What David Schweikert said, and what was done

“You have got to understand what is going on here. This is one of the ones that just stresses me out. Maybe I shouldn't drink so much coffee, and maybe I should double up on my hypertension medicine.”

“Mr. Speaker, and to the room, I apologize. I was doing a tour for a former firefighter, who actually was paralyzed in the scope of his duties, but we were close.”

“Excellent. I am probably going to use every one of them. No, I will try to go as fast as I can here. The U.S. population age 65 and up, and I go back to 2011: 41 million.”

“We did what to shore up the trust funds? We did what to basically incentivize our brothers and sisters to stay in the labor force if they wanted to?”

“Mr. Speaker, I don't believe my brothers and sisters here are actually willing to do the hard things and tell the truth about the math and then redesign these programs because it means getting the crap kicked out of you by the lobbying and the business models out there.”

“Ways and Means over the Oversight Subcommittee, where the fraud we found in so many programs--can I get a piece of legislation? Can we actually have an honest discussion of fixing it?”

“From last year to 2032, Medicare doubles in spending. It goes from 1 trillion to 2 trillion. The Medicare Part A trust fund, if you are a hospital, you take a 12-percent cut.”

“Mr. Speaker, I know it has been a long day for everyone, but I have a couple things to walk through. One of the themes we have had the last couple weeks is waste and fraud.”

“Mr. Speaker, I first came up here to talk about three of the bills, which were in waste and fraud, but I will make a simple point being from a border State.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Georgia. Mr. Speaker, we are going to actually try to do something that is a little complex, so I apologize. I apologize for those trying to keep track.”

“All right, a little bit more, and this one, I happen to actually have had a fascinating experience with: ``Arizona sober living crisis: 140 indicted in billion-dollar Medicaid scheme.'' We think it is $2.8 billion.”

“I want to make an argument in my last couple minutes before I hit the end of my time. What we do in government is insane. How many of you would build a business model where I am going to pay 6 percent, 7 percent of my payments are going to be fraud, but don't worry about that.”

“Mr. Speaker, have you ever had a moment where you think back over the last dozen years, and you really, really miss something we used to call the Tea Party?”

“Mr. Speaker, how long does it take us to borrow--not spend, borrow-- $1 million? Every 12 seconds, every 12 seconds, we borrow another $1 million. Everything that was being discussed in the room didn't even actually add up to a whole minute worth of borrowing.”

“Madam Speaker, I am actually going to try something that we have done over and over. I apologize; I have had a lot of coffee. If I start talking like a machine gun, just start waving at me.”

“My Joint Economic Committee did our report, the Republican side, and we did something really hard. We spent months working on this. We talked about a unified theory: Here is how we bring prosperity back.”

“Mr. Speaker, there is a certain irony to having the message from the Senate come in just as I am about to actually walk through some of the absolutely fraudulent math in their document, but we will get to that.”

“Mr. Speaker, wouldn't it be fun if we actually did these sorts of discussions and debates sort of like we do term papers where you actually have to give the footnote of where the numbers come from.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Mr. Speaker, we are going to actually do something with a little meat on the bones today. I have to walk through the math. Repeatedly, I have come behind this microphone over the last decade, trying to walk through our Joint Economic Committee's, my office's, and my personal unified theory.”

“If we are at a zero population growth and we need to make up for the years of Biden inflation, the way we do that, the way we do affordability is not somehow magically make prices go down.”

“His model basically says that in this decade, next decade, and probably the one after that, the world is going to compete for smart people, people who are educated, people who have entrepreneurial skills, people who have unique talents because there is going to be so few young people, and those with the degrees that grow economies, that create productivity, therefore raise our wages, we are all going to fight over them.”

“Mr. Speaker, part of what we are going to do tonight is a little thick. Can you imagine that? Mr. Speaker, I want to walk through a handful of things.”

“I have a few thousand people who subscribe to this. Yes, it is a little geeky. What we are doing is we are capturing the numbers from the Treasury Department.”

“Part of that reconciliation, we were going to do all of these ideas that saved money but didn't take away services. We were going to get rid of the waste and fraud and the misalignment and the way some of the things are scammed, and that became too hard.”

“The classic problem of--you are a brilliant lawyer. I am sort of a walking accountant or walking calculator. We both serve different--and a lot of people in the public don't understand--we serve different committees and they take over our life.”

“Yeah. Your life is hell. I do Joint Economic Committee and Ways and Means. That is actually one of the elegance the Founding Fathers gave us is, we eventually end up where we are good.”

“Mr. Speaker, have you ever had a piece of legislation--we all go through this--where you have your friends on the opposite side who say things, and you think, wow, I can't find that in this piece of legislation.”

“Mr. Speaker, 90 seconds is the shortest I have ever spoken. Mr. Speaker, if someone is actually listening to our discussion, the Democrats have made it clear: Hey, lots of law enforcement have this product.”

“Mr. Speaker, give me a moment here to get set up. Sometimes, we are just scrambling because we had a whole speech lined up. We were going to do something just simple and pleasant for everyone.”

“Okay. That may be wonderful, but you have to understand that it all works together: our demographics, our tax system, the fact of the matter is this incentive for this to grow, this incentive here, and the adoption of technology.”

“Mr. Speaker, we are going to try to consolidate some of this for some efficiency. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), and then we will finish up.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is an incredible leader and passionate on this, and it is absurd that something that America desperately wants has been this difficult for the Democrats, particularly in the Senate.”

“Let's save America. Let's protect our elections. I will give you one last concept, being someone from Arizona. How do you protect a republic if your citizens don't trust the institutions and don't trust elections?”

“Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to do this somewhat quickly because they are a couple of fairly simple concepts. Almost every week when we are in session, for a decade, I have come behind this microphone and tried to help people understand the fiscal situation in the United States.”

“Obama subsidies, almost another $900 billion. Defense is actually the fifth in our hierarchy of spending. The thing that is actually in the Constitution now is number five.”

“Excellent. If I do this quickly--and I apologize for talking so fast. I have had a lot of coffee today. I am trying to detox. Something almost no one around here pays attention to, but it is my job on Ways and Means and my job with the Joint Economic Committee to talk about the financing.”

“Mr. Speaker, shall we have some fun with math and economics? It is something we just don't hear a lot of here on the floor of the House.”

“Madam Speaker, as a mercy to the poor staff here, I am not going to use the whole half an hour. I am just going to try to run through a couple of concepts.”

“Actually, the labor force participation is pretty flat. We had a small tick up in some of the last unemployment data. Also, if you look at this chart here, we are trying to explain the difference.”

“Why that is just an amazing thing to think about. In the 1970s, for every dollar that went to those who were 65 and up, there were $6 to $7 spent for those who were 18 and younger.”

“Mr. Speaker, I was actually going to come here and do some things on demographics and some things that are optimistic, but I actually think we should first jump into the fact that we work in a math-free zone.”

“Madam Speaker, I promise you at least this one. I think I have the half an hour. I am going to try not to use all of it, and I will try to slow down some of the speaking.”

“Mr. Speaker, the good news is we have only until 10:00. The bad news is I am going to use every second of it. Let's race through this because originally, I think I was going to go almost an hour.”

“When you get the clown show that says: You can't raise the debt ceiling. Then I say, okay, I can do that. Tell me the portion of government you want me to cut, Mr.”

“Mr. Speaker, I have missed all of you. I don't know if you missed me. We are going to actually try something tonight, and some of what we are going to do this evening is a little bit complex.”

“There is a crazy math set, and I have never vetted it, saying, like, South Korea in 150-something years, there are almost no South Koreans left. It is happening all over the industrialized world.”

“Mr. Speaker, for everyone's sanity, I hope not to go 60 minutes. I might go 40. Mr. Speaker, first, the good news. If anyone else is a geek out there, there is this app put out by the Atlanta Fed, Atlanta Federal Reserve, and what they do is they do certain samples in trying to constantly estimate what the gross national product, GDP, will actually be.”

“You start to go over it, and many of these stories are actually someone was giving a speech, and so the AI wrote a story. It is not actually what was said.”

“Yet, I can show you some of our colleagues who run around and say: Well, with DOGE and the customs duties, we are going to be fine, so, Schweikert, shut up.”

“Mr. Speaker, instead of an hour of another economics presentation, we need to have a conversation. Is the evil winning? A couple of hours ago, one of my constituents lost his life.”

“Mr. Speaker, I have a challenge for everyone out there who thinks you know things. A little while ago, I was sent--and I hope this is either a bot or just someone who is having a mental health issue, who was putting out horrible, evil comments.”

“Mr. Speaker, I missed all of you now that we are back. I get teased back home of doing these things that seem more like an economics lecture.”

“Mr. Chair, ranking member, and my good friend, in some ways, this is a budgetary discipline amendment. The fact of the matter is, we have been doing a project with the Joint Economic Committee for a couple of years now, where we have been going up and down budgets and finding resources, money that has been appropriated that has sat in accounts, sometimes for years and years.”

“Mr. Chairman, to my appropriator friend, this is the game that we play, and this is where we talk past each other. Can I give an actual example?”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from California for his remarks, and as I always say to Californians, don't take Arizona's water. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to do a run-through of a couple things here. I am going to try to walk through some economics. Then I am going to actually try to walk through some warnings that are in the documents that are around us that very few people seem to bother to read.”

“Mr. Speaker, I will learn to talk faster. To the poor person trying to take my words down, I apologize. I am going to skip over some of the other charts.”

“Mr. Speaker, we are having a really exciting discussion with my buddy of how CBO actually does scoring on things. I was trying to explain that some of the things we consider absurd are actually our fault because it is the law that we have passed to tell CBO how to do the scoring.”

“We are going to borrow 7.3 percent of the economy this year, and in 9 years we are borrowing 9 percent of the economy. How do we tell the truth to the American people that we are going to have to embrace things that are actually hopeful?”

“Mr. Speaker, Mr. Green caught us a little bit off guard. He suddenly stopped, and I am not used to him doing that. Mr. Speaker, we are going to try a couple of things tonight, and I am going to try to do this as efficiently as possible.”

“You have a shortage of young people in this country. Unless you deal with that reality--but you don't want to open up the borders. That is the disaster.”

“Last year, I did an entire series of charts, which the Democrats turned into attack ads, that showed raising the cap. If every dime someone earns is subject to the full Social Security tax, it only covered 38 percent of the shortfall.”

“Maybe we should stop being scared of adopting the technology because, remember, last year's taxpayer audit said only 31 percent of the phone calls to the IRS were getting answered, yet the IRS union attacks you for saying maybe we could use technology.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to just do a couple of very simple things here. I will walk through that. I believe there are actual solutions.”

“We are going to double senior poverty in America. How many Members have you seen come behind these microphones and talk about the morality of, guys, 7 years from now, let's double senior poverty, and then, let's do everything we can to talk about it.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas. He always has some amazing stories. Mr. Speaker, tonight is going to be a little tricky because I am going to try and weave three major subjects together.”

“Mr. Speaker, I could almost hear the joy from my staff saying: Hey, it is only 30 minutes this time, not an hour. Mr. Speaker, I want to do just a handful of things.”

“Mr. Speaker, as always, I apologize to the bored staff, and I will try not to speak like a machine gun. Mr. Speaker, we are going to do basically three things.”

“I am going to show a slide here in a moment. This one should scare the crap out of people. I know my language is becoming more and more inflammatory, but I can't seem to break through.”

“Here is the prosperity we are going to build for the future. I probably have already had too much coffee today. This is just to make a point, and this is more to mock the Senate.”

“Mr. Speaker, most of this was designed in the late sixties. I have this weird history. I was a child--in my early twenties. I was a temporary page at the State legislature.”

“The borrow is $250 million every hour. Watch out for the scam artists who play the game. They give you something that is outrageous. Okay. Get rid of it.”

“Yet, the big stuff, since there are so many lobbyists and constituencies who live off of that money, you are not allowed to talk about that. Mr. Roy, I am blessed.”

“We can't do it. Mr. ROY.--we are not allowed to touch Social Security in the reconciliation process, and then interest is off of the table because you have to pay it.”

“The MedPAC report, since I am the only idiot who came here to the floor with the MedPAC, but that is partially my responsibility being on the Committee on Ways and Means.”

“Mr. Speaker, let's have some fun with math and the reality of what is going on in the world. First, let me get something off my chest. I hate it when I make a mistake.”

“Tiny movements of interest rates are really stressful. The Federal Reserve, what was it, 1 week or so ago, lowered their economic growth projections for the United States for the next 3 years.”

“Understand the way we deliver and finance the earned entitlements, the earned benefits. Today's worker pays for today's retirees. Last week, I showed a number of charts that, those numbers in 10, 20 years, it is you and your partner, you and your spouse and a little bit more, you have your own retired person you are paying for.”

“Mr. Speaker, forgive me as we get ourselves organized here. Our friends on the other side ended a little faster than we expected. Mr. Speaker, I am going to do something a little dangerous.”

“For those of you who turn to me and say, ``David, I demand you balance the budget,'' I can do it tomorrow. Let's see, if I use the 2024 numbers, for every dollar we took in tax collections, we spent $1.39.”

“WiFi repeaters. For a few hundred dollars, they were fixing something that was going to take another decade and how many hundreds of millions of dollars. Think about adopting technology.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am going to try something this evening. The thesis I am going to try to sell tonight is that data is substantially a solution for us.”

“Okay, let's walk through just some of the math. You have got 3 million Federal employees. If 77,000 have decided to take the early retirement offer, let's see, that is, dear heaven, I should have calculated this before, is 3 percent, 3 percent of the Federal population.”

“Baseline, this is actually with the taxes going up at the end of this year, just baseline. So sort of following current law, not the clowns who actually run around and say: Let's just avoid the law and let's just pretend what we spend we spend.”

“Mr. Speaker, have you ever had the time here where you basically are having to take on two things that push against each other, that create a real math problem, and that telling the truth about it--how do you say it?--oh, yeah, gets the crap kicked out of you?”

“If we are all blessed, I won't use it all. Mr. Speaker, have you ever had a moment where the first words in your head are: I am damned if I do and damned if I don't, but is there a chance?”

“If Members want to understand why this place is so damned toxic, those of us who are actually trying to fix things also write the attack commercials for the other side.”

“Mr. Speaker, my best guess is I will use about 6 or 7 minutes of it. Mr. Speaker, do you remember the hair on fire comments that people said that mathematically had no basis?”

“Madam Chair, the average family would save $2,853. That is your crumbs. I would argue, for the average family that has been crushed by the previous 3 or 4 years in inflation, if you don't make 27 percent more money in my district, you are poorer today than you were 4 years ago.”

“Madam Chairwoman, economic literature and, actually, I think even the board here demonstrated that, if we go back to the original TCJA, over 70 percent of those corporate tax cuts show up in wages.”

“Madam Chair, apparently, the Democratic position is the $2,000 you get per child, which was the doubling of the child tax credit in 2017, should go away and go back to the $1,000?”

“Oh, no. Who else has been working for a decade now to save it? Remember, in 2033, about halfway through the year, the trust fund is gone. Is that a Republican or a Democratic problem?”

“Mr. Speaker, I have a handful of things we need to do. A little while ago, we had an Oversight Subcommittee hearing--I chair the Oversight Subcommittee on Ways and Means.”

“Since the brain trust in this place decided in lame duck that we were going to extend some additional Social Security benefits without paying for them, we actually shortened the life of the Social Security trust fund.”

“The thing we weren't prepared for is that U.S. fertility rates started to collapse in 1990. We don't have enough young people. I am going to show some charts of how hard it is to keep up productivity and growth, and it is not just in the United States.”

“Mr. Speaker, tonight is going to be a little thick, so I apologize to everyone, but we are going to actually try something a little bit broader. We are going to actually play economist.”

“The very last board I am going to show here is the way you protect American people is you offset as much of that as you can because you give it to hardworking folks and then take it away from them in higher interest costs and higher financing costs.”

“All these countries, even Germany, are just trying to deal with the financing costs of their pensions. The United States is much better off than many of these countries, but it is coming fast for us.”

“Madam Speaker, I think we are going to try to do a bit of a continuation of what we were doing last week. If you don't like math or economics, please turn off C-SPAN.”

“Here is the irony that people need to understand: The United States and a few other governments, such as China, are bingeing on so much debt that they have a ravenous appetite to grab people's savings and borrow it around the world.”

“Learn your math. Learn the opportunity, but also learn to think like an economist. Let's put up the one chart that gets me the most hate, and it is more than a year, year-and-a-half out of date.”

“Let's do one more of these just to make the point. This is tax receipts for fiscal year 2024. It is a fixed number. That is the last fiscal year.”

“What if we went to 9 percent interest? It has happened. What would happen? Mr. Speaker, can anyone read this number? Eighty-three percent of all tax receipts would go just to interest.”