DRAINING THE SWAMP

DRAINING THE SWAMP

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 57 (Thursday, March 26, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 57 (Thursday, March 26, 2026)] [House] [Pages H2769-H2772] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] DRAINING THE SWAMP (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.) Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I have a number of things to go over. Mr. Speaker, do you remember over the last few years the number of discussions we would have at home, saying drain the swamp? What was the term, swamp critters? We have been collecting a number of articles and trying to figure out why it is so hard to actually do policy that makes our brothers' and sisters' lives easier, better, healthier, and more prosperous. I am starting to come to the conclusion that for so many of our brothers and sisters who are at home who are watching Members of Congress, and they somehow think this is the swamp, it is part of it. We came across a number of stories that looked like they had been properly vetted, where the lobbyist community is handing out money to people. This was more on the conservative side, particularly some of our conservative publications, handing them cash to write stories to promote whatever that lobbyist wanted. I have been behind this microphone before, and I have actually shown repeatedly, here are influencers on the internet, more from my side, here are some MAGA influencers that were taking money. Maybe we should have caught it more quickly when it was the 23-year-old attractive person talking about Medicare Advantage and saying: I am sure she is an expert on Medicare Advantage. It turns out we had a series of I guess it was the broker community and those things in Medicare part C paying them to warp the information for the American people to try to understand for those who of us to get up here and try to reform this place, reform how we are trying to spend our money, to try to take on the U.S. debt, that the swamp is now on your information that is coming through this device. You have to understand, Mr. Speaker, I actually have some articles from 1 year ago. It turns out, some of the biggest snack food producers were trying to stop Congress through social media influencers. They were paying social media influencers to stop having a conversation about GLP-1 semaglutides like Ozempic. That is how perverse this place has become. I have learned, and I truly believe this, that almost everything in Washington, D.C., is actually about the money. What happens when the armies of folks are walking up and down our Halls here? Are they here because they want a freer society? Is it because they are fixated on the morality of the prosperity of growth and of opportunity for all people? Are they here to try to get us to put up pieces of legislation that stop their competition and that stop creative destruction in the economy, even though that is how you get better, faster, and cheaper? Is it how they want us to hand them cash? Mr. Speaker, I am going to show some boards from the Treasury's detailed balance sheet. The level of financial trouble our Republic is in is remarkable. If anyone is watching C-SPAN over the last day or 2, how many people have you actually seen coming behind these microphones that actually care? This is the chart I have typically started with, and the reason I do this is to say: Hey, you see this blue portion of this board? That is what we get to vote on as Members of Congress. Everything else in the red is on autopilot. We only vote on about 25 percent of the spending here in Congress. The rest is formula. It is mandatory spending. {time} 1820 However, it is worse than that. A couple days ago, the Treasury, as they are required by statute, did the sort of here is the balance sheet of America, here is where we are financially. Did anyone see the stories--you have got to read some of the geeky sort of financial press--that America actually had negative? Functionally, here is what was on the Treasury's balance sheets, saying, hey, America, currently--these are current liabilities. These aren't the unfunded liabilities for the future. These are current obligations. We owe $47.8 trillion in current liabilities, and we have $6 trillion in assets. This is from the Treasury statement. Doesn't this terrify anyone? Is it still just a calculator/math-free zone or is it more important that when the paid influencers, the paid person on conservative media by a lobbyist is saying: Oh, they might actually look at making us reform our program. We are going to hand some money to one of these authors so they will say: Oh, reform is bad, it's not Republican. Of course, it is Republican. We believe in markets. At least we used to. Let's actually talk about how bad this math is. I am going to go straight to the punch line. If you actually just do the 75-year Social Security and Medicare obligations, you are at $88.4 trillion of unfunded liabilities, and these numbers probably aren't dystopian enough. Look, a week ago, I did a whole presentation here, and we partially talked about the unified theory of how we stabilize the debt. I have seen the applause in some of the financial articles on CNBC, Bloomberg saying: Well, there are some Members of Congress trying to do a piece of legislation to get us to 3 percent of debt to GDP. Wonderful idea. At this moment, just interest is well above 3 percent of GDP. So far this year--so we are 6 months into the fiscal year--over 7.3 percent of the entire economy is being borrowed by the Federal Government. But don't worry, we [[Page H2770]] are going to do that 3 percent thing even though the latest GDP numbers are below that. If I had told you a decade, two decades ago that just the interest being paid by the Federal Government on our debt is bigger than the growth of the country, you would have thrown up your hands and said: Well, it is all over then. Yet, we look the other way because we are too busy doing the damn shiny objects around here that will get us on cable news tonight or on social media. We can do the shiny object, get some dopamine hits, maybe get some people giving us money on text message fundraising. We are heading to well over $88 trillion in liabilities. What do we do? I came here a month ago and showed part of the report that said a child born today, if you use a 6 percent generational discount rate-- that might be a little bit high, it is a little geeky, but it is within the margin--this country needs 104 percent of that child's lifetime earnings just to pay the Federal Government pensions. I have a 3-year-old. Our obligations right now require taking every dime my little Matthew will ever earn just to pay the Federal Government pensions. Part of this, Mr. Speaker, is the math of demographics. We don't have enough people. We don't have enough children. We are functionally at zero population growth. There is a math set--I had some of the Heritage demographers in my office today. They have a model that says in the next few years we could actually go negative in population as a country. For some people, oh, yay, that is great, less traffic. Okay. You tell me how I am going to finance Social Security. You tell me how I am going to finance Medicare. In now less than 6\1/2\ years, the Social Security trust fund is empty. In less than 6\1/2\ years, the Medicare trust fund is empty. At that time, we double the poverty of seniors, we will double the number of baby boomers who live on the street. That is the morality now of this place. Why am I the only idiot who comes behind the microphone and does this every week? Okay. God gave me a gift. I am pretty good at math. I will have Members of Congress who see me in the hallway and turn around and walk away from me because I am going to pitch them an idea of here is how we save Medicare Advantage, here is how we save Social Security, here is how we do this. I have pieces of legislation to do some of these things. Oh, David, you don't understand, we have been told by our political-- and this is Democrats, too--we have been told by our political consultants we are not allowed to use those words because we might actually have to explain what the hell is actually going on. You have the same number of 18-year-olds today as we had 20 years ago. We have double the number of 65 and up. I turned 64 a couple weeks ago. Maybe I am pathologically optimistic. We have adopted a 3-year- old, and I have a 10-year-old. Do they deserve to live better? Every math set right now says our kids will be the first American generation to be poorer than their parents. A child born today, my 3- year-old, let's use my 3-year-old as an example. When my 3-year-old is, I think it is 22, 21, 23, right in there, every tax, every one, every single tax in America needs to be doubled just to maintain baseline services. Why am I the jerk that gets up and does math and people look at him and say, oh, David, we are not allowed to talk about that. We will deal with that after the next election. Have you noticed there is always another election? I have been getting that same answer for 15 years here: David, we can't talk about that. It is mandatory spending. We can't go around and tell the truth. It is fixable. There are things you can do. We have presented over and over and over and over ways you could crash the price of healthcare using technology, the morality of cures, the morality of helping our brothers and sisters get healthier, convincing the bond markets that we are creditworthy. Right now we pay more--so, Greece, today Greece can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than the United States. That is what the world debt markets think of us. I could geek out and walk through what happened a couple days ago in the 2-year auction we had and how badly subscribed it was. Maybe it is the war, maybe it is other things. This isn't a game, and this is somewhat unique. L