MATH, MONEY, AND DEMOGRAPHICS

MATH, MONEY, AND DEMOGRAPHICS

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 50 (Thursday, March 19, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 50 (Thursday, March 19, 2026)] [House] [Pages H2616-H2619] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] MATH, MONEY, AND DEMOGRAPHICS (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.) Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, we are going to actually do something with a little meat on the bones today. I have to walk through the math. Repeatedly, I have come behind this microphone over the last decade, trying to walk through our Joint Economic Committee's, my office's, and my personal unified theory. The unified theory is a fairly simple concept: We have an incredibly complex problem. Last year, for every dollar this country took in, we spent $1.43. Yesterday, we hit over $39 trillion in borrowing. We have been borrowing, so far this year, about--actually, if you do this fiscal year, it is over eight, but over the last 12 months, it is like $7 billion a day. You realize that yesterday we hit $87,400 per second in borrowing. Our unified theory is, you can't just pretend and say, oh, we are going to pass a balanced budget amendment, so everything will be fine. I am going to show you in the charts where the math, where the money, and where the demographics actually go, but you are going to have to do lots of things. You are going to have to adopt technology. You will have to adopt smart regulations. You will have to legalize competition, which, remember, this place constantly uses legislation, rules, and other things to basically stop competition. Creative destruction is actually a basic economic principle of free markets, except here in Congress. We are [[Page H2617]] also going to talk about--and this is the tough thing--we are going to talk about moving to a talent-based immigration system because I cannot make any of the rest of these numbers actually work in a society right now where the United States is basically at zero population growth. Last year, the preliminary number is that we grew maybe 400,000. There is a chance this year we are even closer to zero population growth. You have to embrace it. It is math. It is not Republican and Democrat. It is not my feelings. It is math. We functionally have the same number of 18-year-olds as we had 20 years ago, and double the number who are 65 and up. It is demographics, yet we lie our heinies off about it. Remember, yesterday--and I voted yes--we had a ``we are going to balance the budget'' bill. Okay, great. Love it. Do you understand, with the economic impacts, if you told me to balance the budget tomorrow, I can, but you just have to tell me what half of Federal spending we are ending. It would require cutting Federal spending by 50 percent when you do the economic effects. That is the reality, so we don't tell the truth around here. We use these platitudes. It is great on campaign brochures, but it is crap math. Let's actually start walking through reality. Then, I am going to actually try to tell the truth about what the Biden-era years of immigration cost us--millions and millions and millions of low-skilled. The fact of the matter is--I am going to show you the math, but I am also going to show you the math of what high- skill, talent-based immigration does for the finances of this country. First off, we have an updated chart here, and it still needs another update because of interest rates being higher. Today, only 25.2 percent of spending is voted on by Members of Congress. Mr. Speaker, you and I only get to vote on this blue portion. Everything in red is on autopilot. Right now, we have net interest at $1.39 trillion. We actually believe that is actually going to come in closer to $1.112 because of higher interest rates and some of the refinancing demands, but this is based on the CBO report from 2 weeks ago. If you use our math right now, Medicare is coming in at $1.666 trillion. Social Security is number one. We actually believe interest is number two. Medicare will be number three, but I need you to look at my chart right now. Do you see this Medicare number of $1.63 trillion? In 6\1/2\ years, we go from $1 trillion on Medicare to $2 trillion. In 6\1/2\ years, the Medicare trust fund is empty. If you are a hospital getting Medicare part A--remember, there is A, B, C is Medicare Advantage, and D is drugs. If you get your resources from Medicare part A, you are getting a 12-percent cut. That is the new updated number from CBO. {time} 1230 Mr. Speaker, in 6\1/2\ years, the Social Security trust fund is empty. In 6\1/2\ years, you get a 24 percent cut in your Social Security check. We will double the poverty of seniors in 6\1/2\ years. For my Democratic colleagues who keep saying: Well, just raise taxes. Okay, great. This happens in 2032. By 2033, to cover the Medicare shortfall and the Social Security trust fund fall with the trust funds empty, you have got to give us $638 billion, I think is the first year of the shortfall. If defense is $1 trillion, start thinking about that. It is like 60 percent of the entire defense budget is your shortfall. How often are the conversations behind these microphones absolutely vacuous because this place doesn't own calculators or doesn't have the moral aptitude to tell the truth about the math and the misery we are going to put on our brothers and sisters in this country if we don't step up and fix it. I am in a 50-50 district. For years and years, I come behind this microphone. I introduce bills to fix the--MedPAC tells us there is almost $1.7 trillion to $2 trillion in misalignment in Medicare Advantage. Who is the idiot who lays out a bill to fix it and then can't get a single other Member of Congress to sponsor it with him? The fact of the matter is there is a way--you are not going to pay off the debt. You are just trying to stabilize it. We have got a lot of wonderful articles saying: Well, there is a group in Congress that talk about holding the deficit to 3 percent of GDP. Our interest is over 3 percent of GDP this year. The CBO report from 2 weeks ago says: In 9 years the structural deficit of this country is $3.1 trillion; and $2.1 trillion of that is just interest. So, yay, we have gotten the deficit down to $1 trillion; but our interest load is so big. Remember, Mr. Speaker, the primary driver of U.S. sovereign debt is interest and our healthcare costs. Are we willing to have that revolution in how we provide healthcare? Legalize technology. Push for the cures. Diabetes is 33 percent of U.S. healthcare spending. Maybe helping our brothers and sisters be healthier turns out to be one of the greatest economic benefits of society when 47 percent of U.S. healthcare is associated with obesity. Maybe we should change the farm bill. Maybe we should change nutrition support. Maybe we should actually think about helping people be healthier. It is great economics, and it is good for our brothers and sisters. Oh, but that will piss off--sorry--yeah, lots of the moneyed interest. That means the hospitals and the others who make money on sick people. This place is absolutely immoral and perverse. I find myself getting angrier and angrier. I have given up. I am leaving this place. I am going to go run for Governor in Arizona. Maybe I can save Arizona because I can't get my brothers and sisters here to do hard things because it is hard. I have a 3-year-old that we have adopted. I am 64. My wife is my age. Maybe we are insane. It is the greatest gift God has ever given someone. We need 104 percent of my little boy's lifetime income. We need 104 percent of my little boy's lifetime income just to pay Federal Government pensions. In 33 months, over half of Federal spending will go to those 65 and up. The math problem is we have gone 40 years and there are not enough children. Mr. Speaker, you heard me a moment ago say we are functionally at zero population growth. There is actually one analyst out there that has us at negative population growth because of the people leaving the country. They come to me, and our hallways are full of people demanding more money. Many of them are things we agree with and we love. We just have to borrow everything. Let's walk through just, first off, the reality of the math. Then I am going to make the argument to move, to revolutionize our immigration system to a talent-based immigration system that the rest of the industrialized world has moved to. Let's take a look. There were 3.6 million babies born last year. Okay. Think of this. For every baby that was born last year, that same year we put $600,000 on their credit card in a single year. That is the ratio of our borrowing because we have so few children. Our model is we are down to 1.59 fertility rate. France actually has a higher fertility rate than the United States. Greece today can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than the United States. Are we going to tell the truth? Some of my charts are a little bit geeky. The basic principle of this is here is our available workforce. Here is our labor force participation. We are getting down. We are going to be basically getting close to 61, 60 percent of our population in the labor force. It is just demographics. We had the baby boom. I remember back in the early 1980s I was sitting in a statistics class. I had a professor back then; she was talking about we need to get ready. We had this population bubble. How did we know 40 years ago that we had a baby boom bubble? Her model was not dour enough for the fact that starting in the 1980s, fertility rates in the United States--and now it has gotten steeper and steeper and steeper. It is all over the industrialized world. We have got to understand. This isn't just the United States. The United States is just better off. What is one of the miracles we have as Americans? We are the reserve currency of the world. People want to trade in U.S. dollar