Mick Mulvaney

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Schweikert, I see you brought up the graph for the Social Security trust fund. Have you explained what the nature of the trust fund is?

Mr. MULVANEY. And Medicare part A go broke.

Mr. MULVANEY. Put them so we can see both of them at the same time, please. That is stunning. So between 2021 and 2025, we are going to have the Social Security disability fund go broke----

Mr. MULVANEY. I have got a question for you. While we are preparing that question, if the young man could put up the previous graph below, that one that shows the status of the Medicare trust fund.

Mr. MULVANEY. Yet it is not our generation. It is Mr. Buck's generation, the gentleman from Colorado, the older generation, the next generation who is paying closer attention to it.

Mr. MULVANEY. 2032.

Mr. MULVANEY. The real frustrating thing about it, Mr. Schweikert, is that the demographic group that you would hope would be engaged in this topic isn't. When you go home and you and I and Mr. Perry talk to our folks back home, who is most interested in Social Security? The folks who are already at or near retirement. You have got another graph, by the way, that shows who really should be interested in this because you have got the first year outgoing exceeds income, including interest. On another graph, you show when the trust fund goes to zero for Social Security. The last time I had the CBO run the numbers, it was roughly 2032. In fact, it was July of 2032. Why do I remember this? It is the month that I turn 65 years old. It should be our generation. It should be the people in their thirties, forties, and fifties who are demanding that we make this a topic of conversation, and they don't. They are not demanding it right now in the Presidential election. They are not demanding it in their congressional elections. They are more concerned about other things that I get the importance, as Mr. Perry does, of national defense and immigration. I get all that.

Mr. MULVANEY. Last time we fixed the Social Security disability--I am making the air quotations when I say fixed disability--by robbing from old-age retirement. Where are we going to rob from the next time when we have both Medicare and Social Security disability going bust within a couple of months of each other?

Mr. MULVANEY. Well, anything for fun, Mr. Schweikert.

Mr. MULVANEY. I think that is a fair assumption.

Mr. MULVANEY. How many times, Mr. Schweikert, have we held 4\1/2\ percent growth for, say, a decade?

Mr. MULVANEY. What are the assumptions on this, by the way?

Mr. MULVANEY. As this year stands, it looks like now, when they revise the last quarter's numbers, which they will do here shortly, 2015 will be the tenth year in a row without 3 percent growth in the American economy. If that turns out to be the case and we go 10 years without 3 percent growth during any of that decade, it will be the first time in the history of the Nation that that has happened.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chair, I thank my friend from Missouri. We have been working on this now 2\1/2\ to 3 years. The bill is fairly simple, Mr. Chairman, in what it actually does. It just takes a second to read the operative line that an appropriate banking Federal agency may not formally or informally request or order a depository institution to terminate a specific customer account without a really good reason. I want people to think about that, Mr. Chairman. The fact that we have to actually debate this frightens me. The fact that we have to bring a bill to the floor of the United States House that says the Federal Government regulators cannot force a bank to close an account without a good reason should frighten people. I heard Mr. Luetkemeyer talk about many of the companies that have been impacted: gun manufacturers, pawnshops. It has now spread, Mr. Chairman, to individuals. We are hearing reports that individuals engaged in legal businesses-- every single one of the victims are engaged in legal activity. We are hearing now that individuals who happen to engage in legal poker playing in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is a completely legal endeavor--you may not like it--are having their bank accounts shut off by the Federal Government. My dad told me when I got to this job: The difference between the government when I was your age and the government that you are going into is that I was never afraid of my government. Your children will grow up afraid of their government because of things exactly like this. We are debating a bill on the floor of the House that says the government can't force banks to shut down legal business banking accounts. It is outrageous, but it is real, and it has happened for a long time. It has happened, by the way, Mr. Chairman, because this administration has not been able to accomplish their agenda through legislative process. So they are doing it now through regulation. There is a report that our committee put out. It is an excellent report. I commend it to everybody. There are emails from within the regulators. I will read one. It says: I have never said this to you, but I am sincerely passionate about this. I literally cannot stand payday lending. They are abusive, fundamentally wrong, hurt people, and do not deserve to be in any way associated with banking. It is a completely legal business, Mr. Chairman. I hope that we have bipartisan support for this. We have had cosponsors on both sides. I encourage wholehearted support of this so we can get the Federal Government out of making decisions like this.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I urge adoption. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (S. 614) to provide access to and use of information by Federal agencies in order to reduce improper payments, and for other purposes.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this is a Senate bill that we take up today, but there has actually been a House bill that is almost exactly the same for the last year or so. The story behind how this bill comes to the floor is one of those stories that should make folks confident that the system can work. I was on a Facebook townhall meeting about a year and a half ago and got a question from one of the constituents about all the money that they have heard the government wastes by paying the wrong people, paying dead people, or paying people way too much money. I remember it specifically, Mr. Speaker, because shortly after that, my uncle passed away. When my uncle passed away, I was named executor of his estate. It was the first time I have ever been the executor of an estate. One of the things I remember was that I got a notice 10 days after he had died, very shortly--2 weeks--from the Social Security Administration saying: You are going to get another check for your uncle. Don't cash it or else you can be in a lot of trouble. I thought that was really neat. Here is a Federal agency that is actually doing its job in very short order and very efficiently. And I filed that away. A couple months later, Mr. Speaker, my good friend from North Carolina (Mr. Meadows), who is the subcommittee chairman of the Government Operations on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was having a hearing about all of these payments that we are not supposed to be making. I had a chance to ask some questions, and I told that story to the government witnesses from the executive branch who were there. I said: Look, how is it that this works so well in the Social Security Administration, but we have all these tales of all these improper payments going to other people? They said: Well, Mr. Congressman, that is because the Social Security Administration has a really, really good database, and they process the information very well when folks die. I asked what I thought was a relatively straightforward question: Why don't they share the information with the other Federal agencies? That was the genesis of this bill. What we set out to try and do is try and take circumstances, take examples of where the Federal Government actually does its job well and use that as a model that can be shared by other parts of the government. Mr. Speaker, the bill, by the way, that we are talking about is S. 614. There was a House version of it that I worked off of, just because I am a little bit more familiar with it. It is H.R. 2320. The language is almost exactly the same. I want to thank Mrs. Bustos, Mr. Connolly, and also Mr. Carter of Georgia and Mr. Westmoreland of Georgia, who are the original cosponsors of this. Mr. Speaker, the bill does two very specific, large things and one small thing. It expands that Social Security database. So it takes this, again, this example of something that actually works the way that it is supposed to, and lets other folks use the information. What does that mean? States will now be able to use it. State contractors will now be able to gain access to it. The judicial branch will be able to gain access to it, and the legislative branch will as well. So the example is that this really good information is not being shared broadly throughout governments--local, State, and Federal--and we are seeking to fix that in the bill. The other thing the bill does is to expand what is called the Do Not Pay portal. This is a database that is managed by the United States Department of the Treasury and contains, again, really good information about who has passed away, how much money people should be receiving, who has moved, and who is entitled to benefits and who is not. By the way, there is a third thing that the bill does, Mr. Speaker. It seems inevitable that we cannot pass a bill here without asking for a report that goes along with it. But I think it is probably common sense to say that at some point in the future, we would like the Treasury to tell us if it is actually working. It is not very often, Mr. Speaker, that I come up here and tell you that there are examples of the Federal Government doing its job well; but when we do find those examples, I am very happy to get up and admit it. As a small government, conservative Republican, ordinarily I am the one that says government never does anything right; but here, actually, parts and parcels of the Federal Government are doing their job well. If we can take that example, take that model and expand it to other parts of the government, we would actually have a chance to solve what is a real problem. We spent about $125 billion last year on improper payments, payments to people who should not have received it, payments to people who have passed away, or payments to people in the wrong amount--$125 billion. We just had a major fight on this floor 2 weeks ago over spending $80 billion extra in the budget bill, yet we spend that much, half again, on improper payments every single year. In fact, it is one of the fastest growing line items in our budget. That $125 billion represents a 15 percent increase over the previous year. One of the fastest growing areas of our government is improper payments. So, Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank Mrs. Bustos, Mr. Connolly, Mr. Carter of Georgia, and Mr. Westmoreland in the House for helping bring this bill to the floor. Also, I want to thank Senator Carper from Delaware and Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin for shepherding it through the Senate. This is their bill that we are taking. I guess that is another inevitability, that, if the Senate has the same bill as the House does, the Senate gets all the credit. But sometimes it is interesting to see what you can actually accomplish around here, Mr. Speaker, if you don't worry about who gets the credit. I do want to thank the folks who took the time and the effort to shepherd this very sound, well-considered, and bipartisan bill to the floor today. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to encourage my colleagues, if they vote for one and only one of these Export-Import Bank amendments, they should vote for this one. In fact, I would bring to their attention that they probably have already voted for it before because, in the last two Congresses, we have voted to put the Federal agencies on fair value accounting and passed that out of the House. We have already done it. I don't know where the objections were at that time, but we have already done this as a House, and we should do it again. To the gentleman from California's point regarding GAAP, let's be honest with people. Let's be honest. The government doesn't use GAAP. The government does not use GAAP the way that most ordinary people understand it. We use GAAP for government, which is entirely different. Let's just settle on this amendment so that we can count in a way that people understand, that if you lent money to the Batista regime before Castro and it hasn't been paid yet, maybe it is a bad loan; if you lent money to Chiang Kai-shek, maybe that is a bad loan. Let's start counting in ways that ordinary people can understand. This is not a poison pill. It is just good governance. And, most importantly, Mr. Chairman, it would not change the way the Bank functions in any way whatsoever. All it would do is change the way the Bank counts and tells Congress and the American people how it is performing. I strongly encourage that if you are going to vote for one Export-Import amendment, this would be the one.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, this one is fairly simple. We have heard now for the last half-hour or so how much money the Treasury gets from the Export- Import Bank, how profitable the Export-Import Bank is for the American taxpayer. Okay. That is great. Then, let's get rid of the connection between the Export-Import Bank and the guarantee that the Treasury gives to it. Let's let the Export- Import Bank rise and fall on its own economics and its own balance sheet and not put the taxpayer on the hook. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. MULVANEY. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert).

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MULVANEY. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.