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Congressional Daily Record
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March 26, 2026
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Download official House Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I have a number of things to go over.
Mr. Speaker, do you remember over the last few years the number of discussions we would have at home, saying drain the swamp? What was the term, swamp critters?
why it is so hard to actually do policy that makes our brothers' and sisters' lives easier, better, healthier, and more prosperous.
brothers and sisters who are at home who are watching Members of Congress, and they somehow think this is the swamp, it is part of it.
properly vetted, where the lobbyist community is handing out money to people. This was more on the conservative side, particularly some of our conservative publications, handing them cash to write stories to promote whatever that lobbyist wanted.
repeatedly, here are influencers on the internet, more from my side, here are some MAGA influencers that were taking money. Maybe we should have caught it more quickly when it was the 23-year-old attractive person talking about Medicare Advantage and saying: I am sure she is an expert on Medicare Advantage.
and those things in Medicare part C paying them to warp the information for the American people to try to understand for those who of us to get up here and try to reform this place, reform how we are trying to spend our money, to try to take on the U.S. debt, that the swamp is now on your information that is coming through this device.
You have to understand, Mr. Speaker, I actually have some articles from 1 year ago. It turns out, some of the biggest snack food producers were trying to stop Congress through social media influencers. They were paying social media influencers to stop having a conversation about GLP-1 semaglutides like Ozempic. That is how perverse this place has become.
Halls here? Are they here because they want a freer society? Is it because they are fixated on the morality of the prosperity of growth and of opportunity for all people? Are they here to try to get us to put up pieces of legislation that stop their competition and that stop creative destruction in the economy, even though that is how you get better, faster, and cheaper? Is it how they want us to hand them cash?
Mr. Speaker, I am going to show some boards from the Treasury's detailed balance sheet. The level of financial trouble our Republic is in is remarkable.
have you actually seen coming behind these microphones that actually care?
this is to say: Hey, you see this blue portion of this board? That is what we get to vote on as Members of Congress. Everything else in the red is on autopilot. We only vote on about 25 percent of the spending here in Congress. The rest is formula. It is mandatory spending.
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However, it is worse than that. A couple days ago, the Treasury, as they are required by statute, did the sort of here is the balance sheet of America, here is where we are financially.
sort of financial press—that America actually had negative? Functionally, here is what was on the Treasury's balance sheets, saying, hey, America, currently—these are current liabilities. These aren't the unfunded liabilities for the future. These are current obligations. We owe $47.8 trillion in current liabilities, and we have $6 trillion in assets. This is from the Treasury statement.
Doesn't this terrify anyone? Is it still just a calculator/math-free zone or is it more important that when the paid influencers, the paid person on conservative media by a lobbyist is saying: Oh, they might actually look at making us reform our program. We are going to hand some money to one of these authors so they will say: Oh, reform is bad, it's not Republican.
Of course, it is Republican. We believe in markets. At least we used to.
Let's actually talk about how bad this math is. I am going to go straight to the punch line. If you actually just do the 75-year Social Security and Medicare obligations, you are at $88.4 trillion of unfunded liabilities, and these numbers probably aren't dystopian enough.
talked about the unified theory of how we stabilize the debt. I have seen the applause in some of the financial articles on CNBC, Bloomberg saying: Well, there are some Members of Congress trying to do a piece of legislation to get us to 3 percent of debt to GDP. Wonderful idea.
At this moment, just interest is well above 3 percent of GDP. So far this year—so we are 6 months into the fiscal year—over 7.3 percent of the entire economy is being borrowed by the Federal Government. But don't worry, we
being paid by the Federal Government on our debt is bigger than the growth of the country, you would have thrown up your hands and said: Well, it is all over then.
shiny objects around here that will get us on cable news tonight or on social media. We can do the shiny object, get some dopamine hits, maybe get some people giving us money on text message fundraising.
We are heading to well over $88 trillion in liabilities. What do we do?
child born today, if you use a 6 percent generational discount rate— that might be a little bit high, it is a little geeky, but it is within the margin—this country needs 104 percent of that child's lifetime earnings just to pay the Federal Government pensions.
I have a 3-year-old. Our obligations right now require taking every dime my little Matthew will ever earn just to pay the Federal Government pensions.
Part of this, Mr. Speaker, is the math of demographics. We don't have enough people. We don't have enough children. We are functionally at zero population growth. There is a math set—I had some of the Heritage demographers in my office today. They have a model that says in the next few years we could actually go negative in population as a country.
For some people, oh, yay, that is great, less traffic. Okay. You tell me how I am going to finance Social Security. You tell me how I am going to finance Medicare. In now less than 6\1/2\ years, the Social Security trust fund is empty. In less than 6\1/2\ years, the Medicare trust fund is empty. At that time, we double the poverty of seniors, we will double the number of baby boomers who live on the street. That is the morality now of this place.
Okay. God gave me a gift. I am pretty good at math. I will have Members of Congress who see me in the hallway and turn around and walk away from me because I am going to pitch them an idea of here is how we save Medicare Advantage, here is how we save Social Security, here is how we do this. I have pieces of legislation to do some of these things.
and this is Democrats, too—we have been told by our political consultants we are not allowed to use those words because we might actually have to explain what the hell is actually going on.
ago. We have double the number of 65 and up. I turned 64 a couple weeks ago. Maybe I am pathologically optimistic. We have adopted a 3-year- old, and I have a 10-year-old. Do they deserve to live better?
generation to be poorer than their parents. A child born today, my 3- year-old, let's use my 3-year-old as an example. When my 3-year-old is, I think it is 22, 21, 23, right in there, every tax, every one, every single tax in America needs to be doubled just to maintain baseline services.
and say, oh, David, we are not allowed to talk about that. We will deal with that after the next election.
Have you noticed there is always another election?
I have been getting that same answer for 15 years here: David, we can't talk about that. It is mandatory spending. We can't go around and tell the truth.
It is fixable. There are things you can do. We have presented over and over and over and over ways you could crash the price of healthcare using technology, the morality of cures, the morality of helping our brothers and sisters get healthier, convincing the bond markets that we are creditworthy.
bond cheaper than the United States. That is what the world debt markets think of us.
the 2-year auction we had and how badly subscribed it was. Maybe it is the war, maybe it is other things. This isn't a game, and this is somewhat unique.
Look, I have some books. I collect economic books. One of my books talks about 5,000 years of economic history. There are lots and lots and lots of stories of societies that built up lots of debt and collapsed. Okay.
of a society that built up lots of debt and started to have fewer people, zero population growth. Tell me how that math works.
We have a unified theory. I have been behind this microphone dozens and dozens and dozens of times. I am saying, the adoption of technology, synthetic biology, deregulation, smart regulation, a talent-based immigration system—we basically have a dozen things that have to go into this just to stabilize where we are in debt.
Mr. Speaker, do you think this place is intellectually prepared to do anything that is difficult? We are going to go home and stand in front of our constituents and talk about shiny objects.
Mr. Speaker, as of today, we are borrowing $88,000 a second. Mr. Speaker, as of today, we borrowed, I think, $7.5 billion today, yesterday, tomorrow.
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perspective of if it was your household. In your household you basically earn $52,000 a year. This is the Federal budget right now, but you spend $73,000 this year. If you do the accumulation beyond the fact that you went 20 grand into debt this year, if you add up all the years of debt for your household, and this would be your household as divided by the Federal debt, it is $1.3 million upside down.
worse. Part of the reason is—help me grow the economy, help me find how we balance our tax base.
I am a free market economist. I believe in as low taxes as possible. But is borrowing a tax? This is a really interesting, intellectual question that the left has to have and we on the right have to have. Is borrowing a tax?
The family budget this year, you made $52,000. We are going to spend $73,000, so we borrowed $20,000 this year. I am going to argue it is a tax. It is just a tax with interest.
Are you and I going to pay it? Because the philosophy around here is it is going to be our kids that are going to pay it and our grandkids that are going to pay it, and I am going to argue the numbers are eroding so fast.
Just to cover that shortfall for the first year is $638 billion. You run for United States Senate, this happens in your first term. This is not way off in the future. It is here. Yet, when some of us have tried to do the debt and deficit commission, we get these people coming in, lobbying, beating the crap out of us on social media, on conservative press, and now we find out they are being paid.
retirement, and it is my kids and every child out there. How is accepting a society that says: Oh, screw it. We are just going to make sure our kids are poorer, but at least we are going to get stuff until the bond market decides they are actually in charge of this country. It is almost there.
Let's actually do some more math. We have some new ways to try to describe the scale of the problem. I know this is hard to read, but I am going to do my best to make this understandable.
You actually see net receipts by category.
Do you see this dark blue here? That is individual income taxes. That is one of the crazy things those of us on Ways and Means need to actually start having a conversation on how we are going to deal with, because we are seeing right now in the GDP growth we are
getting in the country, more of it is coming from capital than workers.
is not necessarily from wage growth, which actually is a whole other speech and freaks me out because we have got to raise wage growth to make up for the years of the Biden inflation.
Then take a look over here. This is payroll taxes. This is the taxes you pay for your Social Security, for your Medicare, for unemployment. Part of the deep secret here, please don't tell anyone on Social Security, an average couple retiring today gets about a $76,000 spiff.
Here is what we paid in, you get an extra $76,000. Horrible, horrible rate of return. However, Democrats made sure that 20 years ago, 25 years ago when there was a temp saying: Could we build a little, tiny 15 percent sidecar, you can invest in the market. That would mean you would have been dramatically wealthier today. They killed that. They should be responsible for much of the poverty that is going to exist in our senior population. It was Democrats that chose to do that.
dollar they put into Medicare tax, they are getting $6 to $7 back. That is one of the primary drivers of U.S. sovereign debt, that and interest, healthcare and interest.
We got older, and we owe $39 trillion. $30 trillion is functionally sold to the markets, but that other $9 trillion that we borrow internally, we still pay interest on it. It is still a liability. We still have to pay it back. These little slivers over here are customs and corporate taxes. That is our receipts.
Here is our net outlays. You notice this little black box here? This is all borrowed. This is what the taxes cover. A week ago, we had a balance budget amendment, which I voted for, but folks had no understanding that the economic literature basically says: If you want to balance the budget today, you have to cut almost half of U.S. spending. Understand that.
Last year, for every dollar that came in, we spent a $1.43. With the economic effects, if you said tomorrow, David, I demand you balance the budget. I can do it. Tell me which half of the spending you want me to cut. Because right now—this is Social Security right here.
Actually, I think Medicare is here. Other mandatory, this is your VA pension. Those things that are built-in that we are obligated to formula.
You start to look over here, this is net interest. Remember, net interest—actually, it should be gross interest. Total interest right now is the second biggest expenditure in your Federal Government. Defense is actually number 5. The thing that is in the Constitution is number 5 on our stack: Social Security, interest, Medicare, Medicaid, and ObamaCare subsidies and defense.
If you came in here right now and said: David, balance the budget. I can do it. You tell me how much defense, nondefense, Medicaid, they all have to go away, and because of the economic effects, this black line moves in and you would actually have to start cutting Medicare.
It is math. It is not personal. It is just something that comes off of a calculator and someone who is literate enough to actually look at the numbers. David, it is really bad politics telling people the truth.
I am in a 50/50 district. Now, I am in one of the best educated districts in America. It turns out you can get elected in a real tough district. You can even get—don't tell anyone, but you can get smart, educated Independents and Democrats to vote for you. They may not like you, but they, at least, know you are intellectually credible. When was the last time we actually gave a damn about being intellectually credible around this place?
Net outlays for interest over 10 years. Right now, remember, I mentioned just interest—and actually the number is higher than this— my math is coming in at $1.2 trillion of interest this year. You are well over 3 percent.
We are going to go down to 3 percent. That is actually what the Treasury Secretary and others say. I agree, but we are borrowing 7.3 percent of the economy at this moment. You tell me what part you want me to cut.
years we are going to be borrowing $3.1 trillion a year. That is before the war. That is before the request for supplementals. That is before these new healthcare calculations. We are going to be borrowing $3.1 trillion. This is couple weeks ago, CBO report. $2.1 trillion of that will just be interest, one will actually be structural deficit.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Arizona has 4\1/2\ minutes remaining.
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The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Arizona has 4\1/2\ minutes remaining.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I apologize. I am going to talk faster. No, I won't do that to you. As some of you know, I have a coffee problem, and I have only had like nine cups today. I am not shaking, and I am trying not to talk like a machine gun.
Mr. Speaker, I have this chart. You can find this chart if you really care about it. It basically talks about interest fragility. What is interest fragility? It is when interest goes up, interest rates go up, and what that means to the debt.
When you start looking at a chart like this—so, think about this. For 1 year, a 10-percent increase, so essentially 10 basis points, it is about $4.1 billion. You start to see when you actually go out 10 years and start looking at, hey, if we had 1 point of interest—now, this is on the base debt right now, publicly sold debt, not the full debt, but the publicly sold debt. That comes out to $3.1 trillion, a single point for 10 years.
spending patterns more than this place does? I had people say—as we were trying to do the big, beautiful bill, and then we were supposed to do the second reconciliation to pay for a big chunk of it—but that would be too difficult. We might have to talk about fixing Medicare and Medicare Advantage.
have a couple of trillion dollars of waste, fraud, and misalignment. The Wall Street Journal does article after article after article, full- page things on it, saying, hey, the high grading, that is $100 billion a year. We are going to do what about it, Mr. Speaker? Oh, but we would have to explain it. What is wrong with us?
biggest debtor in the world. You want lower mortgage rates? Convince the debt markets because the Federal Reserve only affects the short end of the curve. Your mortgage is based off the 10-year. The 10-year is a market rate, not a Federal Reserve rate. How many politicians around here: We have to beat up the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. That is on the 2-year, the short end of the curve, maybe even less. Convince the debt markets that we are actually going to stabilize our debt.
We have a 40-year cycle. Those of us who are baby boomers, to move on to our reward before we get back to the more normal demographics—those normal demographics may never come because the fertility rate in the Western world continues to fall.
Look, there are things we can do. This is the type of improper payments. I have been working on this for years. Stop the waste and fraud in government. It is billions and billions of dollars. If you are borrowing $220 billion to $230 billion every single month, we can get rid of every improper payment. We don't even cover a month's worth of borrowing. We still have to do this.
Mr. Speaker, is not a whole bunch of new laws, not buildings full of auditors, buildings full of lawyers. It is data scientists.
Look, I chair the Oversight Subcommittee of Ways and Means. We have investigations going on into Medicare part C, hospice care, and organ procurement. How are we finding these things? We hired a data scientist.
Mr. Speaker, there is hope. There is a way to do this. We just need to step up our game and become more intellectually curious and robust. With that, maybe we can stabilize the future for your retirement and our kids.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.