DEBT, DEFICITS, AND DEMOGRAPHICS

On 2026-01-21, Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ-1) delivered a floor speech titled "DEBT, DEFICITS, AND DEMOGRAPHICS" in the House. The speech addressed healthcare and also covered the economy, taxes.

DEBT, DEFICITS, AND DEMOGRAPHICS

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 14 (Wednesday, January 21, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 14 (Wednesday, January 21, 2026)] [House] [Pages H1167-H1170] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] DEBT, DEFICITS, AND DEMOGRAPHICS (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.) Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, shall we have some fun with math and economics? It is something we just don't hear a lot of here on the floor of the House. Remember, this is my therapy because I often sit in the back of the room and stew when I hear people say things when it is obvious they didn't pull their calculator out. I am going to try two things tonight, and if you are actually interested in budgets and economics, have fun with me. If you are not, go watch Netflix. We are going to actually try a couple concepts, where the money is going and within that, the scale of our debt and deficits. The fact of the matter is, we are at what is called interest fragility that--think about what happened over the last couple days in the discussions coming from the White House, from us. The bond market actually bounced up about 30 basis points. We were just playing on the back of napkins, the math, and if that had held for an entire year, just those 30 basis points would have been $33 billion of additional interest. I will try to actually explain that and then actually talk about something that is really interesting. The economy from a GDP calculation standpoint, and this is just the economists looking at the vitality in the economy, is remarkably good. We are running over a 5 percent GDP, which if you go back and look at the economic projections, it is double what many of our smartest economists in the country thought we would be at a year ago, but our spending--because of interest and healthcare and the reality that we are going to have to deal with is debt, deficits, and demographics. Once again, remember, we functionally have the same number of 18 year olds today as we had 20 years ago, but we have double the number of 65 and up. It is just what we are. Don't get mad. It is not Republican or Democrat. It is just demographics and understanding when our brothers and sisters move into their earned benefit years, what it costs. The fact of the matter is, this Congress refuses to do the hard things because in 6\1/2\ years, the Social Security trust fund is empty and you get a 24 percent cut in your check and we double senior poverty. We double the number of baby boomers who will live on the street. In 6\1/2\, 7 years, the Medicare trust fund is empty and your hospital gets an 11 percent cut and much of the financing things like Medicare Advantage and those actually just become, let's just say, difficult. Let's walk through some of this. I pulled up this chart because I haven't used it in a few months and I am realizing there are not enough folks, particularly the staff--remember, I often do these because I am talking to a thousand televisions around the campus. The room looks empty, but we are on televisions. Hopefully, there are some staffers who are working on policy who will understand how important these numbers are. Do you see the blue portion of that chart, Mr. Speaker? That is discretionary. That is all you and I get to vote on. As Members of Congress, we only vote on the discretionary portion, and this was a 2025 chart. Today, it is [[Page H1168]] probably only 25 percent, not 26 percent, of the total spending. Every dime of that is borrowed. {time} 1830 Mr. Speaker, the math for last year, for every dollar we took in, in tax receipts, we spent $1.43. We were just in the back. I was talking with one of my Joint Economic economists. We think it is lower this year but we are still not-- because we are having to make the adjustments on the student loans and those sorts of things, it could be down to $1.37 or $1.40 this year. Think about that. Last year, for every dollar that came in, we spent $1.43. Realize all this in the red is on autopilot, and a portion of it is actually on borrowed money. If you just do the hierarchy, every dime of defense is borrowed. Every dime of nondefense discretionary is borrowed. That is only about $2 trillion. A wedge of the mandatory also ends up being borrowed. There is one other thing I want to point out in the chart. If you actually take a look at the hierarchy of spending, Social Security is number one. It is $1.5 trillion. Guess what is number two if you do the total interest paid. It is interest. Here is interest to the public who bought our bonds, whether it be your pension plan as an individual or another country, or the interest we have to pay back to the trust funds when we reach into the Social Security trust fund, the Medicare trust fund, the railroad retirement trust fund, and those things. We borrow the money. We owe them interest. Total interest last year was about $1.2 trillion, making interest the second biggest expenditure in this government. Medicare is number three. Medicaid and healthcare subsidies are number four. Defense is actually number five. I always love it--I often have these conversations back home when I have a Democrat who says: Well, if you cut defense. Then they look at me in horror when I ask them if they realize that in the hierarchy of spending, defense is actually the fifth biggest expenditure in Government. This one is actually good news of some of what is happening. This is actually one of my favorite charts because it actually demonstrates here is our tax receipts as a percentage of the economy. We were basically getting about 17.1 percent of the economy. We have some new math right now. It says we are probably peaking over 18 percent, maybe even higher, of the economy coming in, in tax receipts. That is wonderful except for one really yucky thing. Remember last year, when we were up, getting 17.1 percent of the economy in taxes, we functionally were spending 23.4 percent. That delta is the deficit. What happens when your tax receipts are going up as a percentage of the size of the economy and the economy is growing but healthcare and interest are going up faster? Are we going to tell the truth about that? Here are basic factoids. I did this last week, but I want to say it again because it doesn't seem to be sinking in. In about 33 or 36 months, half of every dime that the Federal Government spends, 50 percent of all of our spending will go to those 65 and up. Moody's Analytics has in 2035--what is that--8 or 9 budget years from now--30 percent of all tax receipts going just to interest. There was an interesting economic paper. It was actually an economic paper demonstrating that Italy actually was more fiscally sound in the long term than the United States. When you see that headline, you sit down and read it, within there was a factoid. If you use a 6 percent generational discount rate, which is reasonable--it could be slightly high--for a child born today, you need 104 percent of their lifetime earnings just to pay Federal pension obligations. Those are Social Security, Medicare, military, and Federal requirement. Mr. Speaker, think of that. For a child born today, you need every dime they will ever make in their entire life, plus another 4 percent, to pay pension obligations. Does anyone see the immorality going on? But we can't talk about that because that would be hard. I believe the American people are a hell of a lot smarter than we are. They are ready for us to tell them the truth about math. One of the first things we as the political class have to do is stop lying about math. Let's actually walk through some of this, and I will blast through these because I am trying to make a point. Also, before I go much further, if someone actually wants to bathe in the truth in math and what the future looks like and how we can fix it, go to the Joint Economic Committee Republicans. We publish some amazing things. Every weekday, we do a text message to a few thousand people we call the Daily Debt. It shows how much came in and how much we spent. We give you a 12-month window so it fixes ups and downs. We will also give you the fiscal year as it sits. Mr. Speaker, I just got my Daily Debt text message. We are borrowing over $71,000 every second. That is the 12-month calculation. It makes up all the highs and lows and averages out. You have got to understand that this ain't a game because that $71,000 a second, we need to have buyers of our bonds. We make our buyers of our bonds cranky. It gets really expensive. This chart here is just trying to make a point of what is going on in our debt and deficits. Remember that discretionary spending, the blue on the pie chart I just showed you, is flat. It is not growing. Yes, there is waste and fraud in it. We need to eliminate that. We actually believe technology would eliminate that, except I can't believe how the bureaucracies are terrified of the technology that can find the waste and fraud. Our growth is in the mandatory spending. It is the promises we have made that we have got to keep but we have got to figure out a way to finance it. What this chart is showing is we see this slightly darker color here. That is the primary deficit. That is actually programs that we are spending more money than we have coming in. All of this lighter purple is the interest we owe. The point we are making is this. If we have a $2 trillion deficit this year but interest is $1.2 trillion, interest now is the primary driver. Number two is healthcare costs. We just have this problem of telling the truth about healthcare costs are out of control. In many States, the government is the primary--is the majority of money spent in healthcare. Let's have some fun here. I know we are all interested in bonds and how they refinance. Remember, if you have $38.5 trillion of debt out there, over $30 trillion of that is sold. Tha