{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://schweikert.house.gov/2024/09/10/schweikert-if-you-want-to-save-the-country-learn-the-math/", "Schweikert: If You Want to Save the Country, Learn the Math", "2024-09-10", "2024", "2024-09", "Republican", "House", "AZ", "David Schweikert", "S001183", "schweikert.house.gov", "schweikert", "https://schweikert.house.gov/category/congress_press_release/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 U.S. Representative David Schweikert (AZ-01) delivered a speech on the House Floor last night, where he focused on flawed estimates provided by our very own White House. These estimates proved that even though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted a high of $851 billion and a low of $390 billion over ten years from additional collections on $400,000+ earners, we have only seen $1.3 billion in the first two years. Does anyone see a math problem? Rep. Schweikert then mentions the potential cost-savings that come from integrating innovative technology, how it may even be fairer and more effective. He closes his speech with the difficult discussion that 14.5% of all of our spending today is just interest\u2014 total interest, interest we owe to the trust funds, interest we owe to anyone that bought one of our bonds, our union pension funds. If gross interest comes in at $1.4 trillion, (45.68% of every income tax dollar), a little less than half of your income taxes go towards just paying down interest.\n\nExcerpts from Rep. Schweikert\u2019s floor speech can be found below:\n\nOn false promises for additional revenues from our governmental agencies:\n\n[Beginning at 00:23]\n\n\u201cOne of my great frustrations here is sitting on Ways and Means [and] having the joint economic economists as part of my team, and the number of times this place makes promises that the experts around us say, \u201cThey\u2019re complete fraud.\u201d And then, somehow, magically, we never sort of come back a couple of years later and say, \u201cHey, here\u2019s what you were promised when the Democrats did their inflation reduction act. Here [are] the actual outcomes.\u201d Should we hold people to their own language? I\u2019m going to walk through a few boards and try to give some examples of how this place engages in theater that\u2019s mathematically void, and, what\u2019s the term\u2026 oh yeah, we lied to you. How many of you remember, a couple of years ago, \u201cWe\u2019re going to put $80 billion into the I.R.S.\u201d Yay! \u201cAnd we\u2019re going to collect money on those people, $400,000 and up.\u201d You had members of this body, of the White House, and others, saying crazy things. The press\u2014 excuse me, the scribes who, basically, in many ways, should have to file with the federal elections because many of the press around here act more like P.R. Department for the Democrat party\u2014 say, \u201cBetter tax enforcement could raise $700 billion over the decade.\u201d [This came from] the White House in 2021. Some of the others: \u201cSome members of Congress think you could get $1 trillion from taxing and fining delinquent rich people.\u201d Wouldn\u2019t that be neat? Wouldn\u2019t it make our jobs so much easier, in a Congress borrowing close to $80,000 every second? Remember, this is what you were told. How come no one ever comes behind these microphones, two years later and says, \u201cOkay, do we hold you to your language? You built budget documents on these numbers.\u201d\n\nOn enhanced tax enforcement revenues not coming anywhere close to agency projections:\n\n[Beginning at 05:41]\n\n\u201cWhat would happen if, annually, the Treasury has to update what the real numbers [are]? How are they doing? Well, Madam Speaker Pro Tempore, you might get a kick out of this. It turns out, over the two years, they\u2019ve brought in an extra $1.3 billion. That\u2019s a lot of money. We\u2019re still trying to figure out how much of that money would have just organically, eventually come in\u2014 it might have come in slower, so they move some forward. If I take $1.3 billion over two years, and then divide that in half, multiply it by ten\u2026 huh? What happened to the $400 billion? Or the $1 trillion? Or the $700 billion that the Democrats, from those microphones, are telling us they were going to get by going after the $400,000 and up rich people?! My point here is this: so often this place, because it\u2019s mathematically vacuous, builds these promises that are a complete fraud. Now, do I think people who have high income should pay their fair share? Absolutely. In fact, it\u2019s not even their fair share. They should pay what the law tells them they have to pay. Okay, that\u2019s fair. It turns out, there were lots of articles that had been coming up saying it was a fraud, but no one around here was willing to pay attention to it. \u201cDepartment of Treasury, I.R.S., Announces [$]1.3 [billion] Recovery\u2026\u201d it\u2019s not even close. \u201cTreasury Raised Nowhere Near What Democrats Expected from Tax Enforcement.\u201d One of the reasons I\u2019m doing this sort of backwards is I come behind this microphone, week after week after week, sort of showing, here\u2019s the scale of the debt. Here [are] the drivers of the debt. The drivers of the debt from today through the next 30 years are demographics. I get screamed at when I\u2019m home; \u201cDavid, stop telling us the truth!\u201d From today through the next 30 years, about 75% of all the debt\u2014 remember, we\u2019re expecting in 30 years to be $116 [to] $120 trillion in debt\u2014 75% of that will be functionally Medicare. In nine or ten years when the Social Security trust fund is gone, do we backfill that and use the general fund for it? That\u2019s math, but it doesn\u2019t have to be that way. You can\u2019t fix things if this place keeps making crap up.\u201d\n\nOn the morality of pushing creative cures to market:\n\n[Beginning at 17:55]\n\n\u201cIn the last six years, 390,000 of our brothers and sisters have died of fentanyl. I think one of my boards here is going to say, 345,000 prime-age Americans died of fentanyl. That\u2019s the morality of this place. \u201cOh, let\u2019s give some more money to doing the same thing we\u2019ve been doing over and over.\u201d Think about it as everything from border security policy, to the firefighter who is just trying to save someone who gets exposed. In my county, I had someone tell me that, at least my city of Phoenix, there may be two or three dead people every single day from fentanyl. What would happen if I came to you tomorrow and said, \u201cHey, they think they actually have [treatment]; it would be once or twice a year, it\u2019s not a traditional vaccine, that\u2019s the language if you look it up. It basically has your body attached to the protein so it can\u2019t pass the brain-blood barrier. There apparently is, for a number of narcotics, this type of technology appearing to be working. Take a little bit of that money and help bring it to market. Save people\u2019s lives! We live in a country where we may be about to have the fifth year in a row where prime-age males are dying younger. In 14 years, America has more deaths than births.\n\n\u2026\n\nWhen you\u2019re going to have the Democrats come behind [these microphones] and maybe even the debate tonight, [saying], \u201cWe need rich people to pay their fair share, those people over $400,000!\u201d This was a factoid I got from [Congresswoman] Virginia Foxx a little while ago and it screamed in my head. What if I came to you and said, the student loan forgiveness that the administration is desperately pushing because they desperately need the votes\u2014 remember, it\u2019s a vote-mind, it\u2019s pay for play. Hey, now vote for us\u2014 If I told you 750,000 of those individuals who the Biden Administration [provides funding to] make over $312,000, yet, every dime of this is borrowed money? You\u2019re going to take working class people\u2014 many of them that did not have the blessing like I\u2019ve had and others in this body [had], to go to school, to university, to go to grad school, things like that\u2014 you\u2019re going to ask working people who don\u2019t make anything close to $300,000+ to subsidize?! This is the morality of this place.\u201c\n\n###\n\nCongressman David Schweikert serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and is the current Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee. He is also the Vice Chairman on the bicameral Joint Economic Committee, chairs 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.\n\nBack to News", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T21:43:57Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://schweikert.house.gov/2024/09/10/schweikert-if-you-want-to-save-the-country-learn-the-math/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4531139750033617, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}