WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congressman David Schweikert reveals the looming fiscal crisis facing the United States is not a matter of ideology, but rather inevitability, during his weekly House Floor speech. The political class remains entrapped in a cycle of partisan folklore, leaving Rep. Schweikert to expose the stark reality that the nation’s debt trajectory—already consuming 40 percent of global sovereign borrowing—is poised to spiral out of control, with interest payments alone eclipsing essential expenditures. With Social Security’s trust fund set to collapse by 2033, the nation is blindly entering into an era where senior poverty will double overnight. Amidst this fiscal recklessness, a solution exists—not in outdated bureaucracy, but in technological modernization.
Congress’s failure to leverage data science and AI-driven efficiencies has further exacerbated our fiscal demise. If Washington neglects the opportunity to embrace innovation and prioritize truth over political expediency, Rep. Schweikert warns future generations will inherit an economy from those who refused to confront reality. Click on any of the blue boxes below to watch highlights from his speech: 

“We take in about $5 trillion in tax receipts. We’re going to spend about $7 trillion– meaning about 7.25 percent of the entire economy is borrowed this year. And if we don’t get our act together, in nine budget years it could be 9.2 percent of the entire economy that is borrowed. I just wanted to make the point because I’ve come here in the past, [showing how] interest rates have fallen dramatically in the last couple of weeks. Remember the seesaw; when the economy is really strong, or there’s a shortage of capital to borrow, interest rates go up– meaning, the United States, we pay a lot more in debt servicing. When interest rates go down, that typically means the expectations for the economy slowing down– meaning our tax receipts fall. The middle of the seesaw stays the same. I saw some people getting giddy; ‘Look, interest rates are down!’ It also means some of our modeling in the future quarters of tax receipts also are starting to fall now. There’s no free option anymore.“

“In 2033, the Social Security trust fund is empty. Our brothers and sisters on Social Security will take a 17 percent to 20 percent cut; we DOUBLE senior poverty in America. And when someone says, ‘Just raise the cap,’ our model shows that in 2034, raising the cap only covers about 38 percent of the shortfall. You’ve wiped out the cash needed to save Medicare, which actually runs out like three years later.  One of the reasons for this chart is [it’s] trying to demonstrate something very simple, that back before TCJA– the 2017 tax reform– the actual projection of what tax receipts would be– so, before the tax changes– we’re right on track. You see the weird blip there? That was a remarkable amount of spending that happened during the pandemic. We actually just went back to nominal. So, what happens here? What happens when there’s this intense, intense hunger to play this weird blame game instead of being willing to tell our voters the truth?“

“If I came to you today and said, ‘Let’s strip any partisanship; we need to find waste, fraud, abuse, modeling issues where we’re doing things the wrong way, where we have models that are decades out of date…’ would you hire an army of auditors? An army of lawyers? Or would you hire data scientists? Turns out, several years ago, Congress started requiring agencies that send out payments that cover health care costs and that send out checks to start sending error reports. In 2023, the reports came back at $236 billion of improper payments. That’s a stunning amount of money, but that doesn’t mean that there’s $236 billion of improper payments that have been stolen. There’s a bunch that has been, but it’s more complex. An army of auditors would take years to grind through this. That’s why there’s the miracle of technology right now—hire some data scientists.“