GROWING THE GDP

On 2026-01-13, Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ-1) delivered a floor speech titled "GROWING THE GDP" in the House. The speech addressed healthcare and also covered the economy, taxes.

GROWING THE GDP

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 9 (Tuesday, January 13, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 9 (Tuesday, January 13, 2026)] [House] [Pages H713-H716] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] GROWING THE GDP (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.) Mr. SCHWEIKERT. 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. I did a little tripping up of some details last week, where we were trying to explain some of the things we see going on in the math. I want to walk through a concept. We actually, right now, as a country, are remarkably blessed. The GDP growth, the economic growth, is actually well beyond almost any of what even my economists were predicting over the last year. We are seeing some data right now--if you actually look at the Atlanta Fed, GDPNow, nowcasts, some of these--we could hit a five- handle this quarter, which is remarkable. Looking at some of the data from the third quarter of 2025, it looks like the number of a 4.3 percent GDP growth is going to hold up. These numbers are actually remarkable, and I want to make a point here for the annualized 2025 GDP number. I know this is geeky. There is a point I am going to come to, and that is the irony that tax collections don't look as robust as the economy. We are going to try to explain what is going on. This is why getting policy right is going to become so critical. The first quarter of last year, so 1 year ago this quarter, we actually had negative GDP. The first quarter, when the Trump administration started, when our new Congress started, we actually had to go through 3 months of slower growth. Then, it wasn't until the second quarter, third quarter, and now we believe the fourth quarter-- we don't have that final number in yet--we finally hit the acceleration pedal. What is going on out there? We had this irony happening where we have really actually stable and much broader economic growth than we expected. We are actually seeing some odd things. [[Page H714]] 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. Here is the number of folks who are entering the labor force. They are working. Here is the number of folks who are available for work. When we start to get to 4 percent or 4.6 percent unemployment, we are actually, if we look at our historic average, even the last 25 years, that is almost full employment. Do you see this curve here? It is basically starting to demonstrate the demographics of America. It is also sort of the demographics of the entire industrialized world. You have a situation where today we functionally have the same number of 18-year-olds as we had 20 years ago. Today, we also have almost double the number of our brothers and sisters who are 65 and up than 25 years ago. That is creating an interesting irony. We actually take a look here at what we call tax receipts. Most people like to call them tax collections. If you are on Ways and Means, they are tax receipts. Look at this interesting spike here. That is actually tax receipts. That is good. Almost every dime we see on this chart of the real growth is actually capital gains. It is those who have had assets. It is those who have sold real estate. It is those who have sold stocks. The tax receipts really coming in from labor are good. They are stable, but they are not growing nearly in sympathy--if you can play economist words--in sympathy to the GDP growth. This is an important part of what I wanted to share. I am trying--I hate this term--to socialize the concept. {time} 2110 What happens when you are producing growth because we have a lot of growth policies that are right? Last summer, earlier in the year, where investment is going into plant, equipment, data centers, AI, and all of these things are happening, wage growth is actually okay. It is actually outpacing inflation now, finally, thank Heaven. Yet the real GDP growth is coming from that capital spend and not from wage and new employment and the demand for labor. Understand why this is a problem. We are an income-tax-base country. There are income taxes on businesses, but mostly the income tax base is on working--and also FICA, Social Security tax, Medicare tax, and unemployment tax; those are taxed on your wages. We are starting to see this irony where we are actually doing some data where we ask what happens when you hit this type of GDP growth and, at the same time, the amount of borrowing and debt in the country is still going to stay remarkably high. We still have a model that we think will be a bit less, but we could still be approaching $2 trillion of borrowing this year. I hope we are wrong, but you have to understand that the first quarter of this fiscal year, I think we were borrowing about $90,000 a second. So far this fiscal year--so we are, what, 3 months and 10 or 11 days into it--I think we have now borrowed $800 billion. Sometime. Maybe before this month is over, we are going to have borrowed another $1 trillion. This time, it wasn't 3 months. It might be coming in at 4 months. We shouldn't be seeing those types of borrowing with this type of economic growth. The point I am going to make is: Why is the borrowing going up? Look at the spending data. I didn't bring all of those charts because they are exhausting, but if you take a look at interest, remember that we have to refinance $10 trillion or maybe $11 trillion this year. That means that the bonds that were sold in the past have to come back to market, refinance, and they are being refinanced, for many of them, at much higher interest rates. The other thing is healthcare, but it is healthcare, Medicare. We have a model that says that now, in less than 6\1/2\ to 7 years, Medicare will go from $1 trillion to $2 trillion. Also, in 7 years, Medicare is gone. Excuse me. Let me rephrase that. The Medicare trust fund is gone, and that will result in around an 11 percent cut, particularly to hospitals. It is demographics. Baby boomers are moving into their peak utilization years of these benefits. We are functioning, I think in the last 3 years or 4 years of baby boomers moving into the age of 65 and getting their earned benefits, so you see the shift in the labor market. What happens if the formulas that I had come behind these microphones for years and said: That if we could grow another point of GDP, it is this many hundreds of billions of dollars of tax receipts, and now it isn't. I know this is geeky, but it is really, really important because it means many of the budget documents that the brain trust around here talk about, we may be getting wrong--many of the solutions we have had for taking on debt and deficits. There is a piece of legislation. I am absolutely elated. I am trying to get on it. It basically says: Look, let's do a debt and deficit commission, like we did BRAC many, many years ago to close excess military bases, and let's go for 3 percent of GDP growth. Madam Speaker, there is a problem with that number. Just our interest coverage is over 3 percent of our economy. So we are going to take spending and get it down to 3 percent. Great. So we are going to stop borrowing so much, except just the interest we pay is bigger than that. Does anyone see the math problem? So this is actually the punch line I have been trying to head toward. This is a chart that sort of shows labor as a percentage of income. I am sorry, but this is actually really important when you are trying to design how you finance your government. We are hitting a time way down here. This is 2024 because that is the last sort of good data point that I have. We actually believe it has actually fallen further. For years, 64 percent, and there may have been times when we crossed over to 66 percent of our income basically came from labor that financed the government. Today, we are down to touching--actually, we may be as low as 53 percent. That is a huge difference, and it is going to force us--those who care about the economics, those of us on the Ways and Means Committee who actually have to do tax policy, those who actually are paying attention to our bonds and our promise to pay back $30 trillion- plus of publicly sold debt, and another $8.5 trillion that we have borrowed internally. How do we pay it back? We are going to have to start thinking about the taxation on labor. It is going to become a problem. I want to bounce around a little bit because, a couple of days ago, we got some of the inflation data, but with that also came some of the State and localized inflation data. I thought this one was interesting. I am going to be a little caustic on it, but I haven't had as much coffee today, so I am not wound up as tight, so at least I am not speaking like a machine gun. We thought this was interesting. Increase in monthly costs in Arizona, and we thought we would do a snapshot. I am blessed that I represent the Phoenix, Scottsdale area. So between January 2021 to September 2021, so we are actually doing the same snapshot of time, if you lived in the Phoenix area, you functionally lost $1,597 to inflation. That is for the average family. Now we come here to 2025. It is still not as good as we demand that we get it to, but it is now $944, a $653 savings. That is 1 year of the success of Republicans lowering inflation. We have to get it further, but we actually see how bad it was before because this was the inflation that was handed to this country during Biden's first year, and then we start to take a look at the progress. We are making progress. It is not as good as I want, but understand this is the reality of the math. Madam Speaker, I have a fixation that we tell the truth and