Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ-01) has developed a reputation for his speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives providing numbers and data regarding the federal government’s spending problem. Earlier this summer, prior to the vote passing the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which was highly opposed by budget hawks like Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Elon Musk, he gave another presentation on how the government’s debt is exploding, which the bill does not slow down.
Schweikert, who chairs the U.S. House Joint Economic Committee and is the fourth ranking member on the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, warned that without something changing, there is a 23 percent cut coming in Social Security checks in 2033, which will “double senior poverty.” He said, “The one that's had almost no discussion about is the Medicare trust fund is gone in 2033.”
He criticized politicians for not admitting the seriousness of the shortfall to the public. “Tell our voters the truth, that in seven years, you're getting a 23 percent cut in your Social Security check. And by the way, that another 11 percent cut in your hospital coverage, and other things in Medicare because the Medicare Part A trust fund is gone.” However, politicians lie, he said. “We'll just tell people that it pays for itself.”
For every dollar the federal government brings in, he said it spends $1.39. Schweikert said he tried in the House Reconciliation budget to cut $2 trillion out of the bill but had little success. He said it took the U.S. 240 years to reach the debt level it’s at now, and that number is going to double over the next decade.
He said members of Congress don’t want to “tell the truth” about the growth of debt. The top driver of debt is paying interest, followed by Medicare. The U.S. is on track to add $22 trillion to the debt over a decade, he said, but that’s just “baseline,” there will be more “borrowed over the next 10 years,” of which 60 to 65 percent is “just interest.”
He explained as background, “Seventy-four percent of all spending is on autopilot. It's what we call mandatory. It's interest, it's Social Security, it's Medicare.”
Due to the debt increasing, “Moody's actually downgraded U.S. debt so now the three big rating agencies have lowered our credit. We actually have 18 states in America that have a higher credit rating than the federal government.”
If the interest rate remains stable in 2034, 30 percent of tax receipts will go to cover interest, he said. If interest rates go up just one percent, 45 percent of tax receipts will go to interest.
Schweikert said Democrats always say they can fix the spending problem by raising taxes. When the marginal tax rates have been high, it brings in 18.5 percent of the economy in tax receipts. However, spending constitutes 24 percent of the economy, which will be increasing to 25 percent over the next few years. “That gap is the annual deficit that gets piled on to the debt.”
It amounts to “borrow[ing] $6 billion a day,” he said. In nine years, that will increase to over $10 billion per day. The Democrats’ tax proposals only amount to 1.5 percent of the economy.
“We're going to borrow 7.3 percent of the economy this year,” he said. “And in nine years. We're borrowing nine percent of the economy.”
Schweikert got to the root of the problem. “What does obesity cost America?” Healthcare costs are driving up the debt, Schweikert said, but pointing out obesity make[s] all the people that make money off certain soup, foods, off of certain healthcare, off other things, nervous.” A study found that 47 percent of healthcare costs were associated with obesity.
He figured out there is going to be “$1 trillion of additional health care spending over 10 years.” He asked, “Is it moral to give EBT — modern food stamps — to someone to go buy onion rings?” Schweikert said some will counter with, “People should have their own choice.” He responds, “They should with their own money.”
The problem is compounded due to “7 million prime age males that are missing” from the workforce. “In America, we have a data set that says, about half of that population may be missing from the labor force … because of obesity.”
He said programs like former First Lady Michelle Obama’s healthy food initiatives had “absolutely no success” despite spending billions of dollars. Instead, in the last 20 years, what helped make people healthier was the Pokémon Go phenomenon that exploded in 2016, which got young people outside and active.
He said “ACA Obamacare is a finance bill. It's who gets subsidized and who has to pay.” It consists of three age groups and incentives to stop smoking. He said other categories that should be added include incentives for fitness activities such as walking.
Before inflation, he said domestic productivity is growing by 4.3 percent. But healthcare is growing faster, at 5.8 percent.
He dismissed another claim by Democrats on solving debt. “You'll have lots of activists saying, ‘we’ll just open up, immigration, that will take care of the Social Security shortfall.’”
Schweikert explained, “One of the real reasons they moved up the date of the exhaustion of the Social Security Trust Fund was actually flattening of wage growth. … When you bring in millions of people across the border that have similar skill sets, and they're often willing to sell their skill sets for less money.”
He warned how healthcare will be decimated. “Next time we get someone here saying, ‘You know we need more money for our hospitals, we need more money for outpatient surgeries, we need more money for hospice care,’ point out to them in seven years there's an ugly ugly cut coming.”
He explained, “When the portion of your payroll tax that goes to Medicare, 38 to 40 percent of it is covered by the trust fund — that's the hospital portion as we typically refer to it. … What's the primary driver of U.S. debt interest, healthcare. For every dollar you put into Medicare, you're getting $6 back.”
While “we got a little bit more tax receipts and potential effects over the time … it turns out its deficit effects are more than two times, more than two times because of the consumption of services.”
“We're spending about 18 percent of the entire economy on healthcare,” he said, which will increase to 20 percent in nine years. “Those differences [of two percent] are monstrous.”
“We have the same number of 18-year olds as we had 20 years ago. We have doubled the number of people 65 and up,” he said. Last year, the population under 18 decreased while the population 65 and older rose by 3.1 percent. He said fertility rates started decreasing in 1990. He suggested AI can solve some of the problem, otherwise, “Tell me how much poorer you're willing to live.”
“Social Security and Medicare and net interest account for 80 percent of the spending growth,” he said. Going after fraud in Medicaid and Medicare isn’t going to solve the problem. “If you add it all up, is a trillion, $2 trillion of waste.”
He drafted legislation to incentivize people 65 and up to be healthier, but he could not find a single co-sponsor, even “budget hawk[s].” It would have applied to seniors who choose Medicare Advantage, “which is 55 percent of the population.” Economists said it would have saved $1.76 trillion of the $14.67 expected to be spent on Medicare Advantage over 10 years, about 10 percent.
“I'm the guy in the 50/50 district, one of the most competitive districts in America, and yet I'm willing to stand up behind this microphone” and reveal these numbers, he said.
Schweikert also proposed an immigration bill “moving the American immigration system to a talent-based system. But it has the word immigration in it. So it scares the hell out of the political class because the reporters will lie about it.”
He also suggested retrieving back funding that was provided for various states for projects that were never used, known as “forgotten funds.”
He said his three proposed bills would not cut any services, saving $3.3 trillion, comparing it to borrowing $2.2 trillion this year.
Schweikert said the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is criticized for inaccuracies, but its projections for the COVID era were 99.5 to 99.9 percent accurate.
He explained how bailing out people and businesses during COVID reduced tax revenues. “Do you think there's a chance when you borrow trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, pump it out of the economy, you don't have your tax collections go up?”
Schweikert concluded, “What happens when the debt and deficits are demographics?” He said the two sides of the political fence “do this ping pong back and forth” blaming each other instead of addressing the real problem.
“Failed bond auction interest rates are going to explode,” he warned. “Just a single point of interest going up over the next decade wipes out almost all the good we're trying to do extending the tax reform of 2017.”