Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. For my friend from Texas, thank you. It is actually a
joy being on this committee. It is fascinating the access to data. It
is also fascinating how the data sort of gets, as you have already
heard here in the first few minutes, sort of politicized by some of us
almost to the edge of fantasy.

Remember, if we step back to 2011, if we look at the President's own
economic graphs, we were going to see economic GDP expansion
approaching 5 percent of GDP. The indicators we were just getting this
last week, it is this coming quarter, the quarter we are in right now,
we may be about to see GDP of about 1.2 percent.

At some point, holding up a board, it says look at the jobs, and then
looking at the actual math, reality should hit home.

Here is the President's own economic report. If you start to look at
the numbers in here, if someone will actually break it open and
actually read it, look at the numbers in here of workforce
participation, how many of our brothers and sisters out there in the
workforce are actually in the job market? There is something horribly,
horribly wrong out there.

So why do the Republicans so focus, so fixate on economic growth? It
is the reality of what is about to happen in this country. In 4\1/2\
years--so right now we are discussing a $3.8 trillion budget. In 4\1/2\
years, we are expecting $1 trillion more in spending. Where is that
growth? Where is that money coming from?

Look at this slide. We are going to try to put up some slides that
just show you how quickly mandatory spending is consuming everything in
its path, and if we do not have a phenomenal economic growth, we are
not going to be able to keep our promises.

For right now, here is where we are today. We are basically, right
now, only 31 percent of the budget we ultimately get to vote on. The
vast majority of our budget is in what we call mandatory spending:
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest on the debt, veterans'
benefits, and the new ObamaCare health care law.

Well, what happens over just the next 4\1/2\ years? How quickly does
this mandatory spending begin to consume everything else in its path?
Well, think about this. Just a couple years ago in the 2013 budget, we
were projecting that it was going to take all the way out to the end of
2023 before we hit this split where only 24 percent were things we get
to vote on and 76 percent--76 percent--of the spending was going to be
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest on the debt, veterans'
benefits, and the new health care law.

Well, guess what is happening because of the Democrats' policy on
economic growth, this President's policy on economic growth. So how
quickly do we now hit where 76 percent of our money is going into
mandatory? It is not 2023. It is in 4\1/2\ years.

Now, yes, when we track what is happening, particularly in Medicare
and Medicaid spending, it is tracking faster than we expected. And,
yes, we have had discipline in this body on dealing with what we are
allowed to have discipline on because of the relationships having a
split Congress and being disciplined in discretionary spending.

But understand, if we do not do those things that are necessary to
dramatically grow this economy--and it is more than just talking about
fantasies within this economic profile. It is regulatory, it is tax
systems, and it is trade. And yet simple things--and this one is rather
personal to me, and the ranking member was actually somewhat helpful on
this--things like crowdfunding, little things that are simple,
disappear in the bureaucracy for years after we even have bipartisan
legislation.

What is it with this White House, with the Democrat Party's fear of
those things that create economic expansion? Why does it always have to
be some sort of massive, collectivist dogma to drive economic growth
instead of letting the markets go? Understand, this is important
because we are trying to help sell the story of why do we care so much
about this economic growth. When you look at what is about to happen in
net interest, look at how fast this grows.

I am going to actually move to the next slide just so you have a
comparison. I want you to think about this. In just a few years, Mr.
Chairman, the interest--and this is using nominal interest rates. If we
have a spike, then it gets really bad really fast. But in just a few
years, we are going to be spending as much money in this body on
interest as we do for all of defense.

Well, at that point, if you care about the entitlements, if that is
where you are ideologically, you care about protecting the country, you
care about medical research, you care about these things, then the
economic growth is everything. We can't grow ourselves out of this debt
and deficit, but we can sure do some great good.

I beg my brothers on both sides of the aisle and my sisters, too, you
need to step away a bit from some of the crazy dogma, pull back on some
of the crazy regulations, the arrogance of thinking Washington knows
everything, and let America begin to grow, allow it to begin to
prosper. That is what the Republican budget is doing. It is dealing
with the reality of the math we have been given by this President's
policies and trying to drive it to a progrowth future with lots of
options.

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