CONGRESS IS A MATH-FREE ZONE

On 2026-01-08, Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ-1) delivered a floor speech titled "CONGRESS IS A MATH-FREE ZONE" in the House. The speech addressed immigration and also covered healthcare, taxes.

CONGRESS IS A MATH-FREE ZONE

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 5 (Thursday, January 8, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 5 (Thursday, January 8, 2026)] [House] [Pages H244-H246] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] CONGRESS IS A MATH-FREE ZONE (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.) Mr. SCHWEIKERT. 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. If you listen to the people coming behind the microphones, particularly today, it is as if they have read none of the CBO reports, none of the HHS reports, or the other things, particularly in regard to the ACA, which are subsidies. They are subsidies on top of subsidies to insurance companies. Did you read the reports? Last year, 41 percent of those subsidies on subsidies of the people that had the enhanced subsidies paid no premium, so they had no skin in the game, which is not what we were promised when ObamaCare came into existence a dozen years ago. We actually showed an economic report. I did entire floor speeches on it showing that only a third of that $35 billion, $40 billion a year subsidy on top of the subsidies actually goes to healthcare. We also showed that a third of the folks never made a claim because now we are finding rampant fraud of people who were signed up because if they don't have a premium to pay, they had brokers signing them up, and they had no idea they had coverage. Where is the passion to actually deal with the fact that particularly the left--and I have got to blame my brothers and sisters on the Republican side, we have done the same. We have turned healthcare into financial engineering, instead of having it be about the cost, access, and delivery of having our brothers and sisters get healthier. Is it you have sold your soul to the insurance companies? Remember, the ACA model is an insurance company model. You promised them rates of return, you promised them a market, so this is 7 percent of the healthcare market, and 94 percent of that 7 percent gets a subsidy. Let's actually do math because you have been listening to--oh, yeah, there has been actually no math today as people talked about subsidies on top of subsidies. The CBO report that updated yesterday--and I can do this off the top of my head--basically said the 3 years cost $80 billion. The reason it is lower than my $105 billion is because they made an assumption that this year, if the Senate were to pass these, that there will be a delayed sign-up, so there will be half a year or so where people--but if they did a claw back, the actual number on these subsidies is about $105 billion. Okay. Even if you do the CBO's number of $80 billion for 3 years of subsidies on top of subsidies, and then you put in the 10 years of interest, you know, because of the interest window, this costs $111 billion. {time} 1950 Understand what the left is telling you. They are basically saying they don't give a damn about healthcare. It is financing. If we wanted to change the price of healthcare, we would actually be looking at the innovations that are going on and start to legalize them, but there are too many damn lobbyists walking up and down our hallways here trying to stop us. Look, here is an article from 2 days ago. Bless the State of Utah. If you are like me--I have hypertension. Can you imagine that? I have had it since I was a teenager. I take a calcium inhibitor. It lowers my blood pressure. Hopefully, I don't pop an aneurysm, but every 90 days, I have to pick up the phone to renew a doctor's prescription or go visit the doctor, even though it is the same prescription I have had for decades. Utah just created AI that will take my data and renew my prescription. It will save a fortune for the people of Utah--cost, access, not subsidies. Stanford medical reviewed basically being able to use certain wearables. Their new AI model predicts disease risk as you sleep from over 100 health conditions. They take some data as you are sleeping off your wearables, and boom, basically you are wearing a medical lab. Except the problem is, it is not allowed to prescribe. That would be illegal because that would require us to actually do things, modernize access to healthcare, use the technology to crash--oh, we can't use technology to crash the price. It would really annoy a whole bunch of the lobbyists. People are lined up at our doors. People would show up at our fundraisers. OpenAI chat health to connect data from health apps medical records-- there is a revolution coming where we as people of America can stay dramatically healthier. Why aren't we doing the discussion of what to do to lower the price of healthcare instead of having debates of another $100 billion that goes on the very credit cards of the people who get--the insurance companies that get the subsidy that only as--our model is 38 percent of that subsidy actually ends up going into healthcare. We are still trying to figure out where the hell the rest of the money went. Have we lost our minds? Why is it so much easier to just keep borrowing money and borrowing money and borrowing money and say: I am giving you something, but I am putting it on your credit card. It is like we are engaging in a level of financial lunacy here. Now, let's actually go on to the even more difficult part of this discussion. I am doing this because I want us to start to have a benchmark. If there is anyone out there listening that has ever had to tolerate--because I have been doing these for a decade, and I am just exhausted. I am frustrated. I am angry. My brothers and sisters here, Democrat and Republican, I like most of these people, and I am crushed. I am just absolutely intellectually, emotionally, even physically crushed at the inability to tell the truth. We don't want to tell the truth because our constituents get pissed off at us when we walk them through the math. The constituents look back and say, so you have been lying or the politicians have been lying to us for decades. The answer is yes, but it is not Democratic. It is not Republican. Much of the crisis that we are facing is demographic. I am not going to explain all of this chart, but I am basically going to tell you, if you look at the financial lines on this chart, Mr. Speaker, it basically says, in 3 years, over half the money this Federal Government spends will go to those 65 and up. In 3 years, half the money we spend will go to those 65 and up. Now, I need you to work through something with me. I have already presented the Moody's Analytics report that is saying, in 8 years from now, 30 percent of our spending, 30 percent of tax collections, will go just to interest. You are now seeing, in 3 years, the majority of our spending will actually go to benefits here. We have a math problem. Today, we have fewer 18 year olds than we had 20 years ago, but we have double the number of 65 year olds. We can sit here and blame each other, but it is just demographics. It is happening over the entire industrialized world, but we are not allowed to actually have an honest discussion about it because the moment you say something, the other side is writing political commercials to rip your face off [[Page H245]] because you told the truth about math and demographics. It is real simple. Mr. Speaker, you are going to run for U.S. Senate. In your next term, the Medicare trust fund is empty. The Social Security trust fund is empty. It takes that first year, 2033, to just cover that shortfall that is over $638 billion. If you don't fix it, you double senior poverty. You double the number of baby boomers who will live on the street, and everyone's Social Security check has a 24 percent cut. How many people have you heard this week get behind the microphones and say maybe we should actually start to adopt technology, modernization, deal with the reality of our fiscal cliff that is coming? Instead, I watch a parade of my brothers and sisters here say: I have an idea. It costs more money, but it is a really good idea. Let's just put it on the credit card. It is out of order, but I will get to it. I am going to say it a couple of times because I did a presentation of a report from I think it is the Massachusetts or Boston economic council, freaky smart professors. If you use a 6 percent discount rate, which you can argue something lower, but sometimes you have to talk about math. A child born today, you need 104 percent of that child's lifetime income, so more money than they make in their entire lifetime, just to cover Federal pension benefits, Social Security, Medicare, military, Federal employees, and railroad retirement. Does anyone care? Does anyone care? What is wrong with this place? The immorality that the next generation will be poorer than us--but we are not allowed to say that because, let's be honest, people want more stuff. If we keep giving them more stuff, they vote for us. They might even contribute. Look, let's just continue to do some of the basic demographics. From 2004 to 2024, you see this one line here, those are 18-year-olds. Somewhat similar, but now you start to get to 2035 and start to understand, without immigration, you have a world where you functionally have more 65-year-olds than you have 18-year-olds. We are having debates right now. There is a report out that--now, it is not adjusted for self-deports--saying that the United States had about 400,000 as a first snapshot growth in 2025. We have another report that says the United States had zero population growth last year. We have another report that says the United States will have zero population growth this year. {time} 2000 Mr. Speaker, are we going to tell the truth about math? You want our Social Security. You earned it. You deserve it. You want our Medic