David Schweikert

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

The complete record

372 held · 139 searchable for David Schweikert. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 1 of 3.

This is not an official version of US Congress proceedings. It reproduces the published record and links to it; the official version is the one US Congress publishes.

1. “Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn. The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 23 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, September 2, 2026, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate. ____________________”

   House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

   Check this claim →

2. “We can make the math work, but once again, unless you are ready to deal with the reality of the math, just to cover the current growth of debt, you need a GDP that grows 7.7--not 3--7.7 percent a year. How do I get our brothers and sisters who are in positions of power-- whether it be us here in Congress, the administration, the think tanks, the groups out there that just want more money--to bathe in the truth? I guess for many of them, saving this Republic isn't worth it. I am going to go down fighting for this. This is an amazing country. We have done more good for the world than any country in human history. If we don't get our act together, we are going to bring down the world economy with us. Mr. Speaker, I yield back. ____________________”

   House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

   Check this claim →

3. “It is this big binder that is on every Congressman's--actually it is probably in their trash can. We get it a couple of times a year. This was the organization that was designed to keep an eye on Medicare, particularly Medicare Advantage. {time} 2020 These are the experts. We pay them. They will tell you there is a trillion to almost $2 trillion of leakage just from Medicare Advantage. I like Medicare Advantage. I have some simple suggestions: Stop the risk scoring and make it a true capitated model; get rid of the ObamaCare-type of star ratings, where you basically make it a true capitated model where you are paid to help people stay healthier. What if it is a trillion dollars over 10 years? What if it is $1.5 trillion? We had a preliminary score on a piece of legislation.”

   House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

   Check this claim →

4. “We owe them, and we are not willing to do the things to do it better, faster, and cheaper. I have done presentation after presentation over the years of the unified theory: How do you maximize economic growth? How do you maximize fairness? How do you maximize the future to be stable? There are a lot of inputs. You have to have really uncomfortable conversations, Mr. Speaker, talent-based immigration, the adoption of technology, the redesign of smart regulations, instead of bureaucratic regulations. Stop the leakage where States basically are scamming parts of our expense sharing. We have laid out all these steps as a unified theory because it turns out one of them doesn't get you well. We introduced a piece of legislation over 1 year ago: MedPAC.”

   House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

   Check this claim →

5. “I have had more Members of Congress cancel it than subscribe to it. The excuse is: I don't want the negativity, David. It is not negativity. It is called math. My reason--and this is almost hard to understand--is these different countries, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand that did fiscal consolidations, the underlying message in here is they cut spending. Once they had met those goals, they did changes in their tax system to get rid of leakage, but they did the cuts first. Debt reduction in the United States has been and will be possible with fiscal consolidation. We can do it. There are ways to do it, but you have to see what is happening over here. That spike in spending and borrowing isn't a new bridge or new military spending. It is demographics. Our brothers and sisters have earned benefits.”

   House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

   Check this claim →

6. “They never got a dime of the cuts. Mr. Speaker, you always have to do the cuts first. The cuts don't have to--there is so much of our government we could revolutionize: The cost of healthcare, if we legalized technology, if we do things better, faster, and cheaper. Yet here today we had some of my brothers and sisters here introduce a piece of legislation that basically made adopting technology to reduce the price of healthcare illegal, because that is what the lobbyists want. Why don't they care about the future? Do they not see the math? Every single workday I have been texting out something we call the daily debt. I have been doing this for years. I am blessed to chair the Joint Economic Committee. I am number four on Ways and Means. I have been doing the investigations of the fraud. We send this out.”

   House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

   Check this claim →

7. “We have countries like, I think I actually put a couple of them on my charts, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, but there have been others that did what is called fiscal consolidation. Basically they cleaned up their finances. Greece has been doing it now for one decade, and remember, once again, Greece can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than the United States because its future creditworthiness is better than ours. The average of these countries is about 85/15, that means 15 percent new taxes, 85 percent cuts in spending. What we learned is we always have to do the cuts in spending first. That is because when we think about our President George H. Bush, he made a deal saying: All right. We are going to do some fiscal consolidation. We will allow these taxes here to go up, but we are going to cut all this spending. They did the taxes.”

   House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

   Check this claim →

8. “So when they do things like a bed tax, which is basically a three-legged stool on a disproportionate share where you will actually look the other way. But David, it is cash coming into our State. But we are borrowing it. My State of Arizona, 45 percent of the entire State's budget--when you look at the total spend, Mr. Speaker, not what is appropriated from the legislature, total spend--45 percent comes from the Federal Government. We borrow most of that money. We are borrowing money over here. You don't see a problem, Mr. Speaker? Now let's talk about the fancy term that is being thrown around: We need to do fiscal consolidation. Yay. How many of you know what the hell that is?”

   House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

   Check this claim →

9. “Then you send them the paper saying: Hey, there may be a couple hundred billion dollars of waste and fraud. Let's talk about that for a moment. We are borrowing about $2.5 trillion this year. Understand, Mr. Speaker, when we say waste and fraud, fraud over here is criminal. Waste is much more uncomfortable to talk about. I can show you paper after paper after paper, Mr. Speaker. Let's talk about Medicaid. It is the Federal-State program with which we are supposed to be helping indigents and poor people. It is perverse to say this, Mr. Speaker, but do you know States actually have an economic incentive to look the other way with things that you and I would consider almost criminal or waste? That is because it is Federal cash coming into their State stimulating their economy.”

   House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

   Check this claim →

10. “That is basically, right now the Treasury is holding almost $1 trillion in cash. I assume they are building up cash from everything, from having to pay tariff refunds to the fact that this coming January we are back up against the debt ceiling. If we don't raise the debt ceiling, we will do what is called extraordinary measures where you basically are spending some of your cash reserves and reaching into all sorts of other accounts and spending them. And you do owe that money back. I was told: David, we are going to just cover things off of the general fund accounts. Mr. Speaker, you need 41 of them. Really? We say things and we hear things like this. They are told this on cable television, on the internet. We will get people who will call us and say: David, if you just took care of waste and fraud, then we would be fine.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

11. “Then the very next day, I cannot tell you how many Senators said: David, we need to break the sequestration. I need more spending on something. I want a new aircraft carrier. I want this. I want that. Take a look at the number of times we have done debt deals, Mr. Speaker. Do you notice the curve still goes up? It is because spending is an addiction, and it buys us votes. It buys us love, and we screw our kids and our own retirement. Remember, how I showed you a little while ago, Mr. Speaker, how some of this is now hitting in the next 10 years? How many of you intend to still be alive and maybe in your own retirement in the next 10 years? This isn't generations away from now. This is us. There was a comment the other day that, well, we are just going to start taking the general account.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

12. “When there is demand for a bond, then the price goes down. When there is not enough demand, Mr. Speaker, then you have to pay a higher interest rate. In 2056, that is 30 years from now, the calculations from the Treasury itself, so the Treasury is trying to sell you a 30-year bond, the Treasury itself says that we are over 250 percent of debt to GDP. I am going to go out and buy a 30-year bond today because I trust this place that we are going to get our fiscal act together. When we get down to the last couple of boards here, we are going to start to talk about what fiscal consolidation is. That is because people keep throwing out these fancy words and don't explain what it means. I beg of you, Mr. Speaker, take a look at this chart. In 30 years, my 4-year-old son will be how old? Thirty-four. It is not hard math.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

13. “Speaker, we are really not supposed to tell people the truth about that, so I beg of you, everyone who just heard that, please wipe it out of your memory. {time} 2010 Mr. Speaker, if this doesn't terrify you, then you are not paying attention or you don't do basic math. I beg of you, Mr. Speaker, net interest is a share of revenue and GDP in 2056. Now, why is Schweikert saying: Hey, that is 30 years from now? I would love to sell bonds that are long into the curve. Mr. Speaker, you buy a 30-year bond today, did you notice over the last couple weeks we have had a little bit of a problem? We have had the Treasury basically offering to do a twist. Twist is where you borrow short term and spend it over here by buying longer term bonds to try to create a shortage there so the interest rate goes down.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

14. “For my liberal friends here who say: Why don't we just raise taxes? Go onto the internet, there is this amazing thing called the internet. Go look up the Manhattan Institute. Look up Riedl, an economist, who did a great paper about a year and a half ago, basically took every tax hike that the Bernie Sanders and the Warrens of the world and shows it basically will raise about 1.5 to 1.78 percent of GDP. I am going to say this multiple times, Mr. Speaker. Just to cover the deficit, you need 7.7 percent of GDP. If you don't have a 7.7 percent growth in GDP right now, you cannot keep up with how fast the debt is growing. Interest this year, interest this year just will be 3.2, maybe 3.3 percent of the entire economy, so that interest is growing faster than this economy is. However, Mr.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

15. “How did you go bankrupt? Slowly at first, and then suddenly very fast. Understand how bad these numbers are. In 2050, we are basically what we refer to as the default zone. You have such a debt and interest obligation that you have functionally no capacity. This number isn't even 2036, it is 2035 the models say we start to step into the danger zone. This is somewhat assuming that today's interest rates don't continue to go up on us. Those of us who are children of the 1970s and 1980s, today's interest rates are still low compared to that. My first house, I had a 12 percent mortgage on it. Yet, I try and try and try to do things. Let's have a deficit commission, let's deal with it. David, we can't talk about that, voters will get cranky. The voters want free stuff. Really? You are willing to burn down the Republic? Does anyone do math?”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

16. “This isn't your great-grandkids who are going to figure out how you screwed--excuse me--what you handed them. This is now. This is in the next decade. What the hell is wrong with us? Let's save that here because this is the point I am trying to make. This is here safe, we basically have enough cash flow to cover our interest and our obligations and still be a decent credit risk. However, when you start to hit 2035, you have enough models--how long is 2035 from now? In 2035, you are basically walking into what is technically referred to as a crisis zone. That is when any damn thing, something goes wrong on the other side of the world--we have a hurricane, we have an earthquake, this and that, the credit markets, the debt markets start to get nervous, start to raise our costs. Remember that joke you have heard over and over?”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

17. “Well, the bond market finally has woken up and is starting to care. Let's actually walk through--this next one, if this doesn't scare you half to death, you aren't listening. We took a look. AEI did a model, Columbia, University of Minnesota, the Penn Wharton Budget Model basically built models saying, hey, when you hit this level of debt to the size of your economy, the interest you are producing makes it so you hit a death spiral. Basically, their models crash. We have models crashing at 154 percent. Do you remember the last chart I just showed you? It was maybe two charts ago. It said in 9 budget years, in 2036, you actually have over 160 percent of debt to GDP. You already have models saying we have crashed, the economy no longer works. I hope it is wrong, but I need you to understand, this isn't decades from now.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

18. “The other part of your income tax, the corporate income tax, tariffs, excise taxes, those things are over here. If I say I segregate the things that are going functionally to your retirement and your unemployment, segregate those, of the other types of taxes this year, 29 percent will just pay interest. This year. In 9 budget years, 10 years from now, 2036, almost half of nonpayroll taxes--once again, your Social Security, your Medicare, unemployment, those things--almost half of the taxes this country will collect will be just interest. Is anyone starting to see the problem? This is what you call interest fragility. This is where you start to burn down. This is where you are chasing your tail, where you are actually having to raise taxes or dramatically cut spending just to be able to cover your bonded indebtedness. How many care?”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

19. “However, if you do also the internal borrowing--when we borrow money from the trust funds, we have to pay it back with interest. The rest of the world actually calculates their debt that way. When you hear us say, well, we are only at 101 or 102 percent of debt, that is publicly sold debt, not debt we owe. We are at 127 percent right now. In 9 budget years, we will be at 162 percent. Now, here is why that should set off alarm bells. I am going to give this to you in two ways. Understand, when you pay your taxes on your income, here is what we call the FICA tax, this is your payroll tax, this is the Social Security tax, this is your Medicare tax, this is the unemployment tax, this is disability. Those are designated for certain uses.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

20. “The rule is: Hey, if the spending stops in 5 years, you don't have to count it against future deficits, so we do that with things. Hey, we are going to just do this, and then, boom, it is going to go away. You notice that it never happens. Please, I have one or two more boards here that I want you to memorize if you care. If you actually look at current interest rates, debt to GDP grows to 162 percent in 10 years. If you do total debt-- remember, this is total debt--so you are over 100 percent of debt to GDP. Remember, the U.S. economy is basically estimated to be about $32 to $33 trillion. Right now, we are close to $33 trillion in publicly sold debt. That is when we sell it to your pension plans, sell it to your retirement account, sell it to a nice family on the other side of the world, sell it to another sovereign reserve bank.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

21. “Remember a moment ago, I told you the CBO from February said 3.1 in 2036, which is 9 budget years from now? Now it is 3.8. David, where did $700 billion come from? It came from just the changes in interest rates. Do you somehow think magically the interest rates are about to go down? It is not in the futures market. It is not happening in any of the other countries. Look at what is happening in Japan. I believe Japan today hit interest rates they hadn't seen in decades and decades and decades. Maybe the entire world is tired of giving those who are bingeing on debt a free ride. Understand, these numbers should scare the hell out of you because you are looking at a world where, in 2036--so 9 budget years--we take in $8.3 trillion. Hey, yea. However, we spend $12.17 trillion, and that is based on today's models. Will there be a war?”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

22. “What happens in a world where the primary driver of your debt is actually paying the interest on previous spending? The moral question I want you to think about is: Is borrowing a tax hike? I am serious. We have spent money. We are obligated now to pay interest on it. We are pulling that cash out of the economy so it doesn't go into the investment of you buying a house or a new business or those things. Is it a tax hike? I would argue it is a tax hike with interest. Now back to reality. The primary driver of U.S. debt and the debt from the entire industrialized world is our demographics. {time} 2000 Here is where the numbers need to start sinking in of how difficult this math actually is. At current interest rates, the deficit grows to $3.8 trillion in 9 years.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

23. “You do realize what that means? That means over 7 percent mortgage rates on a 30-year debt. Does anyone care? I know these types of charts are almost impossible to read and impossible to see, so come back over here. Do you see the light purple compared to the darker purple? All I am trying to show you there is that most of the future financing is driven by interest, not the actual debt. The CBO number for 2036, 9 budget years from now--and I am going to show you the number that CBO gave us back in February is wrong because of interest rates moving up. But back then in February, the number was, in 2036, 9 budget years from now, you will have a $3.1 trillion debt. Mr. Speaker, $2.1 trillion of it was just interest. Mr. Speaker, $1 trillion was actual structural deficit.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

24. “This is something that is really important. If you can't convince the debt markets that we are creditworthy, that we belong having lower interest rates--all this has to be refinanced, and we are refinancing it now at higher interest rates. This is what we were borrowing before. Remember back in 2021 during parts of COVID or even a bit after the 2008 financial debacle, interest rates stayed very low and we spent and borrowed and borrowed and borrowed. Guess what. We have to refinance it now. Now, often we are refinancing things that were coming in at half of a percent, 1 percent, and now we are coming in at 5 percent, 4.5 percent. Remember, today's 10-year bond hit 4.8 today. The bond futures, if you actually go and look at it right now, are predicted to be over 5 percent by the end of the year, on the 10-year.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

25. “So think of this: In the next year or two we will have fewer people under 18 than we had 20, 25 years ago but double the number of people 65 and up. God knows, I will be one of them. In some of the reports, I think--one I got from Manhattan Institute a couple years ago--was basically saying for every dollar I will have put into Medicare I am going to get about $6, $7 back in spending. And most of Medicare is borrowed--excuse me, most of Medicare comes from the general fund. This is the reality. Are we allowed to tell the truth about math or at this moment is there someone on a blog saying: I am going make crap up about math because it hurts my feelings. It is not about feelings. It is what comes off of a calculator. So let's actually walk through a little bit more there. Estimated annualized cost of refinancing.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

26. “And yet, time after time after time when I do those presentations around the country, the first hand that goes up is someone that says: I want more money. I want more benefits; I want more this. A few years ago I did a presentation on the debt and deficit and demographics. Remember, the primary driver of our debt is our demographics. I would love to blame the Democrats. The things they did in the Inflation Reduction Act now we are still paying the price for because there was a report a couple days ago about what is happening in Medicare part D and the explosion of some of the costs there. It is great. And we have done things also. But it is demographics. We as a country basically, and the entire industrialized world, we haven't had enough children. We have functionally gone 30, 40 years without having enough children.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

27. “Is that what our country has become is basically screw the next generation? I want every dime I can get my hands on? This is the morality of what this country is. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of things we could be doing, but this game of sitting here and saying, well, I am going to save a million dollars here, because I am going to be speaking here for almost an hour. During that hour we are going to borrow about $320 million. We will often have debates here where during the time of the debate we will have borrowed substantially more than everything we debated trying to save. We are borrowing about $7.5 billion a day--$7.5 billion a day. We have had some days where we are borrowing $8 billion. Some days we are borrowing $7 billion. It is close to $90,000 every second.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

28. “It is actually better than last year. Last year for every $1 we took in, we spent $1.43. Mr. Speaker, $1 in, $1.40 out? Come on, people. Yet, I see polling. None of this is an election issue because we have a public that wants things. I am sorry. I have done all these budget presentations in my own State. I love my State. I represent one of the greatest districts on Earth, but I have even done some in other places around the country. The number of times I will spend 45 minutes with these slides showing what is going on, showing data that a child born today--so I have a 4-year-old we have adopted. It is the greatest joy. My wife and I, I cannot express how blessed we are. My little boy who just turned 4 about 3 weeks ago, we need 104 percent of his lifetime earnings just to pay the pensions of the Federal Government. Is that moral?”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

29. “Meaning, the market has decided they are more creditworthy than the United States even though we are the reserve currency of the world. Doesn't that set off some alarm bells to anyone with an intellect? So, more charts. Let's see if I am making a point yet. U.S. 10-year yields are among the highest in the G10. You start to take a look at what is going on, and we are up here. You must understand it is not only the bonds we can sell, but the interest rates carry. There is a risk premium. In the bond market we call it a term premium on U.S. debt. Shouldn't this actually drive us crazy? If you actually look at the compounding piling of new debt being sold--remember, in the United States this year--and we have a fairly decent economy--for every dollar we are taking in in tax collection, we are spending $1.40.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

30. “If you actually are someone who is crazy enough to watch bond futures and how many basis points they move, this is one of the things that should scare you. The debt is being purchased by those who trade it, pledge it, buy options on it, sell it. {time} 1950 There is an argument that we have much more fragility. When the central Bank of Japan or Germany or someone else buys U.S. debt, they are holding it basically as an offset to their own currency, and it is stable. We don't have to worry about them throwing it into the market. A whole portion of our debt today is in play, so those of you who used to say: I don't want other countries buying our debt--I can show you chart after chart. We buy their stuff.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

31. “We talk about the things we are angry about, worried about, this and that, what is really good politically, you know, set off some dopamine hits. I know this isn't what we like to talk about in our elections. It is also the thing that will bring this Republic down if we don't get our act together. Let's actually have some real fun here. An increase in dependency on the market-based--the reason I am showing you this chart is one of the things that is happening around the world and been happening to U.S. debt for the last couple of years is a lot of the Federal Reserve banks of different countries have been sort of holding their amount of U.S. debt steady as we are still borrowing more money, meaning more and more of our debt is being purchased by bond houses, trading houses.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

32. “We don't have enough young people, and we have borrowed stunning amounts of money to maintain the benefits. All over the world--and the reason I am showing this chart is that if one of these countries, like Japan, was having trouble a couple of weeks ago and starts to hit a cascade event--I know there is probably no one out there who actually paid attention and remembers things like the Tequila Crisis of the 1990s. Cascade events start to shoot up those interest rates, and when you are carrying a total of $40 trillion in debt, $32 trillion to $33 trillion of that we have sold, $10 trillion of it we have to refinance every year, do you understand the danger you have put this country in? We come behind these microphones all day long.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

33. “It is a protection racket for business models and bureaucracies that don't want to reform, don't want to compete, don't want to deal with that economic model we all learned in high school, creative destruction, where someone does something better. Do you remember Blockbuster Video? If they had shown up here, maybe if they had hired enough lobbyists, we would have slowed down the internet so that Netflix wouldn't have put them out of business. That is how perverse this place has become. Where are my free market brothers and sisters? Look, some of these are going to be really thick, but it is important to understand. The interest rate movements, do you see these spikes out here? These are all the different countries--U.S., this one is Germany, Japan, U.K. Understand that the industrialized countries, we all have a demographic problem.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

34. “That is interest fragility because you start hitting an expectation where those interest rates drive you up, so you have to borrow more money and borrow more money. You basically end up in the death spiral because now you are borrowing money, and this even happened last year. We had a couple of months where we had to borrow money to have enough cash to pay for our borrowing. Does anyone care? Are we actually allowed to talk about it? Is it just because around the hallways around this place, there are armies of lobbyists, armies of people showing up in our offices, and they functionally want one of two things: Give me more money or regulate, control, push my competition so I have sort of no one to compete with. Washington, D.C., is a protection racket.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

35. “You basically have to refinance it, so you are constantly subject to whatever the new interest rates are, and I am going to show you some charts that show much of the refinancing--because we have to refinance $10 trillion to $11 trillion this year, and a lot of that was originally borrowed at much lower interest rates. It is not only the borrowing of today. You are going to borrow $2.2 trillion to $2.3 trillion publicly to raise some $100 billion internally. That is where you borrow money from the trust fund, Social Security, Medicare, which those trust funds are gone, functionally, in 6 years. The $10 trillion that has to be refinanced is now subject to the higher interest rates of today.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

36. “About 1\1/2\ months ago, I did a presentation here and showed you how you want to deal with affordability on housing, and I showed you the academic paper that basically said that interest rates are a full percent higher in the United States than they need to be because of the borrowing from the Federal Government. If we don't figure out a way to start to convince the bond market--I am going to say this multiple times. If we don't start to convince the bond market that we are going to start being fiscally responsible, the future starts to look really ugly. Let's actually walk through a couple of these things. Have you ever heard someone start to talk about the death spiral? Look, it is not that hard. You borrow lots of money.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

37. “The primary driver, if you just listen to those numbers, when interest will be $1.3 trillion this year--and I am going to show you a couple of charts--in a decade, 9 budget years, interest will be the majority of the borrowing. We will be borrowing money to have enough cash to pay the interest. I have done speech after speech behind these microphones talking about interest fragility, and it seems no one knows what the hell I am talking about. Have you paid attention to what is happening in the bond markets over the last couple of weeks? It is happening all over the industrialized world because we are all on a borrowing binge. Interest rates are starting to move up to points where it is absolutely uncomfortable.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

38. “When you start to look over here, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, other things that are in the formulas, and interest, I need everyone to understand something: Social Security is the number one spend in our government and probably will come in about $1.6 trillion. Interest may come in as high as $1.3 trillion this year, becoming the second biggest expenditure in our government. Medicare will be about $1.1 trillion. Medicaid will come in at about $1 trillion, Medicaid and ObamaCare subsidies. Defense, the thing that is in the Constitution, will come in at number five. Your government is an insurance company with an army. I beg of you to think about the math. If you are one of the people saying that it is all waste and fraud, yes, there is a bunch of that, but it is a fraction of this total.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

39. “We are going to walk through some of the charts and some of the math, and I beg of anyone who is crazy enough to watch this, is detailed enough, is actually caring enough to watch this, I need you to open up your mind and bathe in the math with me, not the folklore. Let's actually start to walk through some of this. I have used this chart over and over to sort of open up the discussion. The numbers are actually already out of date because we are this far into the 2026 fiscal year, and the math is actually uglier than we expected it to be, but the reason you should see this: See the blue area here? That is all your Member of Congress gets to vote on unless we have a reconciliation budget. We have been using the reconciliation budgets, functionally, to spend more money because of the dysfunction in the U.S. Senate.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

40. “Mr. Speaker, I wish I had the magic ability to find the powerful words to try to explain the difficulty of the finances, the reality of the math, and the threat to the Republic, but we are going to try again.”

    House of Representatives1 September 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

41. “The bond market will live in facts, and, eventually, it is going to kick us in the head unless we can do some tough things to convince it that we are creditworthy. Mr. Speaker, I am yielding back because I think I used my half hour. I apologize if I hurt someone's feelings. Please send me a note. I already have prewritten apology notes. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. ____________________”

    House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

42. “But when you start to see the gradual interest rates, we are actually starting to hit a world where I am believing a model where a decade from now, we could be having 11 percent of the entire economy just be interest. Remember, CBO's numbers from the beginning of the year--and the numbers are worse today--had us, in 9 budget years, total borrowing in 2036 being $3.1 trillion, $2.1 trillion of that just being interest, and the math is worse today. We are not going to pay it off, but we can stabilize it. By stabilizing it, the growth of the economy, those things, we have to get through the baby boomers. It is just math. It is not personal. I am not saying something to hurt someone's feelings. It is math, and I know Congress and much of our politics now are a math-free, fact-free zone.”

    House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

43. “But often it is inflation so when we actually start to look at the actual numbers, we actually, right now, estimate this year's borrowing--now, think of this. The Treasury Secretary, the Budget Director, our own budget team, we all said that we are going to--actually, hundreds of us, I think, actually cosponsored a piece of legislation. We are going to only borrow 3 percent of GDP because we are going to grow at 3 percent of GDP, except we have a problem. As of today, interest is at 3.1 percent to 3.2 percent of GDP--not borrowing. Interest is already over that target. Does anyone pay attention to the actual math, or do we just tell each other stories?”

    House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

44. “If interest rates go up, this is actually the collapse of your Republic because you will owe more interest than every tax receipt, every tariff, every corporate tax that everything we sell can produce. The interest load takes us over. It is called the death spiral, and we are not that far away. Some of this starts to hit where you are hitting 80 percent, 90 percent in 14 years from now. You have to understand that those higher interest rates actually just brutalize us as a country. Mr. Speaker, and to the team, last board. I do wish you were allowed to applause and be happy for these things. This is Federal interest costs under various interest rate scenarios. Look, this is a little more the way--if you and I were playing economists, we actually don't do dollar amounts. We do percentages of GDP because the GDP can grow.”

    House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

45. “Not tax revenues, not income tax. All revenues. But here is the punch line. I know this chart is a little hard to read, so I don't know if the camera can pick it up. When we are saying the 50 percent, it is just the red baseline. If interest rates were to go up to 5.2 percent--Mr. Speaker, what is the 30-year bond at right now? It is pretty much at 5.2 percent. I know that is not our blended rate, but you see the elevation. At current interest rate models, which is actually at 4.2 percent-- which I believe we are now well above because the 2-year is at 4.2 percent. Functionally, let's take a look here, and it looks like by about 2041, which sounds like a long time--it is about to become the 2027 budget year. It is not that long from here--it is half of all revenue.”

    House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

46. “It is just that no one dives into them and digs through and goes, oh, dear Heaven, how could this be our country? We are going to avoid actually having the conversation until we get back and the Speaker will keep his promise to our team that have been working on this for a couple of years now of optionality. Yes, it will drive the lobbyists insane. It will drive some of the groups insane and some of the bureaucracies insane because they don't give a damn about the future of this country. What they care about is their current paycheck. I am going to save the future of this country, or at least give it one more shot before I leave here. These two are really, really important and absolutely dystopian, and I know it is hard to read. Interest costs are projected to eventually consume more than half of all revenues.”

    House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

47. “More than 30 percent of the Federal revenues will go towards interest in 9 budget years. We have actually done a stressor on this. So the math right now--and this is sort of baseline policy--in 9 budget years, you pay a dollar of taxes, and 31 cents of that--so this is all taxes. This isn't just income tax. It is not just tariffs. It is all taxes, and 31 cents of that dollar--and in my model because I had a couple of other stressors and slightly higher interest rates built in, but this was using the CBO baseline interest rates, which were already above, it was 33 percent. {time} 2100 Are you ready in 9 budget years to have 30 to 33 cents out of every dollar just paying interest? This isn't crazy. This is actually already in our numbers.”

    House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

48. “I need you to think about something. This is with no wars. This is with no pandemics. This is with no disasters. In functionally 10 years interest is our number one expense of the United States Government. Someone out there help me have the language to move people's hearts and their intellects. This is terrifying. I know we are not supposed to tell our voters this because we are supposed to happy-talk about how much more we are going to give them. In 6 years and 2 months, the Medicare trust fund is gone. If you are in healthcare, your hospital is getting a 12 percent cut. How many are going to get to see their doctor at that hospital? During that time, the spend on Medicare goes from $1 trillion to $2 trillion. It is demographics. One or two more boards and then you will be rid of me.”

    House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

49. “If we as a body don't start to convince the bond market that we are starting to get control of our ravenous borrowing, that bond market is going to run this country. Because--what was it--Carville basically said in the nineties, talked about how the bond market basically shaped policy. Our debt is dramatically bigger today, and our competition for borrowing--how do I put this? Mr. Speaker, how many of us believe the United States is the most creditworthy country in the world? We have the most liquidity in the markets. We are the reserve currency, though we are starting to lose that because of the way we treat our currency and the way we borrow. When Greece, Spain, and these sorts of countries can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than the United States--Greece can sell it substantially less expensive. So can Spain.”

    House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →

50. “Let's actually dig into this: 30-year Treasury yields are approaching their longest stretch above 5 percent since 2007. It is here. It is not some theory of mine. You know, Schweikert is an idiot. He is going to talk about interest fragility. No one cares. Ta-da, it is here. I can show you some interest rate future contracts out there. Jamie Dimon, I think it was yesterday--and I am reading a third-party article--is basically saying he would not buy long-term U.S. debt, the tens, twenties, thirties. Should that tell us something? Because expectation is interest rates are going to go up, because when interest rates go up, the existing bond crashes in value. You have got to understand. It is here. It has begun.”

    House of Representatives22 July 2026Source ↗

    Check this claim →