WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Representative David Schweikert (AZ-01) delivered his final speech of July on the House Floor last week. Rep. Schweikert highlighted the reality that his 8-year-old daughter’s generation will face as the first generation predicted to live poorer than their parents. The truth is 100 percent of our debt from today through the next 30 years is strictly driven by demographics. He mentioned that we’ve neglected to allocate adequate resources for getting old while fertility rates in our country simultaneously decline. Now more than ever, not only is it crucial that Congress talks about the math, but it’s critical to create policies that foster economic growth and restore our nation’s fiscal stability.
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 reaching debt levels that surpass previous calculations tenfold:
[Beginning at 00:28]
“You see the number? $35 trillion. Guess when we hit it?! We should be very, very excited and proud of ourselves! We did something that so many economists said we would never get to this quickly. My math says this coming Friday, 3 p.m., the United States gross debt will cross over $35 trillion. Understand that’s not the way Europeans calculate our debt. They calculate it higher because of our obligated, unfunded liabilities. You are going to watch the Treasury [on] Friday about 3 p.m. post up a number: $35 trillion. We did it. Congratulations. And how many people have you heard come find the microphone today or this week, understanding [and] wanting to talk about that? What we’ve gotten is people coming behind the microphone and not telling the truth. We ALL want to protect Social Security. The way you protect Social Security is [knowing] the math and how it actually works. We’re on track in a decade to double senior poverty. But God forbid any of us tell the truth about math because the truth gets you un-elected with a bunch of angry ads at home. This place runs around and avoids telling the truth. Let’s run through another little factoid. My math basically says, this year, 45.68% of all the income tax collections [and] receipts your government takes in just covers interest. I’ve been coming behind the microphone saying the interest in 2024, this fiscal year, would be somewhere around a little less than $1.2 trillion. I apparently have that wrong and will come in $1.1 trillion, I’m off a fraction. 45.68% of every dime we’re collecting in your income tax now just pays interest. I’ve tried to say over and over — at home and other places — you get people who just stare at you and go, “huh?” Who really runs this government?”
On the importance of getting economics right and how it’s moral:
[Beginning at 16:08]
“Here’s where we’re at to date. We’ve taken in $3,755,000,000. Do you see the red here? The red is the individual income tax. Your country is an income tax-based economic system, while other countries may rely more on a value-added tax — which is a really regressive tax that crushes the middle class. The blue over here, when you start to look at that, this is functionally social insurance and retirement program. It’s in Social Security. Well, that’s actually going out the door immediately, and we have to borrow some to cover it. The blue over here… well, that’s actually corporate income taxes. Remember, the United States, back in the late 1980’s, early 1990’s, changed much of our tax structure when we started having pass-throughs. Do you remember LLC’s, sub-chapter Ss, partnerships, [and] those types of things? Much of what is corporate activity in the United States flows through to that individual tax line. When you get the brain trust here that says, “We’re going to raise corporate taxes!” Okay, great. That’s going to solve something? Remember, and we’re trying to vet the paper I got the math from, but we have a paper from about a year [to a] year-and-a-half ago that said in the 2017 tax reform we did, 67% of the corporate tax rate reduction went to wages. When you have someone from the Left who runs around saying, “We’re going to raise corporate taxes, ta-da!”, what they’re doing is basically screwing over the working men and women of the country. That’s how it works. When your wages go up, the old saying used to be, ‘it’s inflation.’ That doesn’t get you anything… or it’s productivity because you built a tax code that said we can afford to buy the next better piece of equipment. We can build better processes. We build better supply chains, and you as a worker gets part of that. Part of productivity is a tax system that maximizes economic vitality. Economic growth is moral.”
On not allowing disruption to take place in America:
[Beginning at 20:28]
“Our tax revenues are up. We’re taking in more receipts. Technically, they’re not revenues. Revenues are what you earn, receipts are what you confiscate. A bit of tax lingo there, but it’s our spending. Tax receipts are up but our spending is way up. When you see the white line over here — deficits — it’s just basically the derivative of tax receipts [being] up, but we’re spending faster than those receipts are going up. Therefore, you get a deficit. If you get someone who says, “Well those 2017 tax cuts…” No! Tax receipts are up! I have another chart I’m going to show you. Corporate tax rates, or corporate tax collection — don’t think about the rate,but [rather] what you take in. Corporate tax collections are actually above the mean. How much of this spending is the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act? The Democrats lost their mind when we did 2017 tax reform. Remember, it was actually a few trillion dollars — $5.5 trillion. Functionally $4 trillion of it was also covered with direct taxes. We just moved things around to maximize productivity. It was about getting companies to move back to the United States, to move their organizations, their intellectual property, and the things they were making money on. We had to become competitive in the world again.“
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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.