David Schweikert

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Arizona who actually has an amazing district and was actually an amazing leader when we lost 19 of our firefighters this time last year, I appreciate him putting that into the Record for all of those in Arizona. I wanted to do something a little different tonight. A few months ago, we came to the floor here and sort of walked through what was really going on in the math. One of the things that sort of enrages me is so much of the debate we have here in Congress is the noise. We talk about this issue or that issue when we have the 10,000 pound gorilla in front of us, and that is what is happening to us fiscally. Right now, and I am going to be using a lot of numbers tonight, and we are going to try to put up as many of these on our Facebook page and on our Web site so folks can actually see these charts. First off, if this were 1 year ago, we were having discussions of what was the fiscal year 2014 deficit going to be, and we had some folks making these optimistic projections that we were only going to be in the $400-some billion shortfall that year. It is still a stunning amount of money. It has only gotten worse though. Remember, we were supposed to be on the way out. Employment was getting better; income was getting better. Taxes are up dramatically in this country. Remember, we have just hit the alltime high revenues ever for the United States. So what could possibly be wrong? Because then, this last April, the projection of the deficit for this fiscal year was $492 billion, then in May, it was $648 billion; and with today's news that the first quarter GDP was down--was negative, went down--our growth and our economy went down 2.9 percent, that is a stunning amount of GDP to lose. We were going to be giddy if we were over 2 percent, and we had a negative GDP in the first quarter of 2.9 percent. I am going to make you a projection and a prediction that, when we end the 2014 fiscal year, we are not going to be much different than we were last year. So all these discussions of, well, it is getting better, and the spending and with all these new taxes, the future fiscal burden we are about to dump on our kids and our grandkids is going to get better--it is not in the math. It is not showing up. This is important. I wanted to actually walk through a little reality check here and to show you how disappointed I am on so much of the discussion that you will hear here in Washington. You see the chart next to me. If I came to you right now and said: tell me what you think the debt and unfunded liabilities are for the country--now, we can all go to these Web sites where it is the debt clock, and if you look at it right now, it is going to say: well, the unfunded liabilities and the debt for the United States are about $127 trillion. Well, there was a study done--it was done over at George Mason's Mercatus Center, and it was done at the beginning of the year. The number is $205 trillion that we are about to dump on the heads of our kids and our grandkids. What should terrify you about this number--well, let's find a way to talk about this. If I said our unfunded liabilities--our debt and the promises we have made in this government--are at $205 trillion, go on a search engine right now and search for: What is the entire wealth of the world? Mr. Speaker, you are going to pull up estimates that it could be $167 trillion. I saw one that was $180 trillion. So process this: what we have promised in benefits, promised in spending, what we have already borrowed is greater than the wealth of the world today. Process that. If you, right now, grabbed every penny of the wealth of the world, it would not put enough money in the bank to cover the promises we have already made as a government. You have got to understand this. This should be the discussion of our times, and yet it is uncomfortable. Look, I am in my second term, and let's have a moment of brutal honesty here: What do most elected officials--what do we often focus on? Being reelected. When you stand up in front of a room, the pollsters and the political consultants often tell us: well, happy talk or talk about something that is easy because big numbers scare people and, besides that, they are so negative, you would lose votes. If you talk about what is happening in the entitlements, if you talk about $205 trillion being the debt and unfunded liabilities of your country, Schweikert, you are likely to get unelected. We have got to step up and start telling the public, telling our voters, telling our constituents the truth: the single biggest issue facing your government is the debt and the explosion of the entitlements. I am going to spend a little time here talking about what is really driving this. Just how do you get to this? Part of this is this is what it would look like if you used honest GAAP accounting. Now, what is GAAP accounting? So let's put this in perspective. If I came to you right now, today, and said: all right, the country, we already know if you go on the debt clocks on the Web, you will see we are about $17.5 trillion of borrowed money. About $4 trillion to $5 trillion of that, we borrowed from ourselves, which we steal out of Social Security, we steal it out of Medicare, but the $17.5 trillion--but then I come to you, and let's do something that is simple math. The Social Security trust fund, with the benefits we have promised right now, is about $23 trillion underfunded. Okay. So my $17.5 trillion of hard debt right now and the $23 trillion we owe--and if we were doing GAAP accounting, if we were doing honest mathematical accounting--like we all learned in, hopefully, accounting classes--you are looking at $40 trillion that you would put onto this number because that would be honest. That $23 trillion that we owe to Social Security beneficiaries, that we do not have the money, we just pretend, yeah, we owe it, but we are not going to tell the public about it because it will make them nervous. That is the GAAP accounting, so when we start doing the honest accounting--like every business, every charity would have to do--that is how you get to real numbers and understand the real situation that the government, that the people, the beneficiaries, and those in Congress should be dealing with today. Mr. Speaker, why is this not working? Why the problem? Let's actually go to the next chart, and maybe this will sort of help because we have had so many discussions. Do you remember all the rhetoric that was around this place before the 2012 Presidential race and the election, the discussion of how much better everything was getting, how much better the job situation was about to get, these debts and deficits will start becoming under control? Well, it just wasn't true. The political class, probably for reelection--heaven knows the President did--we misled the people. We didn't tell them the truth about basic math. So what is wrong here? We are going to walk through what is really going on in these charts, but think about just the last year or two. What has happened out there when even we have succeeded at getting good legislation--bipartisan legislation--passed through the House, getting our brothers and sisters in the Senate to actually work with us, and getting the President's signature? Something like the JOBS Act, passed it 3 years ago. Think about this: little things that were going to help the individual entrepreneur, like crowdfunding, the reg A, some of the mechanics in there where we were just trying to help capital formation for the little guys, for the startup businesses--what happened? They got lost in the bureaucracy. Some activists on the left said: oh, we are scared of this, and we took away the optionality for everyone out there to grow that business out of their house, out of their garage. It breaks my heart--something as simple as crowdfunding has now had so many rules and regs, and it still is in reg writing, even though we were supposed to have the rules 2 years ago. Think about it. Even when Congress has gotten it right, this President and the bureaucracies he controls--he is appointed to-- continue to destroy the optionality that we were trying to give to the American people to get this government out of their way and start growing this economy. Let's take a quick look at this chart--and I am sorry, I know how hard it is for those folks who might be watching on television or sitting in the back row or galleries, these are hard to read--but what is important about this is the blue line here was our projection a year ago. We were actually projecting that the deficits and debt were actually going to get better. Then when we actually had to start doing our recalculations and realizing the economy is not growing, it is not producing the economic expansion, the economic wealth that we need in this country to cover the promises we have made, that became the red line. Now, we need to do the next part of the discussion of what really goes on in government math. You do realize that government math, the budget projections, the debt projections that are put out--I am going to be fairly harsh here--border on fraud. Here is simply why: this red line is based on current law. Well, you do realize in current law--something we call the SGR, you will often hear it as the doc fix--that in about 10-12 years, we expect doctors to accept 73 percent less to see a Medicare patient. That is the current law, so that is why this line goes this direction--because we have these things in law where we expect these fantasies to take place. Now, the reality of it is: How many of you think a doctor is going to see a Medicare patient for 73 percent less? It is just not happening. So we will run here to the floor and say: oh, heavens, we have got to make sure that our seniors have access to their doctors, we have got to make sure doctors are at least covering their costs, and we will come in here, and we will raise that doc fix, that SGR, another year. One of the reasons it does not happen around this place for the 10 years out or the 20 years--our permanent fix--is because, all of a sudden, the math changes again, so we get the benefit of fake math. We know we made the promise that there is going to be this health care within Medicare. We put out these fancy charts, and I see some of my brothers and sisters speechifying with the numbers they are handed. When you start to grind into what is underlying underneath those numbers we are often given by the Congressional Budget Office, you start to realize: well, they say this is based on current law. You have got to understand, inside that current law are things that are implausible. Actually, go look at the Medicare actuaries report and go to the very last 2 or 3 pages, and even the head Medicare actuary makes it very clear that the projections in the report--because the projections in the report are based on current law--are implausible. The head actuary actually uses the word--year after year, when they do their Medicare actuary report--that it is ``implausible.'' Why is that not the headline? Is it because it comes with big numbers? Here is what happens. There is something also that our Congressional Budget Office does, which is referred to as the alternative scenario, when you actually take out the things that are in current law and put them into what actually is more likely to happen: we will do doc fix and other things that are current law that hit the wall that are unfunded in the future, and we will step up because of the political pressure and adjust them and raise that spending. Well, what happens when we do that? You get a curve, this green line. I know it is hard to see, but just understand that what this means is, if we hit this alternative scenario, in about 14 years--actually, slightly less--your country hits 100 percent of debt to GDP. Okay. That is debt to GDP where, actually, that is just what we are booking. Remember, we started the conversation with we tell everyone here is the money we are borrowing, so here is our debt to GDP. This would not even have--that 100 percent to GDP in 14 years would not actually have GAAP accounting. It would not have the real numbers because you do understand, that number we did before, saying if you just take Social Security and our current debt, add those together, it is approaching $40 trillion, you do realize that is double your country's GDP right now. We are already not at 100 percent of GDP. If we actually had honest accounting--just those two are 200 percent of GDP, yet how often do you hear us talk about it? This is the issue of our time. If we don't step up and start dealing with it, I have no idea, I have no idea what happens in the future when we hit the wall--and we will hit the wall. Oh, by the way, understand, if you just add up the debt we have and the unfunded liability in Social Security, we are far beyond where Greece is. I think Greece was $1.7 trillion, so 100 percent debt to GDP. If you just add up those, we are at 200. We need to have some folks actually start to learn some calculus, and that was actually one of my running jokes for my first year here. I started to realize many of my constituents thought the problem in D.C. was Republicans versus Democrats, and I have grown to believe it is those that own calculators and those that don't. A question I will actually give--and we have had this discussion with a lot of Members both on the right and the left--is: Why do we seem to fight so much? Seriously. Why do we seem to fuss with each other so much? And I am going to make you the argument it is about the money. In the next couple of charts, I am going to try to walk through what is really happening with the money so you understand if you are tired with Congress fighting with each other about the money, it isn't going away. It is about to get--and will continue to get--dramatically worse. Another chart, probably almost unreadable from a distance, but understand here is what you are looking at. Do you see the red lines there? The red lines are what we call discretionary. That is what I get to come to the floor and debate over and work on these appropriations bills where we are trying to move money here, take it away from here, try to save here. That red line is discretionary. That red line is your military. It is your parks. It is the FBI. It is things that are not mandatory spending, things that are not entitlements. Here is where we are right now. We used 2013. In 9 fiscal years--2024--do you notice something in the pattern on this chart? Do you notice that what we vote on here in Congress, the discretionary, is pretty much the same? Nine years from now, 10 years from now, it is basically the same. But what we call mandatory, which is mostly entitlements--and I will get phone calls tomorrow from folks that are enraged that I used the word ``entitlements.'' That is what it is. It is an earned entitlement, but it is still a promise. It is a social contract we made as a government with our people. We just forgot to tell them we didn't have the money to pay it. So understand from here, from 2013 to 2014, that increase, we will now be sitting at a $2.29 trillion increase on mandatory spending--and that is in 9 fiscal years. They are huge numbers, but you have just got to follow the chart. Let's say you are someone who is passionate about drug research, passionate about the national parks, passionate about securing our borders, passionate about the military. That is in this red line. It is being consumed by mandatory spending. So understand, the simplest way I can phrase this is your government is very quickly becoming a health insurer and an entitlement provider with a shrinking army. Process that for a moment. That is where we are at. That is what is going on around us in our lives. We will have these charts up hopefully in the next couple of days on our Facebook page and our Web site so you can vet them yourselves. It is important. If you want to understand public policy in the United States, if you want to understand public policy that is happening here in Congress, everything is about the mandatory spending. Do you remember the first board we put up where I was showing you the $205 trillion of unfunded liability and debt? It is important to understand that half that is Medicare. Medicare right now represents close to $100 trillion of promises we as a government have made, and there isn't money to pay for it. And those are in today's dollars. We are going to come back and forth to a couple of these so that we better understand them. This is actually the 2013. You will notice the red. That is what we all come here and we debate over and we fight over and work through and come up with ideas. That is the discretionary. It is 32 percent of all of our spending. We have Social Security and Medicare. We don't have the Obama subsidies in here yet, but that is one of our newest entitlements. Remember, we were almost promised that this ultimately was going to be a savings. It wasn't the truth. Medicare, income security. These are food stamps and other types of programs that are entitlements because of where you sit income-wise-- veterans' benefits, other mandatory certain pensions, certain other requirements we have to meet, mostly on the retirement side, and interest on the debt. I want you to pay attention if you can see this. Six percent of what we spent in 2013 was interest. I am going to be rotating back and forth so this is going to get a little awkward with these boards, but it is important to see. So where will we be in 9 fiscal years? Now, this is important. Remember, you just saw discretionary spending. This is your military. This is your drug research. This is the FBI. This is the border. It is 32 percent of all our spending. In 9 fiscal years, it is 22 percent of all of our fiscal spending. Social Security becomes 24 percent of all of our spending. Medicare becomes 17 percent of our spending. Best guess--and this becomes a moving target right now--the ObamaCare subsidies in about 9 years will be about 2 percent of our Federal spending. A little different than we were told a couple of years ago; right? Medicaid, 9 percent of your entire Federal budget; income security, 8 percent; veterans, 3 percent; other mandatory, 1 percent. And this is the most dangerous part of this chart. Do you see interest? Remember, in the previous chart we were saying interest is 6 percent in 2013. How many of you believe today's interest rates are normal, are real? What happens when we go back to normal interest rates? Well, this projection is that 9 years from now we will be back in normal interest rates. At that point, 14 percent of your entire Federal Government spending is interest. Understand how fragile that makes all future discretionary spending if we had an interest rate spike. What happens if we were in the early eighties, late seventies type of interest rates? This number explodes, and it would consume what is sitting in the discretionary budget. As we continue to borrow, as we continue to add to programs and make promises and not set aside money for them, we are squandering our future. On occasion, I get to sit down with an audience where I will see parents and grandparents and the grandkids and you will turn to them and say to the parents, ``How many of you love your kids?'' and most of the hands go up. And then you will turn to the grandparents and say, ``How many of you love your grandkids?'' and all the hands go up. Then you start to show them these charts, and you turn to the parents and the grandparents and say, ``Do you understand what you have done to your children, what we have done to our grandchildren, and what we have done to a generation that is not even born yet?'' The math right now, just to cover the promises that are already done--this is baked in the cake; this is done--your kids, your grandkids, your unborn children are going to have a 60 percent mean tax rate. And that is not for those with a high income; that is everyone. Sixty percent of your income will have to go just to cover this spending. And that is not your State, your local, and your FICA; that is just 60 percent of your income. You will have a of 60 percent income tax just to cover the promises that are already made. And that doesn't pay anything off. That just maintains where we are, because you start to have externalities like the net interest that you have got to pay. And what happens when interest rates move again? So for those of you, once again, who care a lot about the military, care a lot about protecting the border, care about drug research, care about education, care about all these things, if you really do care, every time you speak to an elected official, every time you speak to someone with election ambitions, every time you speak to a policymaker, every time you speak to someone from the press, please ask the question: What are you willing to do about mandatory spending, because the mandatory spending, the entitlements, are consuming us as a people. And they are consuming your Republic's future. One more time. Basically, this is 9 fiscal years from now. So take a look. Here is what actual was for 2013. These are the actual numbers. We had 32 percent of our budget go to discretionary. That means not Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare. Those are the mandatories. This actually crashes to 22 percent. This is in 9 fiscal years. So what is the solution? The solution actually is pretty obvious, and it is really tough. We need the American people to understand maybe not the math but what it means. It is hard to get in front of an audience and say a trillion this and trillion that. How many folks even understand what a trillion is, the thousand billion and a million. So many of our brothers and sisters do not understand what these numbers mean, but they need to understand what it means to their future and that what we are doing today isn't working. These numbers continue to get worse and worse month by month because we have policy from this administration and we have policy coming from the U.S. Senate where they won't take the pieces of legislation that we put out of this House that would actually help us to start to grow the GDP. So let me give you how simple and how tough the solution is. Number one, we are going to have to step up and tell the truth and do something about mandatory spending. How many politicians, how many consultants out there will say: If you talk about Medicare, you are going to get unelected? Wouldn't it be amazing if the public started to understand this and say: If you don't talk about Medicare, you get unelected? The other thing is you have two things that potentially start to really grow our economy. The energy renaissance--let me walk through this because this is sort of a stream of consciousness, but it is really important. If I had come to you a decade ago, when you would pick up the newspaper, when you would pick up the magazine, when you would go online, whatever you read, there was this term called ``peak oil''? Do you all remember that 10, 12 years ago? It is very simple. The next incremental barrel of oil was going to be less than we had the day before. The world was running out of energy. How many of you out there can tell me what is wrong with that? Seriously. The fact is that it was absolutely wrong. We are not running out of energy. As a matter of fact, as of today, we have more known fossil fuels than any known time in history. We have been blessed, substantially through technology. And be prepared, there is another wave of technology coming, particularly for natural gas, between now and the end of the decade that may even make it better and more accessible and, hopefully, even cheaper. You have an energy renaissance happening in your country. How do I keep Congress, the bureaucrats, the control freaks here in Washington from destroying this energy renaissance? The second thing that is happening is even more complicated to talk about. I have grown to believe there is an economic renaissance around us, but it is unlike anything we have ever experienced. Let me see if I can find a way to make this work. I believe we are entering the age of the hyperefficient economy. Who here has ever used a ride-sharing service? I guess the big ones are the things like Sidecar. How many of you have ever used something like Uber? Okay. You have this little computer in your hand that, on occasion, works as a phone. What about the other things that it is doing in business? If I came to you right now and said, ``In the country, who is the largest pet groomer in the United States? I think it is PetSmart. Who is the second largest one in the United States?'' It is an app on your phone, where you hit it, and that is how you access your pet groomer. Think about that. Then at the rate of growth, in a couple of years, it becomes the biggest. If I came to you right now and if you were a policymaker in New York City or were a hotel owner, would you consider something like Airbnb an existential threat to your business? Remember the discussions coming out of New York about what it is doing to the bed tax. So, when you start to worry about incumbents coming to their politicians and saying, ``You need to stop this new economy,'' the incumbents aren't always the businesses. It is also the tax system that is built on the way it is, not on the way it is becoming. We had a presentation from one company. I think it was out of Michigan. It had this idea--I think it was 1000 Tools--where you could go online, and instead of going down to your favorite hardware store and buying the $1,200 compound miter saw with laser sighting--and if my wife is listening, that is actually what I want for my birthday--you now hit the button on your phone, and you rent it from your neighbor. Think about that. That is a change in the economy. The sale no longer happened at the hardware store, and the manufacturer didn't get to sell a new compound miter saw with laser sighting, but you as the consumer-- you, as the renter of this equipment--now probably have, not the $1,200 you would have spent, but the $1,140--because you spent $60 on the rent--still in your pocket. Do you go and spend it on other things? Do you spend it on investments? Do you spend it on your family? There is this rotation happening all around us of things that you and I have not even thought of. Will the bureaucracies and will the incumbent businesses show up in legislative bodies and courts around the country and do everything they can to stop that new hyperefficient, highly optional economy that is around us right now? Will they try to put the Ubers out of business? Will they try to put the Airbnbs out of business? Will they try to put the 1000 Tools--and who knows what else is out there?--out of business? Every day, entrepreneurs in this country are coming up with ideas, but those ideas are restructuring the economy, so let's walk through some of the options we have. We have an energy renaissance. Every week in our office, we have people coming to us, saying, ``Oh, David, we really want you to regulate hydraulic fracturing because--oh, yeah--we worry about it, but it is also ruining our investments because we invested in alternative energies, and when there is $4.50 long-term futures in natural gas, it is screwing up our investments over here.'' Remember the family rule: money, power, vanity. It is about the money. You would be shocked to know how much of the public policy that so many Americans think is Republican and Democrat is about the money. Will this Congress do everything in its power to maximize this future of the energy renaissance and the revenues that it produces--both inbound, outbound? Will it be like some of the discussions we even saw earlier tonight of: let's come up with ways to regulate or let's come up with ways to minimize what we are able to sell when we are bringing in revenues from both our own country and from around the world? Be prepared and think it through. It is so often about: well, the people who support it are I and my political party, who are invested on the other side, so we need to stop this because it is hurting their investments. Then remember the number one thing most elected officials care about--their reelections. Forgive me. I know I am trying to be brutally honest here. The second half is, today, here in D.C., the taxicab industry spent an hour blocking the roads and honking. My understanding is a substantial portion of that was the disdain for the competition from rideshare applications, from things like Uber--another optionality. It is a changing economy. There is going to be displacement in it, but with that also comes opportunity, and with that comes the new efficiencies that give us a chance to grow this economy. Remember the first board here. We are $205 trillion upside down. If we don't get amazing growth, we are never going to provide the promises that we have made to 76 million baby boomers who now have begun to retire. As just a bit of trivia, why is that so important? Average baby boomers--my math may be about a year out of date--will have put about $100,000 into Medicare. My understanding is they are going to take out about $320,000 to $330,000. If you take that shortfall and multiply it times 76 million of our brothers and sisters who are baby boomers, then just in that one program, you start to see some of the demographic and math problems we have. How do we start to grow the economy? The last part of this is the regulatory zeal that has come from this administration. Please, President Obama, turn to your folks. It is time to rethink this. How many more bad GDP numbers do you need? How many more misses do you need on the projections of: ``Oh, the economy is getting better. No, it is crashing the other way. Oh, we are going to be this much better in our deficit. Oh, dear heaven. We are a year later, and it is still the same even with all of these new, higher taxes''? Regulatory overreach on things like waters of the U.S. and on so many other programs out there that are coming out of the bureaucracy are crushing the expansion of this economy. My closing is pretty simple here. If you have someone out there who is asking for your vote or if you really care about the future, have the conversation, and be willing to open your mind up and understand the math--even though it is uncomfortable--that the mandatory spending is consuming everything in its path. If we don't deal with that and, at the same time, if we don't do everything we can to grow this economy absolutely vigorously, it could be a very dark day in the future. Yet I am incredibly optimistic that, if we embrace the new hyperefficient economy, if we embrace the energy renaissance, if we start to understand the regulatory crushing that has been going on right in front of us--if we deal with those and deal with them honestly--I think we actually have an amazing future, and we are going to make it through this. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. That is all I wanted to accomplish here. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. Amendment Offered by Mr. Takano

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. We attached the Rothfus amendment earlier, and I believe the amendment I was going to be offering in a couple of moments would have probably been a little duplicative, but I want to make a specific point. We have had a series of amendments here and discussions in regards to bonuses for VA leadership. There are frustrations and concerns particularly when we look at previous GAO reports which say the matrix--some of the data, some of the collection--on wait times and other things that substantially the bonuses are based on, as this GAO report says, may actually be very inaccurate. If the performance bonuses continue to exist, Mr. Chairman, would you be willing to work with someone like me and my office to try to find a better way? My fear is that right now, in the way it is designed, we incentivize playing games with the wait times. The world works on incentives and disincentives. Can we work together to come up with a better methodology of how we incentivize good acts so that we are all comfortable that we are moving towards, shall we say, a proper analysis of the outcomes, and, therefore, we reward those?

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I am doing this, actually, to try to be efficient because we are moving on a bit. May I request that the gentleman from Texas enter into a quick colloquy with me.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, last evening, I had a couple of articles sitting on my desk and had the opportunity to read through them. I was somewhat--what's the term--oh, yeah, outraged at some of the comments in there, so that is the reason I am standing here on the floor today. I want to walk through a concept and then try to ferret out why is the agency so terrified of this concept, something very simple. If you are going to make public policy, shouldn't it be based on data that is available to the public? That public data, properly vetted, is used to make public policy, sort of this concept of almost the crowdsourcing of information. So if there is a rule set made by an agency, we can all believe in it. We all know it has been properly looked at. It wasn't produced by a small silo of very smart elitists who may be ideologically set one way or another; but the data, the information that creates the rules that we all live under, belongs to all of us. So how would you feel if you pull up a piece of paper and on that piece of paper is an article about a speech that Administrator McCarthy gave on Monday morning? And I do hope she is misquoted because we have treated her very kindly from the Science Committee and my subcommittee. But if I came to you and read a line that McCarthy told the audience, on Monday morning, that she intends to go after a--one more time--go after a small but vocal group of critics, in light of what the IRS has done, doesn't that send chills down someone's back when you hear that an agency intends to go after its critics? And then there is this arrogance that was, I hope, misquoted that only qualified scientists should be allowed to see, real scientists. So you are telling me that a grad student or a leftwing group or a conservative group or just someone that has an interest in data shouldn't be allowed to see the datasets that are making public policy that literally cost trillions of dollars? The concept of having a government that runs substantially on secret information is outrageous. So that is why I am trying to push forward on a bill--and maybe the title of the bill is a little inflammatory. It is called the Secret Science bill, a very simple concept that you make public policy with public data and that public data that we all have the right to vet and look at. Look, the vast majority of Americans will never look at it, but shouldn't you have the right to access it? Then there is this outlier that the agency is using that is complete obfuscation of the truth: well, there is personal data out there, and we don't know how to protect it. Every single day, whether it be the Census Bureau, the CFPB, the Commerce Department, they collect personal data. There are standards out there where you blind data. As a matter of fact, there are actually protocols for the protocols on blinding data that we all get to use. It is done every single day. Somehow, the EPA doesn't want to have that conversation because, somehow, they don't want you, the American public, and the academic community of all ideological stints to have the right to access it. Mr. Speaker, Administrator McCarthy was quoted as saying: You just can't claim the science isn't real when it doesn't align with your politics. She is absolutely right. I am not asking for ideological data. I am just asking for data to belong to the public and so everyone has the opportunity to study it and understand it. Who knows, maybe that studying of that data will find better ways, smarter ways, more efficient ways to protect the environment, more rational ways; but we will never know until the EPA finally steps up and makes that data available to every American.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I thank the chairman. Mr. Chairman, one of the reasons I ran over here right now is that I have been listening to some of the speakers on the left. As the gentlewoman just spoke, in referring to the budget as a moral document, I actually somewhat agree with that, but let's actually discuss what is moral for the next generation and the generation after that and the generation after that. For the fun of it, as I was running out the door, I grabbed this little poster which had been dropped off to me last week. It is a little poster from over at the Mercatus Center, which has been doing some calculations of what the United States' debt would look like if you took the debt in the unfunded liabilities of this country and put it on GAAP accounting, so if you actually treated it honestly. What is the real number, the typical actuarial 75-year window, attached with regular debt? Process in your mind what you have been told year after year of our unfunded liabilities, and I need you to wipe that number clean. The number they came up with recently has hit $205 trillion of debt in unfunded liabilities. You do realize, if you go right now to Google and look up the best estimates of the wealth of the world, our unfunded liabilities are now exceeding many of the estimates of the wealth of the entire world. This is what so many Members are willing to hand to our children, to our great-grandchildren, and to the future generations? If you want to make a moral argument, that debt--those unfunded liabilities--is the moral argument.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I thank Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bonamici, and the sponsor of our bill. Mr. Speaker, this is actually one of those moments where you are going over a piece of legislation--and I am very proud of everyone who has worked on it, and maybe this language is a little too strong, but in many ways, it sort of removes, whether it be excuses or statutory straitjackets, away from NOAA, away from OAR. And the optionality of, how do you design data sets, how do you reach out to the cloud, to the world around you, and gather their technology, and how they are doing weather forecasting. You have just heard Chairman Bridenstine speak of big weather events, whether they be tornadoes that affect his district--but think of the Members who have had input into this piece of legislation. I am from the desert Southwest. We have someone from the wet and rainy Northwest. We have had people from around the country that represent very, very different types of climates in their districts, and that is, actually, something that is really special about this piece of legislation. I have a level of enthusiasm. Last month was my birthday, and my wife bought me this weather station that sits on the side of the house, and it talks to the WiFi, which talks to the cloud. And their goal is to set up hundreds of thousands of data points that are collected by enthusiasts, like myself, across the country and put that data together. Can you imagine a world where NOAA actually becomes the hub of so many data sets? Then it has the optionality of reaching out and finding what technology, what mechanics are out there to put it together and help us, from our little microclimates that I may have in my neighborhood to the terrible storm that may be threatening the Florida coast. This is the future, and this bill actually moves us towards that future.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, congratulations on yesterday. Sort of a one step off, I lost the ranking member. I was going to congratulate him on his years of service now that his decision is to leave the body. I am obviously standing here with two separate points I want to make. One is, I actually believe the underlying bill has been substantially misrepresented. If you take the totality of the Clean Air Act, NOX, and all the other pollutants that are regulated, that is not what this piece of legislation touches and does. Be that as it may, I am here to stand up and advocate for amendment No. 1, which is very simple in its elegance. It does a very simple thing. It says, this bill is not only a discussion about coal, but it is actually a discussion about all fossil fuels. If we are going to have a regime mechanic that says this technology, once it is properly demonstrated is appropriate to adopt, should not that demonstration be on other forms of fossil fuels that may be generating power? In many ways it is that concept of sort of optionality. If we are going to create a silo that says hey, these mechanics are only about coal, that is unfair. It should be about all forms of energy, because you would hate to find out, a year or two from now, that the bright, shiny object that I believe the EPA is often chasing has moved to something else, and we have allowed a hole here in our amendment process.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas, though at this moment I feel like I am surrounded by Texans in this particular discussion. I am from Arizona. I am actually from the desert part of Arizona in the desert Southwest. So why is a bill such as H.R. 2431 so important to us? The data collection and the management of the data models for those of us who are in an arid region of the country is really, really important to us. We have come so far in the last couple of decades. The ability for my water management authorities in our reservoirs to know what is happening in the snowpacks all the way up into Colorado and on this side of the Continental Divide and learning whether we are moving into a ``La Nina'' or ``El Nino'' year--which actually makes huge differences to the expected rainfall, particularly in the winter months, in the desert Southwest--is important to us because we are getting better and better at forecasting even a year out in our expectations. And so I have great appreciation for the gentlewoman from Texas, the chairman emeritus, and the other chairman from Texas, one more time-- remember, as Texans, you are easterners to those of us in Arizona-- because this bill is appreciated. I know there is always a discussion about funding. But one of my great interests in this is the continued movement of the data-sharing as our universities across the country, particularly in the Southwest, build better and better and healthier and more robust models and the ability for that data to help States like mine manage our water resources into the future.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. John C. White for his dedicated service as the Chairman of the Board of the Universal Technical Institute, Inc. We are in sincere gratitude for the vision, guidance, and leadership you have provided to UTI for your thirty seven years of service.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Guido Weigend for his long-term dedication at the Office of Strategic Services. His many years of service have impacted us all. I would also like to thank him for dedicating the majority of his life to the advancement of our nation's youth through his role at Arizona State University. We are in sincere gratitude for the vision, guidance, and leadership he has provided our country.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, first, I appreciate being recognized for these 5 minutes, although it is always dangerous when a Member starts walking towards the microphone and they are doing it because something hit their desk and it annoyed them. We have been working on something in our office to try to explain an intense frustration I have, and that is Washington and its embracing of delusional math. Look, I have only been here 3 years, and I have come to the conclusion that the single biggest problem I see is not the right-left continuum, but those who own calculators and those who don't; those who live in a world where math actually has a value. And this will make sense, hopefully, in a moment. I am right now holding a CBO report, the ``2013 Long-Term Budget Outlook.'' Yet I have not heard someone else come to this microphone, but there is just the beginning of a paragraph that should terrify you: Federal debt as a percentage of GDP in 2038 under the extended baseline is projected to be about twice as large as the amount estimated in last year's report. Do you understand what this report is saying? That because of the policies from this administration, the policies coming out of our bureaucracies and the things we need to actually deal with in this House, the numbers are almost twice as bad as they were last year. That is the speed we are going to hit 100 percent of debt to GDP. And the thing you need to understand is that it is worse than in the long-term budget outlook forecast because there are delusions built into that, because we here as a body instruct the Congressional Budget Office saying, Follow current law; that's what you need to budget off of. How many of us here come January when the SGR is up, and many of you will know it as ``doc fix,'' are going to hold the numbers, hold the current law with the understanding at the end of about a dozen years, doctors who see Medicare patients are going to be paid 73 percent less. So we will walk onto the floor here probably in December or January and fix the SGR so doctors are compensated so they continue to see their Medicare patients, and we blow up the numbers in the long-term budget forecast, and we do that on lots of things. So when you actually do the adjustment for math reality, policy reality, the long-term budget numbers are much, much worse than we talk about around here. And now to my point. A year and a half ago, we actually did something bipartisan. We did something called the JOBS Act. In the scale of things, it was small; but there were some neat things in there. One of the things I fixated on was something called ``crowdfunding,'' an opportunity to help the truly little entrepreneur. This was only up to $1 million, and it was using this thing called the Internet to be able to raise money so if you are the cupcake shop or the mechanic shop, or you have some idea where you can begin getting some angel investment and get going, well the SEC took a year and a half to do what was supposed to be a simple rule set, so they are a year late. And here is what they brought us: this is the law, these handful of pages, six, seven pages is the crowdfunding portion of the JOBS Act. Here is the 550-page proposed rule-set. So if we are in a world where we have crushing debt screaming towards us, and some of that is coming now because we are being told that the new normal is a 2 percent GDP growth, we need to be doing things that accelerate that economic growth, or we are in incredible trouble. So as the House, bipartisan, we passed the JOBS Act, which is one of the little increments that is supposed to reach out and help grow the economy, and then the bureaucracy hands us crushing rules that make it almost impossible to use. So for whoever is listening, watching, caring about things like the crowdfunding rules that are before the SEC, you have 90 days from now. Please go online, make comments, help them understand that this is supposed to be helping the next generation of small entrepreneurs in this country, and don't make it 550 pages of bureaucratic legalese. It can be simpler. We can handle this. We can do great things in this country, but we can't do it if the bureaucracy continues to crush our opportunities.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Harold Sharp for his 44 years and 3 months of dedicated government service. Arizona is in sincere gratitude for the assistance, guidance, and leadership you have provided for the Federal Aviation Administration for so many years.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in celebration of Mr. Christopher Moyer's 55th birthday. May the years ahead be blessed with good health, strong family, prosperity, and peace.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in celebration of the marriage of Sara Kyler and Brian Gates. May God be with them and keep them. May their love for one another and commitment to the life they have ahead be an inspiration to others.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Harold Sharp for his 44 years and 3 months of dedicated government service. Arizona is in sincere gratitude for the assistance, guidance, and leadership you have provided for the Federal Aviation Administration for so many years.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, this is one of those moments where you come to the floor--I am unscripted--and I want to sort of share something from the heart that actually has really, really disturbed me watching this debate over the last few days. I am from Arizona and I like to say I am a friend of Gabby Giffords, and I have known her for a very long time. Do we all remember 3 years ago when this House came together, when my media in Arizona and the media across this country said, whoa, maybe it is time to actually take a step backwards and reflect on our use of language, reflect on our tone, reflect on our civility. Yet look what you have heard over the last two or three days, over this last week. I have a President that got behind the microphones and was literally talking down the stock market, asking why hasn't it gone down. I have one of the heads of the intelligence services fearful that the intelligence service officers are bribable now because some are on furlough. I have had Members come to the microphone right off to the side of me here and use language like ``terrorist.'' The White House has stood behind the use of the language of ``gun to the head.'' You want to talk about something that is offensive? And this is to all my brothers and sisters here in Congress and for the blogs and the reporters and the political operatives around this country, you are better, we are better than this. A good example is you just heard the Representative from New Jersey come to the microphone. I can only say nice things about his tone. He made his argument in a rational, constructive way. We have different views of the world. There was none of the flailing of the hands and the screaming into the microphone. And you have to start to take a step backwards and wonder, why the theater, why the viscousness and the theater coming from the left. I hope we don't look back a month from now and find out that some of this was about money, fund-raising, the politics of cash; because the reality is this argument is actually pretty darn simple. Those of us on the conservative side believe we have and we have reached out over and over. And if you really want a solution, and this is to Senator Reid, send over some Members to that conference committee. Put them in a room and let them start talking. I am from that view of the world that a big deal is healthiest for the country; but then I will hear language like, well, we are heading toward the debt ceiling and you are going to default. Anyone that says that is looking you in the eyes and lying to you, either that or they don't own a calculator. You have got to understand the math. This country takes in 18 percent of GDP in taxes, and we pay out 2 percent in debt coverage. And in 2014 we have, what, $1.6 trillion in refinancing. The fact of the matter is any way you ladder the model, we are never, ever, ever--and I am also quoting Bill Gross from a couple of days ago--we are never never, ever, ever, it is implausible that we won't make our interest payments. You have $3.1 trillion we are going to take in in tax revenues. We are going to spend about $3.7 trillion. So using language like, well, we are going to default, has the left decided that they are hungry to scare the markets, hungry to scare the world debt markets, and is this how you leverage politics? Look, I understand we have different views. I actually believe the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, is part-timing America, is destroying so many people's opportunities. But I also do believe we do have to come up with solutions and continued solutions for preexisting conditions for someone with severe asthma. But we have our vision, we want to get to the same goal. So to my friends on the Democrat side, particularly over in the Senate, 2 years ago you lit up my phones in my office demanding that we talk and negotiate on other issues. So that rhetoric was acceptable in the summer of 2011, but today it is not? How about just a little bit of intellectual consistency from the left?

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Gosar, and from all of us, I see Peggy has slipped off the floor, but happy birthday. Mr. Speaker, I actually come here before the body with somewhat of a unique perspective on what's going on here. And I hate to admit that I'm getting this old, but in 1993, I was the majority whip in the Arizona State house. I was the one who was assigned to work as a negotiator on the original IGRA compacts between the State of Arizona-- the legislature had to put its text together--and the tribal communities, our 21 land-holding tribes within the State of Arizona. So I spent a year of my life with lawyers and tribal members and their lawyers and members of the legislature and members of the Governor's office going over this over and over. And the concern that constantly came up was, if we make this deal as IGRA, that had passed a few years earlier and was sponsored by one of our U.S. Senators, are we confident that this very situation that's happening right now would not happen. Look, I know many of the players have changed in those 20 years, but this is what we talked about. And now I need to take you to the next reason: Why is this so dangerous to our State? Arizona does something, and I don't know if it's unique to our State, but there's the ability for my poor rural tribal communities to transfer their machines to urban communities. I believe if this casino goes into my metropolitan area, my State, within a couple years, becomes a full-scale gaming State because the horse track and the others are already lining up, gearing up, I believe, to do the initiative, saying, hey, we all thought we had this deal. Look what's happening. They're coming into your neighborhood. Let's just put it on the ballot and let everyone participate in full-scale gaming. And the moment that happens, the value of the machine transfer for these poor rural tribes that are just now starting to build that consistent cash flow will go away. This is much more than just dealing with the Tohono O'odham and where their aboriginal lands are and this acquisition of lands that are 100 miles beyond. This is an issue of: Are you about to allow something to happen that will change the very nature of my State?

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, due to a family funeral, I was unable to vote on today's ``FARRM Bill'' legislation. However, I want the record to show my strong opposition to the bill that was passed by the House. Despite the fact the welfare portion of the bill, in the form of SNAP, was separated; the bill that made its way to the Floor was rife with a permanent entitlement system in the form of farm policy. If this bill becomes law, there will be no incentive for our friends in the agriculture community to pass another farm bill for the next 30 years because Washington, in one fell swoop, pegged prices at all time highs. Further, under this bill, shallow-loss programs and wholly uncapped crop insurance have become a permanent backstop. We had an opportunity to shrink government and chose instead to continue down a path of unending subsides and market distortions.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, it may be a little unprecedented, but I wanted to actually give my friend, Dr. Burgess, even though he is on the other side, 30 seconds of my time.

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

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I might consume. Mr. Chairman, I'm sure this is true for all of us in the body, both on the right and the left. As we grind through the amendments and look at them, we, on occasion, come across an amendment that you can actually see where it was well meaning. It may have had a good heart behind it, but when you sort of dice it up, you start to actually understand both something from a personal basis almost borders on the humorous side but also structurally has some real problems. I stand up today trying to remove some language, the Healthy Food Financing Initiative. Look, we will have some Members who will say it's only $125 million, but understand that $125 million may be used to buy a grocery store to subsidize certain healthy food products in areas where the program deems there is a shortage of such. Where there is an amazing irony is, okay, we want healthy foods. There are some areas that the products that may be available in those areas we deem not to be particularly nutritious, but that may be because in our commodity subsidy system, what's in our grocery stores? The fact of the matter, processed foods, because we subsidize commodities. Then I go in and say, But my solution is I'm going to create another subsidy to take care of the problem on the other side. At some point, you've got to be willing to take a step back and see the irony of this. But there are also other structural problems. We're basically taking taxpayer money, and through a sort of a network, you may find a private grocery store being financed by taxpayer money. You may be finding the system where certain foods and certain retailers are being financed by taxpayer money just because it's designated as an area where these products don't exist. So with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I reserve to close.