God speed the day when human blood shall cease to flow!
     In every clime be understood, the claims of human
           brotherhood,
     And each return for evil, good,
     Not blow for blow;
     That day will come all feuds to end,
     And change into a faithful friend each foe.

     Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                            MATH DOESN'T LIE

  (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr.
Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of
the majority leader.)
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, this is going to be another presentation
of basically budget, debt, my frustration with this place, and my
frustration with telling the truth.
  Look, we are a remarkable country, no matter what you hear often from
our brothers and sisters, particularly from the left, a quarter
millennium of a remarkable experiment. We have brought more freedom to
the world, more prosperity to the world, more ingenuity to the world,
more health to the world.
  I think sometimes our dourness, if that is a word, our frustration--
and Heaven knows I am a sinner on this. I am terrified of our
unwillingness to

tell the truth about basic math. So we are going to walk behind these
mikes over and over and over and desperately try to find whatever the
dopamine hit is of the day, and yet, we will borrow another $6 billion,
$7 billion today.
  Last week, when I did this, I had my little boy, who had just turned
4 years old that day, running behind us. It was so much fun. Yet, the
comments we received from the folks who are unique enough to watch
something like this commented on the little boy, not necessarily the
math.
  I was trying to make the point at one moment saying: Here is my 4-
year-old we have adopted. It is the greatest gift God has ever given
someone, and he is healthy. We were terrified he would never be
healthy. He was born with rather severe drugs. This government has made
a decision we will need 104 percent of that little boy's lifetime
earnings just to pay the Federal Government pensions, to cover Social
Security, Medicare, military retirement, our retirement, 104 percent of
the generation of young people today, we are so upside-down
mathematically.

                              {time}  1910

  I also tried--and I am going to do it again because apparently I
didn't do it very well. We passed a housing bill. I voted ``no''
because there were too many gimmicks and it made government too big.
Fine, personal opinion. I actually have a background in housing
economics.
  However, not once did someone come behind these microphones and say
that one of the primary problems in affordability of you being able to
purchase a home, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that if we had a normal debt
load, then you would be paying 5.5 percent on today's 30-year loan.
Instead you are paying 6.5 percent.
  Why?
  It is because the United States is going to borrow probably $2.3
trillion this year. We are crowding you out, Mr. Speaker. We are
raising the price of money.
  I have given presentation after presentation saying that if we keep
this up for much longer, then the bond market is going to run this
country. We will exist in a fear of the weekly and monthly debt
auctions.
  We actually brought some data just trying to show the difference
between 2011, and right now the interest rate movement. This is
interest rates. We are paying 1 point higher because of the scale of
U.S. sovereign debt borrowing that when you buy that 30-year mortgage,
Mr. Speaker, on an average priced home--and I think we used an average
priced home in Arizona, not here in D.C.--you are going to pay about
$2,500 more, and over the life of that loan, $76,000 more.
  That is just the cost of money because we, as a government, borrowed
so much. We are responsible for that higher expense in the interest
rates.
  Except for the problem here is the hallways here are full of armies
of people coming into our office demanding more money.
  What happens when, Mr. Speaker, you and I go home?
  We tell the truth.
  Now, we make people angry because I am starting to worry: Voters, do
you want us to lie to you?
  Is that actually what you are asking for?
  Do you want us to tell you things that set off a good dopamine hit,
that make you feel this, but don't tell you the truth about the
demographics, debt, and deficit?
  That is because at that point, it is not a conversation of what else
we can give you. It is going to be a conversation of how we are going
to fix it.
  The data is actually pretty darn clear. Our borrowing raises your car
loan, Mr. Speaker, and raises the cost of you financing your small
business. Heaven knows, it is going to cost on an average home in
Tempe, Phoenix--not Scottsdale--about $76,000 more in interest. That is
a knockoff effect.
  Let us actually start. I am going to produce a whole bunch of boards
here. My rule used to be that I am going to give you the problem, Mr.
Speaker, and then I am going to give you a series of solutions. I am
tired of coming here with solutions and then realizing there is not a
chance in hell--I can't even get cosponsors because it would mean
telling the truth.
  When I have come here and shown the MedPAC reports, there is $1
trillion, $2 trillion of misalignment because some of it is legal on
the edge. We introduced a bill. The preliminary score was $1.84
trillion of savings over 10 years just to fix some of the things in
Medicare Advantage that wouldn't cut a single service, and I got told
this morning in conference: David, you don't understand. It has the
word Medicare. We are not allowed to talk about that in an election
year, but we will fix it next year.
  I have been here 16 years, and it is always next year.
  Let us take a look at this chart. I often start with this one because
so few people understand.
  Mr. Speaker, do you see the blue area?
  That is all you, as a Member of Congress, get to vote on, unless it
is a reconciliation budget, except we now use reconciliation budgets to
pass things, not save money. Here is your math problem: As of today,
just this little net interest sliver for this fiscal year will be 20
percent of all tax receipts. So when you pay $1, 20 cents of that is
just covering interest.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to show you some charts here that in 9 years
how big that math actually gets. But understand, your government is
functionally an insurance company with an army. I love that line. Think
about it. It will make sense.
  Nondefense and defense, that is all we vote on, and we are about to
make this much bigger. People go to war with us when we are trying to
cut down nondefense.
  Mr. Speaker, a moment of truth. Let's have some fun here. DOGE
identified $0.25 trillion in potential savings modeling. What has made
it through the legislative process is about $7 billion, basically what
we will borrow today.
  I know folks aren't really good at math with lots of zeros. Our
government borrows about $1 million every 13 seconds or so. In 13, 13.5
seconds, we borrow $1 million, and then $1 million. So often we will
have debates here and say that this will save $3 million. I try to
explain that it barely covered 30-some seconds of borrowing.
  We are now borrowing about 90--if you do just this fiscal year so
far, so just this fiscal year, about $73,000 a second.
  If you do the last 12 months--understand there is a blip in there
because we had the extraordinary measures where we didn't have a debt
ceiling and we had to refund it. But if you do the last 12 months, we
are borrowing about $98,000 per second.
  I know everyone is going to talk about that, right?
  All right, let's get to the math. Let's do some speed dating on math.
  Do you see this chart, Mr. Speaker?
  This is basically to make a point. We are in the OECD, basically the
organization of developed economies.
  Do you notice the red one down here, Mr. Speaker?
  If you add up everything, Mr. Speaker, we are borrowing 7.9 percent
of our entire economy. We are the worst in the entire industrialized
world.
  Mr. Speaker, if you actually start to take a look, you start seeing
countries like Greece--and those are much healthier than we are. Do you
realize today Greece can sell a 10-year bond substantially cheaper than
the United States?
  Of course, we are going to work on that and talk about it next year.
  Let us actually walk through some of what is going on.
  Remember, Mr. Speaker--I am going to try to make this point a couple
of times through the presentation in some of the last slides--the
primary driver of the debt is not a tax cut over here. It is our
demographics. Next year the data looks like we are going to have fewer
under 18 than we had 20 years ago and double the number 65 and up.
  Are we allowed to actually say that?
  It is not personal. It is not actually Democrat or Republican, it is
just math.