The Truth About The Debt Ceiling

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I thank the gentleman from Florida.

One of my reasons for asking you for a little bit of your time this evening is one of these days I'm supposed to come here to the floor, and we're putting together an actual presentation of the Medicare actuary report to walk people through, both our citizens and our fellow Members here, the reality of the numbers. But there was so much rhetoric on the floor today, and even within the last couple of hours, that it became one of those "it was time to come back here to the floor.''

These are some slides that we used about a week ago. And it was my great frustration, because how do you manage your government? How do you engage in this political process when we're operating under mathematical folklore? We're living in a fantasy land when you see Members walk up to that microphone, look the public in the eye through that camera and say, If we would just get rid of those incentives to buy corporate jets, if we would just tax Big Oil, if we would just tax those millionaires and billionaires.

So one more time, we're going to actually walk through a little bit of mathematical reality so we might be able to start having an argument, a debate, a discussion that has some basis in fact instead of basis in, I'm going to say whatever is necessary from this microphone to get reelected. And it breaks my heart, but in my 7 months here, I think that happens an awful darn lot.

A quick sample of where we are at today. That's a dollar bill. Do you see this first part? That's 42 percent. So 42 pennies of every dollar this Federal Government is spending today is borrowed. That's why this debate that we're going through right now is so much more than just the debt ceiling and how much more our borrowing capacity is. It is the fact we're buried in debt and we are crashing, being crushed under that weight.

If you go and read the S&P letters and the Moody's letters, it's so much more than, Raise the debt ceiling or you might get downgraded. It is, You are going to get downgraded unless.

There is a credible plan to demonstrate how you intend to bend this debt curve. That's the real debate around here. That's what you are seeing the Republicans passionately try to discuss with the American people and with our brothers and sisters from the other side that this was so much more than raising the debt ceiling. It was a discussion about saving this Republic.

So if you have a Republic, this government borrows 42 pennies out of every dollar we spend. How long do you think that's going to last?

So what sort of rhetorical things do we get to hear around here? Well, let's actually, now, do a little analysis on a couple of them.

How many of you in the last 24 hours, both either in the gallery or here on the floor with me or my good friend Mr. West, have heard Members walk up to microphones, shake their hands and say, No more subsidies for those corporate jets?

Okay. Maybe they're right. But let's actually do the math.

We borrow about $4.7 billion every single day. And that whole piece of rhetoric, which I know has been tested through polling and focus groups so it is all about politics and campaigning and not the truth to the American people, is 15 seconds of that borrowing every day.

So one more time. We borrow $4.7 billion every single day, and the rhetoric you hear about the depreciation on the corporate jets, we're going to need to take that away, even if it were something sensible, it's 15 seconds a day. So you nod your head and say, All right. What if we got rid of it? Great. But it's 15 seconds a day.

So let's go on to the next bit of rhetoric we were hearing today.

Big Oil, we need to take away those subsidies, those incentives to go out and find more oil. Well, let's do this. What if the math were we're going to take away those subsidies from all oil, all fossil fuels, not just Big Oil. Well, we borrow $4.7 billion a day. It's $2.44 billion a year. Well, that equates to a good 2.2 minutes of borrowing a day.

So let's see. So far the two prime bits of rhetoric we heard here today equal 15 seconds, 2.2 minutes of borrowing, and this is the type of solution we keep getting from the left. And the reason we're getting those types of solutions is because it's tested through polling. It's easy for the public to understand, even though it's horribly untruthful to the public that's actually trying to get their heads around the scale of this problem.

So let's actually go on to one of the other ones we heard today.

How about those millionaires and those billionaires? You know, those Bush tax extensions. All right. But let's first be honest. They're the Bush tax extensions--they're actually the Bush-Obama tax extensions, because remember President Obama did sign the extension in December.

If you were to take away those tax extensions for every American, not just those millionaires and billionaires, what does it buy you? Remember, once again, we're borrowing $4.7 billion a day. It would buy you a good 28 minutes of borrowing.

So this rhetoric we hear from the President and around here, I know it may politically be wonderful and it's politically easy to digest, but mathematically, it just isn't the truth, and it doesn't lead you to a solution.

Because think of this one more time. The depreciation on jets, the incentives to find fossil fuels, ending the Bush-Obama tax cut extensions, and assuming--which we did in our math--that every single dime came in, that you didn't slow the economy down, you didn't raise unemployment, we used a magical fantasy number that every dime came back in and was applied straight to the deficit and to the debt, all three of the rhetorical points we heard over and over and over today add up to a half-hour of borrowing.

I turn to my brothers and sisters on the left one more time--and this is starting to become a habit here--what would you like to do with the other 23.5 hours?

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

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