{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://schweikert.house.gov/2024/12/11/rep-schweikert-americans-are-feeling-inflation-effects-everywhere-but-their-paychecks/", "Rep. Schweikert: Americans Are Feeling Inflation Effects Everywhere but Their Paychecks", "2024-12-11", "2024", "2024-12", "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) took to the House floor to deliver his weekly speech, presenting solutions that directly contribute to rising costs and decreasing wages in America. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for November showed a 2.7 percent price increase from November of last year. Rep. Schweikert explained that wages are still down, and prices are evidently still up. He implored the American people, as well as his colleagues to prioritize a more modernized immigration system that promotes productivity and wage growth while, at the same time, contributes to our shrinking population and declining birth rates. Rep. Schweikert asks the question of why we invite people into our country just to educate them, when the next day we send them back to their country of origin in direct competition with America. When wages go up, we actually take in more tax receipts and then begins the cascade event of changing society and the economy for the future and the better.\n\nExcerpts from Rep. Schweikert\u2019s floor speech can be found below:\n\nOn modernization creating a pay-for, as well as preventing tax hikes:\n\n[Beginning at 00:41]\n\n\u201cIn the last fiscal year, our borrowing represented about 6.4 percent of the entire economy. When you have individuals around here saying, \u201cOkay, we have these parts of our 2017 tax reform that expire at the end of next year.\u201d If we just extend those, and don\u2019t pay for them, it\u2019s that [which] drives us to almost 9.2 percent of the entire economy nine years from now\u2013 nine budget years from now. If we actually find a way to pay for them and still extend those tax reforms, we get economic growth. If you just let everyone\u2019s taxes go up, you end up\u2013 at the end of nine years\u2013 at about a little under 7% of the entire economy borrowed. It\u2019s a little geeky, but the passion I tried to show here is I believe it\u2019s the moral thing to do\u2013 we don\u2019t let the portions on the middle class\u2019s taxes go up next year, but we also step up and find a way to pay for it. The CBO and Joint Economic economists showed us last week if you paid for the tax extensions, at the end of the decade, the economy has gotten bigger. It will make sense. You would have taken $4.6 trillion out of the economy and use it for borrowing. You left it there so the small business, the big business, your family [has] money you can borrow to grow. And at the same time, your taxes haven\u2019t gone up. It is hard for us to do because if we do modernization, if we find things to cut, there\u2019s an army of lobbyists outside this door coming to scream at us. Some of those aren\u2019t the people walking around with Gucci\u2019s\u2013 they\u2019re the people they fly in from our home districts and say, \u201cDavid! We want that spending.\u201d\n\nOn voters being conscious of the rising cost of living:\n\n[Beginning at 04:29]\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s the reality: if the president is looking at you in the camera, and telling you [we have] the best economy ever\u2013 that\u2019s not factual\u2013 but why don\u2019t you feel it? It\u2019s because much of America is poorer today than the day President Biden took office. If you live in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area\u2013 my home\u2013 if you don\u2019t make 27 percent more today than the day President Biden took office, you are poorer. Having someone telling you, \u201cOh, the economy is great,\u201d and yet, you\u2019re having trouble paying for things\u2026 The reason we made this board; functionally, for you to maintain your purchasing power, if you are an average American in my district\u2013 these numbers are substantially higher because I am from a district with some of the highest inflation in America\u2013 if you are not making $1,115 more a month\u2013 because that\u2019s what you have to be [making] from four years ago\u2013 your purchasing power\u2026 you\u2019re poorer. And I think that\u2019s the reason that voters turned and said, \u201cOkay, I see these Democrats running lots of ads saying crazy things,\u201d but yet, it turns out the voters are actually really smart. They would look at their checking account. They\u2019d look at the cost of their kids\u2019 clothes. They\u2019d look at the grocery store and try to figure out why in the last week of the month they were losing their minds under stress.\u201c\n\nOn protecting research and development expensing in tax reform:\n\n[Beginning at 21:32]\n\n\u201cOne of the things that\u2019s expiring from our 2017 tax reform is research and development expensing. [Let\u2019s say] you\u2019re a business and you\u2019re researching a new way to make something. A new piece of technology. A new type of biology. A new cure for a disease. In 2017, what we did is we made it so you could expense it right then. In today\u2019s tax code, you basically depreciate it. You spend a million dollars trying to build a new tool, and you get to amortize that research over the next seven years. Think about this: if I expense it in one day, or do it over seven years, government basically gets the same money, right? It\u2019s just the timing. But if you have the ability to say, \u201cI spent the money, I expensed it immediately,\u201d what happens? You get this virtual cycle [of having] a new, better tool that\u2019s better, faster, [and] cheaper. Then you jump on the next one, jump on the next one, and you get that productivity curve. Back to productivity again: how do you pay people more money? One of the complaints we were getting after 2017 is all this money was going into research and development to make society more prosperous, more modern\u2013 better, faster ways to cure people\u2013 and we had a shortage of people with skill sets. One of our economists is trying to model what would happen if you said we\u2019re going to do expensing of research and development, because we know that pops economic growth, but if you also did talent-based immigration at the same time. You may get a multiplier effect. This is thinking like an economist. This is what we have to do to get ourselves out of this hole.\u201c\n\nClick here to view Rep. Schweikert\u2019s full remarks.\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", "2026-04-07T22:13:55Z"]], "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/2024/12/11/rep-schweikert-americans-are-feeling-inflation-effects-everywhere-but-their-paychecks/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.7099278047680855, "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"}