WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Representative David Schweikert (AZ-01) delivered a speech on the House Floor last week to discuss how the United States is functionally creating a social entitlement system where many working Americans potentially won’t see a dime of their retirement benefits. Rep. Schweikert also discussed how prosperity is moral, and by allowing our federal spending to continue to soar, we are halting the opportunity of prosperity for generations to come.
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 rampant spending making the U.S. economy fragile:
[Beginning at 00:35]
“Last week, and the week before that, I came here and tried to walk through a concept of how fragile we are because of our borrowing — the amount of insatiable borrowing we go through. And my sarcastic comment that happens to have the benefit of being almost true, that the bond market is the one [who] pretty much now will run this country. I actually can prove part of my thesis. The last week, because we, here, made it a couple weeks without looking like a clown show, we got some decent inflation data. The movement in the U.S. debt market on our interest rates coming down, if you annualize that, do you realize it’s more than every dime in foreign aid? I need you to think about this for a moment — just those ticks. When a single basis point— remember, 1% of interest is one-one-hundredth of a tick of interest is about $800 million per year. Whether this place likes it or not, when we tell the world we are not serious of leading the world, when we don’t look serious that we are going to be the country that defends the reserve currency of the world, when we don’t look like adults, we pay a price. And many of the folks here, you get your five minutes of theater and then we add hundreds of billions of dollars of additional interest. I’m going to show you charts here where we are approaching $1.2 trillion of interest this year. I’m going to try to walk through a concept that the spending, particularly what the Democrats did with the Inflation Reduction Act, where we are saying over the 10 years, we are going to be pumping out a couple trillion dollars of subsidies to corporate America. Also, the fact that because of our debt and these higher interest rates, we are also pumping out $1.2 trillion of interest payments out. So that much cash flow is going out in the marketplace at the same time the Federal Reserve is over here trying to pull liquidity out of the market to slow down inflation.”
On wasting money while wasting our breath:
[Beginning at 10:24]
“Ok, first thing I need to walk through, [the federal] deficit over the last 12 months [was] $1.8 trillion. If you [consider] gross, it’s closer to $3 trillion in the last 12 months. That was originally when we built this board, what we thought it would be — that’s what we were going to borrow publicly. Our burden rate is actually substantially higher than expected. What’s enraging about this, is that the economy is fairly decent! We just weren’t prepared for higher interest rates, higher other expenses, and the fact of the matter is, much of the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, most Orwellian-named piece of legislation in modern history, its distortion effects in the economy, also the borrowing because when we are handing out cash grants, do you think that money’s coming out of tax receipts? It’s borrowed. The point I wanted to make here is when you see this blue, that’s what I get to vote on as a Member of Congress. The red, that’s mandatory. It’s about 74%-75% of all spending that’s on autopilot. Your Member of Congress doesn’t get to vote on it. And guess what? Every dime I vote on is on borrowed money. Plus, a sliver of your Medicare. Every dime a Member of Congress votes on is on borrowed money. And then we play this game around here, when you are clicking off — we are just shy of borrowing $100,000 a second. We have debates here where we are debating on saving this tiny little bit and the borrowing during the debate was greater than the savings.”
On interest rates affecting the reserve currency:
[Beginning at 28:16]
“Our model at today’s interest rates, we’re at $3.7 trillion baseline borrowing. That’s already our model. That’s without a recession. That’s without a war. That’s without a pandemic. And I have some other articles, talking about how fragile we’ve made ourselves — God forbid this year, next year, we go into a true recession. Do you have any idea how fragile we’ve made this government, this country, with our ravenous to borrowing? What would happen if tax receipts started to roll over our bid on us because we went into a recession? Tax receipts are up about 7%. Medicare spending is up around 10% this fiscal year. If that rolled over and 7% was closer to 4%-5%, you want to talk about a blood bath… Raising interest rates could push the national debt toward 300% of GDP within 30 years. How many of you think the bond markets will let us get anywhere near 300% of GDP with our savings rates? If you’re Japan, maybe you can do it. They can almost finance their own debt. Actually, they do finance their own debt. Do you think the rest of the world is going to keep loaning us money, respecting the sovereignty of the reserve currency that is the dollar? Why are we destroying ourselves? Why are we destroying your retirement? Why are we destroying your kids, my young kids? But once again the hallways are full of people wanting more money.”
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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.