand, particularly even staff. You see the blue here, nondefense/defense, every dime of that is borrowed. I think this year we will probably borrow, let's call it, $400 billion for Medicare. We are going to actually hold a contest shortly to see who can guess the final borrowing for this year.

The economy has actually been pretty good. We are tracking customs receipts. Many of you think of it as tariffs. We may have another $70 billion on top of baseline. It is probably going to come at $2.2 trillion of borrowing this year.

This doesn't have the tax reform, many of those things built into that base. How do I help folks understand? Here is where we are already at, and this will make sense in a little while.

For every dollar we take in in tax receipts, we spend $1.39. We spend $1.39 for every dollar we take in tax receipts. If you saw that previous chart, you would have noticed that only about 24 to 26 percent is in discretionary, what we really get to vote on. That is why we end up having to use what we call these reconciliation budgets.

The 1974 Budget Control Act allows us to move a bill, if it has certain fiscal properties to it, through the Senate without having to get 60 votes. It is all a dance to deal with the 60 votes. If we were actually a little more honest about math, maybe we wouldn't have to do this dance.

Why this is important is--I am a little freaked out because this is the MedPAC report. I know every Member of Congress has read every word of it because it is really important. There is a chart in here that if you actually read the footnotes--now, look, for anyone that is paying attention, I am trying to bring Medicare Advantage back where the incentives actually are about helping populations be healthier and not about risk scoring them that--it is a concentration of illness, but the incentives are that if populations are healthier, the plans can make more money.

But inside here is also a great data point, Mr. Speaker. This year, we are going to spend, let's call it, a trillion dollars on Medicare.

How many of you would guess what we are going to spend in 7 years? The model in here says in 7 years, we go from $1 trillion a year on Medicare to $2 trillion. We double Medicare spending in 7 years.

Now, part of that is demographics. Starting, functionally, 30 years ago, we started having a lot fewer children. So if we took today and stepped back 20 years ago, we had about 35 million of our brothers and sisters who were 65 years old, 30 years ago. Today, we are approaching about 70 million of our brothers and sisters who are 65 and up, so more than double.

Go back 20 years ago, the number of 18 years olds we had is pretty much the same as the number of 18 year olds we have today. Next year, the number of 18 year olds goes down, the year after that it goes down, and the year after that it goes down.

Is that Republican or Democrat or is it just demographics? It is a little hard to campaign on that. It is a little hard to attack the other side, but the fact of the matter is, if we all read our data, we don't have a choice.

This is the Social Security Medicare actuary report, another thing I know every Member here has actually read. Seven years from now, the Medicare part A trust fund, which is about 38 percent of Medicare spending--the rest comes out of the general fund and members' participation, I think is about 15 percent, the fees they pay--but that 38 percent, that trust fund is gone in 7 years, meaning hospitals, surgery centers will have an 11 percent cut, but I know we are all going to talk and work on how we are going to revolutionize the cost of healthcare.

One of the classic problems around here, Mr. Speaker, is for some reason the left--and many of us on the right--we talk about healthcare as a finance problem. The ACA was a finance bill. It was who had to pay, who got subsidized. Medicare for All is a finance bill. I would argue the Republican alternative from a few years ago was a finance bill. It had a little better actuarial curve, but it was a finance bill: who got subsidized, who has to pay.

I beg of our brothers and sisters around here, open up your brain. We live in a time of miracles. We are going to have some conversations about how you change the view of healthcare. It is all about what we pay. Can we change the cost by doing it better, faster, cheaper with technology and our brothers and sisters being healthier?

If we don't, we will have problems like what is shown on this chart. Today, 16 percent of all tax receipts go just to interest. In 9 budget years, actually 9 years straight up, in 9 years, 30 percent of all U.S. tax receipts go just to interest. Heaven forbid, if we had a 1 point movement in interest rates, my math is 45 percent of all tax receipts would go to interest.

When you see people come behind these microphones, how many people are saying: Hey, how do we convince the bond markets? The bond markets are basically on the edge of running this country now because when you borrow $6 billion a day--next year, I think we borrow $6.5, maybe $7 billion a day. In 9 years, we are over $10 billion a day. Let's see. That is, what, $70,000 to $72,000 a second.

I have this aggregator on my news, and there are some crazy articles. A couple leftwing economists are saying: Borrowing doesn't matter, people are always willing to buy U.S. debt.

Okay. Let's pretend these leftwing economists are right. We can continue to borrow and borrow and borrow. They purposely sort of forget the punch line. Let's say we could borrow forever. At what point are there no more services, purchases, government helping our brothers and sisters because it is all covering the interest costs on the bonds?

So let's say--I think you are a little insane--you believe we can just borrow forever, you are a monetarist, but even the fragility in the monetarists, you saw in the previous few years of inflation that their model didn't work. Also, in addition to that, we are going to pay the interest. In 9 years, baseline under a favorable interest rate model, 30 percent of all U.S. tax receipts go to interest and, Heaven forbid, if interest rates were to come up 1 percent because we have to--this coming year, I think we are going to refinance $11 trillion, the year after that I think it is $13 trillion because we stay so short on the financing term, we sell short-term debt instead of longer-term debt because it turns out there is not as big an appetite. We are in this world where in 9 budget years, it will be $10 billion a day.

I am just going to run through a number of these things fairly quickly just to sort of get to the point. National health expenditures as a percentage of GDP, this will make sense in a moment. In 2033--so functionally, what, 8 years from now--over 20 percent of the economy will just be healthcare. Why?

The Joint Economic Committee 2 years ago wrote a report--and I thought I was going to get the crap kicked out of me, but we spent months and months and months grabbing every bit of literature and saying: Can someone tell me what obesity costs America? What it costs society? What it costs family formation? What does it cost? We came up with a number 2 years ago of $9.1 trillion in additional healthcare costs. We had some mortality statistics, the number of multiple chronic conditions, the misery out there.

What is fascinating is we have some articles right now talking about that we may have actually hit something crazy, and it is an odd way to phrase it, but it is what the researchers think, we may have already hit what we call peak obesity.

When we published the report 2 years ago, we still had about 4 or 5 more years of growth of obesity. In some States, actually approaching 50 percent of their population are technically obese under the BMI calculations.

It looks like in the last 12 months we may have started to bend the curve. We are trying to recalculate. Is this a sign of incredible hope that we know so much misery in our society--because there is a brilliant paper from about 7 years ago saying the leading contributor to income inequality in America, it turns out, isn't education. It turns out it is health.

When you think about it, the cascade of costs of someone with severe diabetes, when we already know diabetes is 33 percent of U.S. healthcare. What if things like this actually could help our brothers and sisters? Is this Republican or Democrat? It is just good policy. It has just always been uncomfortable to talk about.

Maybe society is starting to open up, saying, hey, maybe a healthier society actually is a really good, really moral thing.

Look, as we walk through these, I want to come back and sort of hit a punch line here. These charts have been available to us for years. The curve keeps getting steeper. When you have someone say they are a protector of Medicare, that is great. I am with you. It is an earned benefit. We made a societal promise, are they telling the truth about its financing? Oh, David, we can't do that, someone will say something mean about us.

In 7 years, what else will also be empty? The Social Security trust fund.

I am sure you all dove into the Social Security Medicare actuary report and saw the point in there where it says in 2032, 2033--actually we think it is 2032--our brothers and sisters on Social Security will take a 24 percent cut. Our model says we double senior poverty in America. That is absolutely immoral.

Have you also read the papers, the scale of tax hikes, of policy? Now, is the left offering to work with those of us on the right who are willing to step on the third rail and do the moral thing to actually take these on? Hell, no.

Mr. Speaker, I have talked to so many people on the Committee on Ways and Means and other committees who basically look at me in terror and run out of the room.

The political consultants care more about the power of the politics than the fact that in 7 years, Medicare is $2 trillion a year. In 7 years, the Medicare trust fund is empty. In 7 years, the Social Security trust fund is empty.

In the first full year, if we want to backfill that shortfall on Social Security, one of the rough numbers we have is $618 billion. Basically, what is that? It is two-thirds of what the entire defense budget is.

There is a lack of understanding of the scale of almost the dystopianism that comes from what happens when these trust funds are empty.

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I will learn to talk faster.

To the poor person trying to take my words down, I apologize.

I am going to skip over some of the other charts.

Mr. Speaker, you get the punch line. In the next decade, the vast majority of debt is driven by interest and healthcare costs. We are often very uncomfortable talking about it.

Let's actually talk about things that are great and that if we would get the policy right, we could lower that healthcare cost. It is not just an argument about who gets subsidized and who gets financed. It is what would be really good for society and really good for the budget.

We all saw The Economist article the last couple of days that talked about the miracle of how much the statistical benefits were having on the number of cures for cancer, particularly lung cancer and blood cancers, and their model that we are on the cusp of having major breakthroughs.

We saw this article a couple of days ago about a Microsoft platform. I didn't even know they were specializing in this. What was stunning about the datasets they had in here was that AI systems diagnosed patients four times more accurately than a human doctor.

I just upset some of my brothers and sisters in the doc caucus, but the data is the data. Mr. Speaker, should we legalize technology? If I have something I can blow into called a Breath Biopsy and if it is statistically as accurate or more accurate than a human and knows what I have, should it be allowed to prescribe?

It is uncomfortable, but it would help crash the cost of healthcare. It would actually help us with the fact that we have a shortage of medical professionals.

We are on the cusp of these things. As a matter of fact, that technology has been around for 5 years except it is functionally illegal. We don't reimburse it, and we don't allow it to prescribe. We are on the cusp.

An hour ago, Sam Altman with OpenAI was down the hallway. He and I had a few minutes of conversation about a new healthcare stat that is going to go public in about a month. He seemed incredibly optimistic that its accuracy will be off the charts.

Should we legalize the use of technology to help our society be healthier? Should we allow it to prescribe? It is uncomfortable because this place is a protection racket. We have to understand. Congress is mostly about one thing. It is about money. The left pretends it isn't. The right pretends it isn't. It is about money.

When we start to say maybe we can use technology as a competition to help our brothers and sisters be healthier and, therefore, change the cost of healthcare, somebody is going to say: I make money on that. You are now going to have me compete against a data system that is more accurate than I am?

We see it over and over. A new Apple Watch AI model can reveal hidden health conversations. Here are a couple things I have been most interested in the last couple of years. There is a great article. I did a whole speech on it a couple of years ago.

AI discovered a whole new categories of antibiotics. Remember we were all panic-stricken that we had diseases and bacterial infections that we didn't have antibiotics for. The antibiotics weren't working. AI discovered a whole new category of antibiotics that the literature said it would take humans 20 years to develop.

Instead of being afraid of the technology, maybe we should get our heads straightened up. In our society we have a shortage of young people. Baby boomers like me with gray hair are getting older, and we are going to consume a lot more healthcare. Can we embrace the technology? That technology sets us free when we start to realize the things that are going on.

We just had a doctor of radiology in our office. He walked us through the statistical abstract of breast cancer and the scans and showed that his AI platform was remarkably more accurate. It is cheaper, faster, and more accurate. Why wouldn't we embrace it? We don't reimburse it.

The barriers to entry here are protection rackets saying we are not fighting for what is fastest, best, and cheapest. We are often here because we know our incumbency.

We really are on the edge of miracles. How do I get the left and the right to understand the math is the math? Demographics are the primary driver of U.S. sovereign debt. It is hard to campaign against the other side. Maybe we can take a couple of months off and actually do good, quality policy and legalize properly vetted and properly certified AI to prescribe.

This August, with the wearables, I am going to do an experiment with this Oura Ring. I am buying some Dexcoms to manage my glucose. Have we all seen the app where we can take a picture of food and it calculates glucose and calories?

How can we create the incentives? Maybe we should look at the ACA. Instead of just smoking in three age categories, we can add a fifth category that is an incentive for our brothers and sisters to manage their health.

Mr. Speaker, 16 percent of U.S. healthcare spending is people who are not taking their drugs for hypertension and are not taking their statin. Mr. Speaker, 16 percent of U.S. healthcare spending is over $600 billion a year.

There are solutions. We can make a difference. Embrace the technology. Change the cost. Have a healthier society. It is the most powerful thing we can do for U.S. sovereign debt.

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