MATH IS SUCH AN ANATHEMA

On 2026-02-11, Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ-1) delivered a floor speech titled "MATH IS SUCH AN ANATHEMA" in the House. The speech addressed immigration and also covered healthcare, the economy.

MATH IS SUCH AN ANATHEMA

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 29 (Wednesday, February 11, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 11, 2026)] [House] [Pages H2178-H2181] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] MATH IS SUCH AN ANATHEMA (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.) Mr. SCHWEIKERT. 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. We were going to walk through Medicare financing for a while, and they wouldn't give me 3 hours or 4 hours to do it, so you are stuck with me for a half an hour. Then, earlier today, CBO actually did their update. Okay. Let's see if I can make this make sense. When I come behind these microphones, I am trying to explain sort of a unified theory that, so often, the political class behind these microphones say: We can do this. [[Page H2179]] 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. I need people to start thinking about the interaction that there is not a simple solution to a country that, right now, is functionally borrowing about $74,000 every second so far this fiscal year. Sorry. Let me rephrase. Over the last 12 months. If you do just fiscal year, it is higher. A few hours ago, the CBO put out a report. Look, the report is actually like this. I just cheated. I just grabbed the executive summary because I didn't need the whole binder out here. It is going to take me 3 days or 4 days to read through everything, but I have some of the highlights for you--this is important--and then it is going to tie into what we are spending. Your country is an insurance company with an army. That is both funny and it happens to be mathematically true. In about 33 months, over half of the Federal spending will go to those who are 65 and up. Actually, in 33 months, I will be one of them. It is demographics. We have gone about 30 years or 40 years with dramatically fewer children than we expected. I have done a series of presentations here on the floor where I have shown that we actually have the same number of 18-year-olds as we had 20 years ago, but double the number of those who are 65 and up. Is that Republican or Democrat? Look, there is policies that have been engaged in by Democrats that helped to create this, but the fact of the matter is that these are people. It is our reality. We have our obligations on Medicare, on Social Security, and some that will be dual eligible because they are poor and retired, and we have some things that are terrifying. In 6\1/2\ years, the Medicare trust fund is empty. Your hospital will take an 11 percent cut. Medicare Advantage programs will actually take something much larger. It is just the way the Medicare part A trust fund works. In 6\1/2\ years, the Social Security trust fund is empty. No one stole your money. We just don't have enough workers. It was a Pay-As- You-Go system. It is math. The fact of the matter is that, yes, the money has been loaned to the Treasury. Treasury actually pays interest on that money, so that twice a year, there is actually a fairly large dividend given to the trust fund. It is demographics. We had the baby boomers. In 6\1/2\ years, if we followed the law, there is a 24 percent cut coming to Social Security recipients, which will double the poverty of seniors in America. Our math is that it will double the number of baby boomers who are homeless. It is absolutely immoral, but we are not allowed to talk about it except for idiots like me who get up and say week after week: Please, my brothers and sisters here, there are things that we can do. The Democrats say that we will just tax rich people. Then you show that the math is nothing like that. It doesn't work. Here is the CBO report. In here, it makes it absolutely clear, and I have been telling you for 1 year, but the scorekeepers have finally caught up with my Joint Economic Committee economists. Remember, I chair the Joint Economic Committee. I chair Oversight Subcommittee in the Ways and Means Committee, so I am blessed. I have a freaky smart staff. In 2032, the trust funds are empty. In 2033, the first year where they are completely empty, if you said that we are just going to pay for everything out of the general fund, okay, we can do that. My estimates come in at about $638 billion in 2033 just to make up the shortfall of the Social Security trust fund being gone and the Medicare trust fund being gone. That is, what, 60 percent of today's defense budget. Why is math such an anathema to this place? Let's walk through a couple of other things here. I have only had time to produce a couple of boards from the new CBO report, and then we will try to tie these into what else is going on. This year, we are basically going to spend 3.3 percent of the entire economy on interest--interest. Once again, this interest number is just the interest to publicly sold debt. Remember how I was just talking about the debt? That we borrow the Social Security money, and then the trust fund gets IOUs from the Treasury, and we pay it interest? Then when the Social Security needs money--which they do every month--because the tax receipts come in from your FICA taxes and there is a shortfall, so they cash that in every month? If you add up all of the money and interest paid from the trust funds, I think this year is going to look more like $1.2 trillion in interest. Why that is important: What is the number one spend in America? The number one spend of your Federal Government is Social Security. It is going to come in at about $1.6 trillion this year. Interest is your number two. It is going to come in at about $1.2 trillion. Medicare is going to come in at about $1.1 trillion this year, maybe a little more. Medicaid and ACA, ObamaCare subsidies, are going to come in at $900 billion. Those are your top four. Number five is the defense. The thing that is actually in the United States Constitution is actually number five in hierarchy of spending. One of the things that CBO was trying to point out is that their estimate is for 9 budget years--so 9 budget years is 2036 from now-- that we will go from $1 trillion of interest to $2.1 trillion of interest. In 2036, so 9 budget years from now, the annual deficit will be about $3.1 trillion. Structural deficit is $1 trillion, and $2.1 trillion will just be interest. The majority of future deficits are actually interest. Interest and healthcare are the primary drivers of U.S. sovereign debt. Will the bond market continue to finance this? What happens when one of your greatest solutions is: Can we actually have honest conversations about healthcare costs? Are we willing to legalize the very technologies and the methodologies of helping our brothers and sisters stay healthier and, therefore, use dramatically less healthcare? I have been coming behind this mike for over a decade with presentation after presentation of technologies, new pharmaceuticals, and new methodologies to crash the price of healthcare. I get the crap kicked out of me because armies of lobbyists don't like it when we talk about changing their business model. Remember, several months ago, I came here to the floor and showed that we came up with a math experiment of, in America, how many duplicative MRI scans, ultrasounds, X-rays, and CTs are there? The top end was looking like $36 billion in a single year. Why wouldn't you do something crazy? You get an MRI, attach it to this crazy supercomputer that you put in your pocket, and then when you go to your next doctor, you put it up, and it is up on their screens, and you don't get another one. Now it turns out that you get some folks who make money on the duplicative scans. They get very angry, but $35 billion over 10 years, $350 billion, and that is just one of dozens of things. Why is it so hard? Are we that afraid of the lobbyists? Are we that afraid of trying to explain to the folks at home that we don't have a choice? In 6\1/2\ years--let's say it again--the Medicare trust fund is empty. If you want to extend the life of the trust fund, let's have a revolution on the actual cost of delivering healthcare. There are a couple of other things that are highlights in the CBO report. They estimate that in 10 years, we will have 5.3 million fewer people in America. That is mostly from reduction in immigration and the fact that our fertility rates continue to fall, but think of this. That missing 5.3 million people is $500 billion over that timeframe in lost tax receipts. When I use the term ``demographics'' on our debt, it is a function. Our debt is a function of the fact that our society has gotten older. We have substantially fewer children. We are going to have fewer workers, and there are actually whole charts I have here that actually talk about it. Look, they are hard charts. This one is absolutely inappropriately designed to use on the floor, but it is trying to explain what happens in a society when we have substantially fewer young [[Page H2180]] workers in our society and substantially more of those who are now 65 and older. {time} 2000 It is just life, but we have to be prepared for what it means when the majority of Federal spending will be going to those 65 and up in just a couple of years. Are we prepared for this? Of course, we are not. So many folks still have a mind frame that is decades out of date with what we are demographically. This is happening over the entire industrialized world, but in our society here, if I can raise wages and productivity of those who are in the workforce, I have resources to cover the promised benefits, because we made a deal. We have