UNSUSTAINABLE DEBT

On 2026-05-21, Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ-1) delivered a floor speech titled "UNSUSTAINABLE DEBT" in the House.

UNSUSTAINABLE DEBT

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 87 (Thursday, May 21, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 87 (Thursday, May 21, 2026)] [House] [Pages H3719-H3721] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] UNSUSTAINABLE DEBT (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.) Mr. SCHWEIKERT. 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? Do you remember, for those of us who were involved in that, what was the premise? The premise was fairly simple. We cared about the fiscal status of our country and following the Constitution. Today, a dozen years later since the Tea Party was basically put out of business, do I have any of my brothers and sisters out there who actually care about what is going on? My preference is when I do these sort of weekly presentations, I put my Joint Economic chairman hat on or my Oversight and Ways and Means hat on. This time, I am just going to try to be the guy who cares about financing the U.S. debt and what the hell is going on right now. Often, when I do these, I like to say: Here is the problem, and here are some solutions. This time you are just getting problems, and then the reality of what it means. I am going to do this three or four times in this presentation, so if anyone is listening, think about this: From February until this week, the movement on U.S. interest rates, if you do it over 10 years, it is over $2 trillion of additional interest. That is not $2 trillion we get to spend on a new aircraft carrier or building roads or helping our brothers and sisters get healthier. It is $2 trillion to the bond market. I have come behind this microphone for a decade and a half. I have been criticized by many of those who actually care about the economics of the country, I have been criticized for saying the bond market very soon will be the dominant player in this government. David, how can you say things like this? It is happening. Let's start with this slide that we keep doing because the math is wrong now. A couple years ago when I used to do this, discretionary outlays were 27, 28 percent of spending. Now, it is down to 25 percent of the spending. This is all a Member of Congress votes on unless you have a reconciliation budget, and you see how well we are doing on those right now. So nondefense and defense. Basically, the other 75 percent of spending is on autopilot. You get these folks who come in here--we did one about 3 or 4 weeks ago where we basically said: We are going to do a resolution to balance the budget. There were no ideas with it, there was no discipline with it, there was no telling the truth with it, but we did a resolution so we can all put it on our political brochures and say we voted for a balanced budget. The economists I have on the Joint Economic Committee, we were spitballing some of the math on that, I can balance the budget next year. I have got to cut half of U.S. Federal spending. Last year, for every dollar in, we spent $1.43. So far this fiscal year, for every dollar in, we have spent $1.47. Now, that will balance out a little bit because there is a spike in there from last year's debt ceiling when we had to refund many of the accounts, but when you look at this chart, there is something really important to get your heads around. I am running for Governor in Arizona. I have given up on this place. As I am traveling around the State, I will do part of my presentation on what is really happening in the Federal Government and why it is so important to get the finances of your own State really solid because some of the revenue sharing that goes to the States--which is almost half my State's budget, our total spending--is going to start to dry up because every dime we send to the States is borrowed. Do you see this number over here, interest? Our calculation says right now the interest this fiscal year, the one we are in right now, will come in over or around $1.2 trillion. Stop and think about what I am sharing with you. Social Security, $1.6 trillion; interest, 1.2; Medicare, about 1.1. Remember, Medicare doubles in spending over the next 6 to 7 years, and in 6 years the trust fund is actually gone. Number four is actually Medicaid and ObamaCare subsidies. Defense, the thing that is actually in the Constitution, is number five on our spending stack. When we go home and we sit there with our constituents, and we do things like happened today to me--so we are doing a Ways and Means markup, and there were good, simple bills that should have been bipartisan, but every Democrat had to get their little video of attacking the President, so we had to sit there for several hours. Okay, great, that is the theater of what we do here in Congress now. However, down the hallway and in the basement, a Republican Study Committee was trying to do a debt fraud forum. They had some really good people there. They had people who had been working on the issue of waste and fraud, and they had one gentleman who has written some really amazing articles. He has researched where he found millions of dollars of fraud. My problem is I was actually doing the math of what I was listening to. [[Page H3720]] 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. Here is the problem in this place: Because of the financial illiteracy--sorry, I withdraw that, that is being a little mean--the lack of batteries in the calculators around here, you will see Members come behind these microphones on both sides: We are going to save $1 million, $10 million, $20 million on this, and we will have borrowed more money on the debate on the piece of legislation than the bill saves. Yesterday, we crossed over $90,000 every second in borrowing. We will borrow over $7.7-plus billion today. Is anyone listening? Do I say it in a way that is not understandable? Is there another way I can make my charts so it is absorbable? Are we a society where the desire for government spending--because there are tens of thousands of people from home, from lobbyists, others walking up and down our hallways, in our offices all day long telling us how much they care about the debt and deficits, and then they demand more money. We can stabilize the debt. We can convince the bond markets to give us lower interest rates. For those of you who are watching, and you think, well, we will just have the Federal Reserve lower interest rates. It doesn't work that way. God. Do you remember your high school economics class? The Federal Reserve, the Fed funds rate, the open window policies basically are what we call the short end of the curve. They basically influence those things that are 2 years and shorter. {time} 1940 Your mortgage is based on the 10-year instrument. That is a market rate, and it is based on the borrowing of excess savings that is loaned to sovereigns, your mortgage, and everything else, from the entire world. It is not just financed from us here in the United States. It is the entire world. The entire world--at least most of the industrialized world--is bingeing on debt. You have to understand: We have to convince the world debt markets that we are going to tame inflation, that we are creditworthy, and that we are going to get our act together. There is a report that came out just about an hour ago--honestly, I have only read the first half of it--that basically was doing the calculations that even publicly sold debt, in 9 budget years, will be over 126 percent of debt-to-GDP. We just passed 100 percent. Does anyone care? In slightly over 6 years, if you are on Social Security, you get a 24-percent cut in your check. That is the law. In 6 years, the Medicare trust fund is empty. In a little over 6 years, the Social Security trust fund is empty. Does anyone care? Is anyone here willing to tell the truth? Yes, you will have the other side beat the crap out of you. You will have some of your own people in a primary saying: He talked about Social Security and Medicare. I am just trying to save it. For the idiots that go around saying, ``Well, we will just raise this tax,'' understand that, in 2033, to cover the shortfall of the Medicare and Social Security trust funds is over $638 billion just that year, just to cover the first year, and then it goes up and goes up and goes up. It is demographics. We don't have enough children. We don't have enough young people. We don't have enough young workers in our society. It is math. Your country basically is at zero population growth. The Census Bureau, about a month ago, did a report. If you dig through it, sometime in the next 5 years--I think the benchmark was 3 years--the United States at current policy goes negative in population. Those people go, yay, we are going to get smaller. Fine. You figure out and tell me how I am going to finance Social Security and Medicare. You tell me how I finance the debt. You tell me how I am going to convince the bond markets not to keep raising our interest rates. I know how to do it. I have come behind this damn microphone how many times and talked about the unified theory of you are going to have to adopt technology, and you are going to have to revolutionize the cost of healthcare. That is one of the things we are about to talk about. You are going to have to move to a talent-based immigration system so the population you bring into the country maximizes economic growth and tax collections. You don't have a choice anymore. You can't import mass poverty anymore. There is a way to stabilize the math, Mr. Speaker. We would just have to do everything at once, and we would have to do hard things. Two days ago,