Schweikert: If You Want to Save the Country, Learn the Math

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Representative David Schweikert (AZ-01) delivered a speech on the House Floor last night, where he focused on flawed estimates provided by our very own White House. These estimates proved that even though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted a high of $851 billion and a low of $390 billion over ten years from additional collections on $400,000+ earners, we have only seen $1.3 billion in the first two years. Does anyone see a math problem? Rep. Schweikert then mentions the potential cost-savings that come from integrating innovative technology, how it may even be fairer and more effective. He closes his speech with the difficult discussion that 14.5% of all of our spending today is just interest- total interest, interest we owe to the trust funds, interest we owe to anyone that bought one of our bonds, our union pension funds. If gross interest comes in at $1.4 trillion, (45.68% of every income tax dollar), a little less than half of your income taxes go towards just paying down interest.

Excerpts from Rep. Schweikert's floor speech can be found below:

On false promises for additional revenues from our governmental agencies:

[Beginning at 00:23]
"One of my great frustrations here is sitting on Ways and Means [and] having the joint economic economists as part of my team, and the number of times this place makes promises that the experts around us say, "They're complete fraud." And then, somehow, magically, we never sort of come back a couple of years later and say, "Hey, here's what you were promised when the Democrats did their inflation reduction act. Here [are] the actual outcomes." Should we hold people to their own language? I'm going to walk through a few boards and try to give some examples of how this place engages in theater that's mathematically void, and, what's the term… oh yeah, we lied to you. How many of you remember, a couple of years ago, "We're going to put $80 billion into the I.R.S." Yay! "And we're going to collect money on those people, $400,000 and up." You had members of this body, of the White House, and others, saying crazy things. The press- excuse me, the scribes who, basically, in many ways, should have to file with the federal elections because many of the press around here act more like P.R. Department for the Democrat party- say, "Better tax enforcement could raise $700 billion over the decade." [This came from] the White House in 2021. Some of the others: "Some members of Congress think you could get $1 trillion from taxing and fining delinquent rich people." Wouldn't that be neat? Wouldn't it make our jobs so much easier, in a Congress borrowing close to $80,000 every second? Remember, this is what you were told. How come no one ever comes behind these microphones, two years later and says, "Okay, do we hold you to your language? You built budget documents on these numbers."

On enhanced tax enforcement revenues not coming anywhere close to agency projections:

[Beginning at 05:41]
"What would happen if, annually, the Treasury has to update what the real numbers [are]? How are they doing? Well, Madam Speaker Pro Tempore, you might get a kick out of this. It turns out, over the two years, they've brought in an extra $1.3 billion. That's a lot of money. We're still trying to figure out how much of that money would have just organically, eventually come in- it might have come in slower, so they move some forward. If I take $1.3 billion over two years, and then divide that in half, multiply it by ten… huh? What happened to the $400 billion? Or the $1 trillion? Or the $700 billion that the Democrats, from those microphones, are telling us they were going to get by going after the $400,000 and up rich people?! My point here is this: so often this place, because it's mathematically vacuous, builds these promises that are a complete fraud. Now, do I think people who have high income should pay their fair share? Absolutely. In fact, it's not even their fair share. They should pay what the law tells them they have to pay. Okay, that's fair. It turns out, there were lots of articles that had been coming up saying it was a fraud, but no one around here was willing to pay attention to it. "Department of Treasury, I.R.S., Announces [$]1.3 [billion] Recovery…" it's not even close. "Treasury Raised Nowhere Near What Democrats Expected from Tax Enforcement." One of the reasons I'm doing this sort of backwards is I come behind this microphone, week after week after week, sort of showing, here's the scale of the debt. Here [are] the drivers of the debt. The drivers of the debt from today through the next 30 years are demographics. I get screamed at when I'm home; "David, stop telling us the truth!" From today through the next 30 years, about 75% of all the debt- remember, we're expecting in 30 years to be $116 [to] $120 trillion in debt- 75% of that will be functionally Medicare. In nine or ten years when the Social Security trust fund is gone, do we backfill that and use the general fund for it? That's math, but it doesn't have to be that way. You can't fix things if this place keeps making crap up."

On the morality of pushing creative cures to market:

[Beginning at 17:55]
"In the last six years, 390,000 of our brothers and sisters have died of fentanyl. I think one of my boards here is going to say, 345,000 prime-age Americans died of fentanyl. That's the morality of this place. "Oh, let's give some more money to doing the same thing we've been doing over and over." Think about it as everything from border security policy, to the firefighter who is just trying to save someone who gets exposed. In my county, I had someone tell me that, at least my city of Phoenix, there may be two or three dead people every single day from fentanyl. What would happen if I came to you tomorrow and said, "Hey, they think they actually have [treatment]; it would be once or twice a year, it's not a traditional vaccine, that's the language if you look it up. It basically has your body attached to the protein so it can't pass the brain-blood barrier. There apparently is, for a number of narcotics, this type of technology appearing to be working. Take a little bit of that money and help bring it to market. Save people's lives! We live in a country where we may be about to have the fifth year in a row where prime-age males are dying younger. In 14 years, America has more deaths than births.
…
When you're going to have the Democrats come behind [these microphones] and maybe even the debate tonight, [saying], "We need rich people to pay their fair share, those people over $400,000!" This was a factoid I got from [Congresswoman] Virginia Foxx a little while ago and it screamed in my head. What if I came to you and said, the student loan forgiveness that the administration is desperately pushing because they desperately need the votes-remember, it's a vote-mind, it's pay for play. Hey, now vote for us-If I told you 750,000 of those individuals who the Biden Administration [provides funding to] make over $312,000, yet, every dime of this is borrowed money? You're going to take working class people-many of them that did not have the blessing like I've had and others in this body [had], to go to school, to university, to go to grad school, things like that-you're going to ask working people who don't make anything close to $300,000+ to subsidize?! This is the morality of this place."

###
Congressman David Schweikert serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and is the current Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee. He is also the Vice Chairman on the bicameral Joint Economic Committee, chairs the Congressional Valley Fever Task Force, and is the Republican Co-Chair of the Blockchain Caucus, Telehealth Caucus, Singapore Caucus, and the Caucus on Access to Capital and Credit.