WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Representative David Schweikert (AZ-01) delivered a speech on the House Floor last night to note that the United States federal government continues to borrow money at an extraordinary pace — eclipsing $80,000 every second for the first time other than during the pandemic. Rep. Schweikert also discussed the optimism surrounding various technologies to promote carbon capture, fentanyl vaccine development, and FDA approval of CRISPR treatment for sickle cell disease.
Excerpts from Rep. Schweikert’s floor speech can be found below:
Click here or on the image above to view Rep. Schweikert’s remarks.
On borrowing costs soaring past $80,000 per second over the last year:
[Beginning at 0:59 mark]
“We did something today that we’ve never done before — other than in the middle of COVID. But we did something very special today. Over the last 365 days, our borrowing has increased so much the last two months, we’re [borrowing] $80,600 a second. […] I knew we could actually spend ourselves into oblivion. We did it. We’re at $80,000 a second, and we’re only a few ticks away from getting to $7 billion a day. So you think about the fussing that goes on here on the floor where where we’re knifing each other for this or that. Unless it’s covering almost $7 billion in savings, that day, we actually went negative.”
On the Left’s resistance to carbon capture technology:
[Beginning at 7:14 mark]
“There’s this thing called carbon capture. Also, the Left despises it because it would allow you to continue to use, in particular, natural gas. And yet there’s breakthroughs in the technology right now to capture the carbon, sequester it, or convert it into other products. And I actually have a whole library of MIT and others who have had breakthroughs on how to do it. […] There’s even crazy experiments going on around the country and in the world on what they call ambient carbon capture, where the concept of what happens when you can actually start to capture the carbon right at the point source, turn it into another fuel, sequester it in the ground, use it for extraction of other hydrocarbons. But there is a solution here. The problem is it doesn’t fit the narrative of my brothers and sisters on the Left, but if you actually look at the math, particularly with 45Q which is an incentive to capture this carbon. One of the biggest emitters you have in the country is making concrete. What if you’d grabbed that carbon and put it in the concrete? […] The ability to think that there’s positive economic growth solutions, and for our brothers and sisters on the Left that have climate change concerns. But yet we talk past each other. But I have article after article I have saved on new technology that could capture carbon and water out of thin air. This is the ambient carbon capture. It’s out there. It exists. How do you get this body to start reaching this century of technology? Instead, we often sound like it’s still the 1990s. It’s here. I bring this up because this is a particular subject area where the Left wants one thing, we want one thing, and I argue there is a technology that actually solves both of our problems.”
On the development of a fentanyl vaccine:
[Beginning at 11:31 mark]
“Last year, somewhere close to 100,000 of our brothers and sisters in America died [due to drug overdose]. The number one overdose was fentanyl. Come to Phoenix, Arizona. In Maricopa County, Arizona, we have three people lose their life every single day to fentanyl. What if I said, ‘Hey, there’s a health care solution.’ It turns out we’re on the cusp of having a vaccine. Now, I’m not an expert on this, but I have read the articles. Apparently fentanyl, because it’s a synthetic, is remarkable at capturing the receptors in your brain and just magically changing your brain chemistry and the concept of filling those receptors. Well, it turns out there are scientists all over the world working on this concept. If anyone’s industrious enough, google right now or use your search engine [to search] vaccine for cocaine. […] What what would happen if you could start to remove the high from some of these incredibly addictive synthetic drugs? Remember, these things are chemicals. They’re not plant-based. This world is so much more dystopian. What change would happen to the homelessness in our urban areas if this was available? How many people out there could you help back into society? It is a tough conversation. […] This is on the cusp. This is projected to be here potentially next year. Are we intellectually, ethically, financially ready to deal with the opportunity of a disruption of something that’s tearing many of our cities and our communities apart? This is optimistic. This is loving people. This is also trying to figure out a way to take on human misery. How many times have you had an idiot like me come to the floor of the House and say, maybe we should start to think about policy if there’s now going to be vaccines coming that actually block the receptors for these types of drugs? And would that be good for society, and if it would be good for society, how do we carry it out? I think this is just moral.”
On the FDA approving the world’s first CRISPR-based drug to treat sickle cell disease:
[Beginning at 18:12 mark]
“The first CRISPR drug made it through the final bit of its process and apparently is heading toward the streets now. The FDA has approved it for sickle cell anemia. Incredibly painful. This drug will be outrageously expensive, and we need to find for just basic morality’s sake, how do we make it available? But the point here is it works. Finally, we’ve talked about CRISPR and the ability to alter a genome and add some gene sequencing. It is here. It has been done. It is approved. It is available. One of the miseries in our society actually now has a cure. So, we have actually proposed ideas of a health care bond, the ability to be able to buy the units, cure our brothers and sisters, and then use the future health care savings because they’ll no longer have that affliction in the future to pay it back. If someone else has a better financing mechanism other than just borrowing money, let me know. But get ready. There’s dozens of these types of pharmaceuticals, genetic, bio, other things that that are in the pipeline that we have almost a moral obligation. It ends misery, and also allows our brothers and sisters to once again fully participate in the society, in the economy. We have to deal with these. But this is optimistic because we actually have been working, trying to find a cute way to say it is — cures are the solution. And this is where I often get in a fuss. I’m going to spend a bunch of time at the end here on diabetes. A fuss I have with a number of our Democrat members who we go at each other pretty hard here because their version of morality is, ‘Let’s put up more clinics to help you manage your misery.’ And I kept looking at them and saying, ‘Will someone read the scientific literature? We’re on the cusp of cures.’ What’s more moral — spend money, build more clinics, or spend some money, get more economic growth because you’ve cured, you’ve ended the misery? How do I get this body to see that vision, that it’s great economics, great growth, and it’s also moral?”