Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman David Schweikert (AZ-06)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — For his House Floor speech this week, Arizona Congressman David Schweikert expanded upon the demographic crisis of declining birth rates and aging populations, with more deaths than births in many states. While stressing the urgent need for economic growth and productivity to sustain prosperity, Schweikert argues for capital investments, technological advancements, a talent-based immigration system to address labor shortages, and embracing the benefits of artificial intelligence. The U.S. debt crisis is underscored, and rising interest payments and mandatory spending on Social Security and Medicare are consuming tax revenues, ultimately leaving discretionary spending to be reliant on borrowing. Schweikert calls for honest discussions, modernization of government services, and fiscal discipline to avoid economic decline.
Excerpts from Rep. Schweikert’s floor speech can be found below:
Click here or on the image above to view Rep. Schweikert’s remarks.
On what world bond traders have to say about the U.S.’s rapidly accumulating, unsustainable debt:
[Beginning at 09:22]
“Japan has almost 300 percent debt to GDP, but it’s a unique society because their corporations, their individuals actually finance almost their entire debt, where the United States, we are chewing up our capital stock now. We are borrowing somewhere between $70,000 to– if you take this fiscal year– as high as $80,000 every second; every second of every day, we borrow $6 [billion], $7 billion every single day. I have done a chart before but think about this: we click off an additional trillion dollars of borrowing about every 125 days. You think it’s going to go on forever? I am going to show you in the second part of this, the number of the biggest bond traders in the world. When Larry fink, when Ray Dalio are basically saying, “You guys have got a problem and it’s coming fast,” and taking billions of dollars and starting to hedge– even the U.S. Bonds– saying, “We think you are going to five, 6 percent.” Understand if the United States ever went back to what was normal before the Great Recession of 2008, you get back to a 6 percent handle on U.S. debt. In nine years, 45 percent of all tax collections are interest. When does it scare the crap out of people?”
On higher productivity directly driving wage growth and combating effects of inflation:
[Beginning at 12:00]
“How many can afford a car loan? Understand, we just went through functionally three, four years of inflation, where, in my communities, if you don’t make 27 percent more, you are poorer today. Isn’t the employment rate great? It is, but it’s wage growth, and it goes up by two things: inflation– which means you are not getting ahead, you’re just treading water, or productivity. When you are lacking population growth, ok, how do you get productivity? Regulatory policy; good trade policy; great tax policy that makes it so you are investing in plant and equipment and research and development to do it better, faster, [and] cheaper. That’s how you make people less poor. This one is a little tricky, but fascinating if you dig into the article. If you are out of your mind, or you’re geeky, or don’t have a Netflix subscription… but you dig into what level of productivity growth you actually need just to sustain your lifestyle for all sorts of countries. For the United States, you need almost about a 2 percent– and looking at the different years– but you see the pink line? We calculate that if you’re not having at least a 1.8 percent productivity gain– which is a lot– you are functionally poorer. You become poorer, and for all the people that complain about, “Don’t do tax cuts for business! Don’t do regulatory change for business! Okay… go read the literature; we know that in 2017– what we did [for] change in corporate tax rates and getting companies to move their monies back here, getting them to invest in productivity and all those other things– we calculate from 60 percent to 70 percent of every dime they got went into wages because once again, the primary way people make more money is productivity.“
On protecting American people by offsetting interest and financing costs:
[Beginning at 19:19]
“I challenge my brothers and sisters on the Left and the Right: know your math and start telling the truth. You look at charts like this, where this right here is break even. This is where the dollar [lands]. Even this year, every dime of discretionary and a little sliver of mandatory are on borrowed money once again. The only reason I threw up this chart in the way it is, that is with CBO’s calculations saying the law says, next year, we only get to take in $100 billion-some additional taxes because Americans’ taxes go up. We don’t want that to happen! We want to protect hard-working people! The very last point I’m going to show here: the way you protect the American people is you offset as much of that as you can because you give it to hard-working folks, and then you take it away from them in higher interest costs and higher financing costs. You smile at them, hand them a dollar in their face, while grabbing their wallet from behind and stealing it from them. That moment of telling the truth about math is really important.“
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Congressman David Schweikert serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and is the current Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee. He is also the Chairman on the bicameral Joint Economic Committee, Chairman of the Congressional Valley Fever Task Force, and is the Republican Co-Chair of the Blockchain Caucus, Telehealth Caucus, Singapore Caucus, and the Caucus on Access to Capital and Credit.