The publication is reproduced in full below:
PAYING FOR INFRASTRUCTURE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Green of Texas). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) for 30 minutes.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, so we can finish up some things, and for many of us who were very fond of Mr. Lewis, I am going to yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock), my friend.
{time} 1415
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank Congressman Calvert for organizing the tribute to Jerry Lewis today.
I knew of Jerry Lewis many years before I had the honor to know him personally. He was elected to Congress the year that I graduated from college in southern California, and he was a well-known name then because of his activism for air quality, which at the time was a very serious concern in that region.
I then had the opportunity and honor to actually be able to work with Jerry in Congress. And I have to say I was a bit leery about him at first. Jerry was a bit of the Republican old guard and I had spent an entire career fighting that affectation, but what I found was a man who was willing to listen as well as to be heard, a man who was so interested in the process and the give and take and the sharing of ideas, that he really demonstrated what this institution is all about, how it did work, and how it could work in the future if we could learn from his example and his life.
I am very honored to join in the tribute to him today on the floor.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California
(Mr. Nunes).
Mr. NUNES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for giving some extended time to recognize Jerry Lewis, who was a statesman, a Congressman from the Inland Empire, a good friend to all of us.
Jerry really was a one-man institution on Capitol Hill, having served in the House for more than 30 years. Jerry was extremely effective at serving his constituents. He always kept his constituents in the Inland Empire in mind, and he was always popular with them. Jerry never lost and never received less than 61 percent of his vote in any of his congressional races.
Jerry was a veteran Congressman, and when I first came to the House in 2003, I actually already knew him, because, as was typical of Jerry, he liked to work with young people. At the time in the eighties and nineties, him and Congressman Bill Thomas from Bakersfield, they would organize conferences for young people to teach them about policy and politics. And I went to many of those events, which I have fond memories of, and when I look back at that, those were really important events in my life that probably inspired me in some way to ultimately serve with Jerry. I will always be thankful for that.
When I did come to Washington as a Representative, Jerry became a close friend, a mentor. Jerry taught me the ropes and how to assimilate and deal with sometimes the strange ways of doing things around here.
Also, back home in California, there are many times that I had the opportunity to visit both Jerry, his wife Arlene, Mr. Calvert, memorable times at dinner doing constituent events, getting to know his area and always focusing as a whole on how we could do things better in California and work together.
Jerry ultimately became one of the most influential and well-
respected Members of the House, earning admiration and affection on both sides of the political aisle and serving his long tenure with distinction.
Jerry was a good friend and a true statesman who will be missed not only in these Halls of Congress but also, as well, in California.
I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding, and I also thank Mr. Calvert for organizing this tribute to Mr. Lewis.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert) to give a closing good-bye to Mr. Lewis.
Mr. CALVERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
I want to say we are all going to miss Jerry. It was a privilege to serve with him, and Godspeed, Jerry.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your patience. You look good up there. Maybe this is a harbinger of the future.
Before I start--because there are some serious things here I want us to get our head around on what is happening financially, and some of the things I see that are--and I am going to be brutal--a bit dishonest in the math on some of the tax proposals--I need to share something that has just been eating at me for 2 days.
This place has about a century-long tradition during the summer of us bringing our children here. John Boehner actually put it into policy that children 12 and under we could bring on the floor with us. We tried very hard in previous years to make this an institution that loved and embraced our families and our children because to be honest, this is a tough job on the family.
And so, 2 days ago a handful of us showed up here--I brought my 5-
year old daughter--and we wanted to bring our children on the floor. And instantly representatives of the Speaker--and I know they are doing their jobs, I mean, they were brutal about it, but they were doing their jobs. They said: You can't bring your children on the floor.
Why?
Well, it is against the rules. Okay. I will respect the rules. Show it to me in writing. And they ran off and came back 15 minutes later. Well, we can't find it in writing, but we don't want you to have children on the floor.
Well, why?
COVID.
Okay. If I remember the whole science thing, a 5-year-old little girl is not a Texas State Democrat, they are not super spreaders. Why would you engage in such sort of dystopian cruelty to children? The math is the math.
Do you remember all the speeches that my brothers and sisters on the left gave us that we need to follow the science, particularly in response to COVID? Okay. I have been incredibly respectful of it. I am someone who has never complained on this floor about wearing the mask when we wore the mask, going through the metal detectors because I figured the public is forced to do those sorts of things. But come on, if you are going to preach to us, we are going to follow the science, you know the science on children isn't our problem.
Why would you engage in such sort of cruelty to kids for that one time during the summer when we could bring our kids here to sit here, and my little girl who, as you know, loves you because you have been incredibly kind to her over the years, Mr. Green; they get marched off with a group of the floor staff from the Speaker scaring my little girl half to death. You have got to get out of here.
This is sort of the weirdness that this place has become under this leadership, and the cruelty, this dystopian--and I love using that word--the ultimate explanation we got is, well, it is not in writing, but we can do anything we want.
When that type of cruelty is off the impulse of this leadership, you understand why this place is falling apart with hate. And the inability to show kindness to children, which aren't a problem, gives you almost a poster of what has become wrong with this leadership.
And I don't know if it is vanity, I don't know if they have become control freaks, I don't know if it is that these were Republican children, so therefore, they must be punished, but it was a really crappy thing to do to my 5-year-old and the other little girls that were with that group that just wanted to sit with their daddies and their mom on the floor. That is what this place has become.
Dear Heaven, I hope when we hit this August recess there is some sort of soul-searching evaluation of what we have turned this place into, because a year and a half from now Republicans are going to take back the majority here, and I hope this hasn't become so embedded in our psyches that it is going to become the tit-for-tat seesaw where the types of cruelty that have been foisted on our families, our kids, our Members isn't handed back, but that is where it is going. I needed to share that.
Mr. Speaker, I want to get our heads around a couple things that are bothering me, also, in regard to the spending and tax plans and the belief that we are not--excuse me, the Democrat leadership--and I understand a lot of this is generated from the Senate side, so I am not going to blame House Democrats because some of the Democrats I work with on the Ways and Means Committee here in the House, we have different views of the world, but they treat me very kindly, they are very respectful for the ideas, but some of the proposals being put together by the leadership are frauds. They are just mathematical frauds.
And the very things that we would have been and should have been--and Republican hands aren't completely clean on this, but this now has been industrialized.
So here is the scam: The left wants to spend this much money on the infrastructure bills they have. The President, Speaker Pelosi, Democrats promised we are going to pay for all of it. Okay. And then they have industrialized gimmicks that are frauds.
So, first off, we need to deal with the reality of what we are about to do, not only to my 5-year-old, but to everyone that is in retirement or heading towards retirement. Do you understand over the next 30 years--and this was before the spending binge--this government is going to be $101 trillion in debt in today's dollars? And most of it is actually Medicare.
Now, I have given presentation after presentation on how we can change that using technology, changing the price of delivering healthcare, because the ACA, ObamaCare; the Republican alternative, Medicare for All, they are financing bills; they do not change the cost of healthcare.
And instead, this is the greatest fragility to our retirement security, the future of our society because if you plan to borrow $101 trillion over the next 30 years, you have just sopped up actually more borrowable money in the world. This mathematically can't happen.
And guess what our debate around here is? It is how we are going to spend more money. So the left makes--and I am going to show a couple examples of this--a promise, saying, well, David, the American people, we are going to pay for everything.
So let me show you one of the gimmicks, just to get our heads around something that my friends should be embarrassed about.
President Trump offered a rebate rule in regard to pharmaceuticals for people on Medicare. And the idea was, and it is complicated, but the punch line is pretty simple: We have a process right now where there is a rebate paid for through the pharmaceutical companies to the purchasing managers, and it is done to lower the price of the drug at the purchasing level.
The Trump rule was changing the path so the rebate would go right to the consumer. So instead of lowering the price of the drug you would see it almost at the register. Okay. Fine. I had mixed feelings about it, but Democrats absolutely hated it. It was never going to become policy. It was never going to become law. This was a proposal from a couple years ago.
So what does this place do? Well, first off, my Democratic brothers and sisters spent lots of time attacking the idea, making it clear we will never allow this to become law. This will never become part of the Medicare financing system. We are never going to do the Trump rebate mechanism where the consumer gets it.
Okay. Then why would they turn around and pretend it is a pay-for for the infrastructure spending?
Part of the Democrats' financing is, well, we are going to take 170,
$180 billion over the next 10 years--and by not doing the rule that doesn't actually exist that we already oppose that actually isn't in practice, but we are going to pretend we get $180 billion from that--we are going spend it. You wonder why the American people just realized our numbers are a fraud here? And this is proposed with a straight face. Our inability to tell the truth.
I understand if there is an insatiable appetite for my friends on the other side to do different types of spending, and if you are going to make a promise to the people in the country that you are going pay for it, fine. Okay. Keep your promise.
And this isn't even an attempt to be cute, but this is just blatant. These dollars don't exist. They were never going to exist, but because the CBO will give us a score on it because we are going to pretend that this might have become policy, even though it was never going to become policy, and the very people that are promoting it made it clear they were never going to allow it, hey, we just created another $180 billion of magic money.
{time} 1430
This is us. This is what this place has become. And we need to lead with a couple of the other things that are also in the tax proposals.
Okay. I understand my brothers and sisters on the left really want to raise corporate tax rates, but be honest about the math. The best study right now says in the first 24 months you unemploy 1 million Americans. That corporate tax hike unemploys 1 million Americans.
And we still haven't found a good study, and we are trying to actually do it ourselves. What you end up saying, when you unemploy 1 million Americans in the first 24 months, what does that actually ultimately cost society?
What did you just do to Medicare? What did you just do to Medicaid, because they are not paying their FICA taxes? What did you just do to unemployment benefits? What did we just do to people's future income power, because you pulled them out of the workforce?
We talk about societal costs to policy around here. Oh, no, we don't talk about societal cost to policy around here, because we don't tell the truth about the math. So a couple of us--and I actually did a fairly detailed presentation about a month ago, saying if my friends on the left really need money, they want to keep their promise in saying, Hey, we are going to spend all of this, we found a trillion bucks--
actually, in one of our calculations of $1.4 trillion over 10 years. Cut spending. Stop subsidizing the rich. It was fascinating. My phone was just dead. My email, no one even responded to that.
See, you have to understand, here is how the Democrat financing washing machine is working: is on this hand, we are going to raise taxes on the rich. We want them to pay more. Okay. That is the Democrat policy. But on the other hand, we are going to turn around and subsidize them to about $1.4 trillion over 10 years, because we are going to subsidize their solar panels; we are going to subsidize their new Tesla; we are going to subsidize their flood insurance on their house on the beach; we are going to subsidize their retirement accounts; we are going to subsidize their future healthcare. Does that make sense?
It is a washing machine. So I am going to raise your taxes over here, but then I am going--through the backdoor--because when I subsidize you over here, I get power. Because these rich people need to get benefits from me. I mean, is it that cynical anymore?
Wouldn't it be much more economically efficient, much more rational, much fairer to say, I am not going to do things that are going to distort the economy and economic growth and jobs and functioning--my personal fixation of how do you lift the working poor--but we are going to stop subsidizing the ultra-wealthy in the country with all these programs. We are just going to cut the spending over here. Wouldn't that have been a more rational way to find revenues?
But once again, the dirty little secret is much of the rich live in Democrat districts on the coasts. Much of the dirty little secret is these are the people that write the checks. So it becomes sort of this washing machine fraud of wink-wink, nod-nod. For the ultra wealthy we are going to raise your tax rates, but you don't actually pay yourself through income, you live off your assets. So don't worry, it is not going to affect you. Oh, by the way, we are still going to subsidize your multimillion-dollar house on the beach with subsidized flood insurance.
That is the type of fraud we are committing on the American people. We are better than this. And I don't know why this place doesn't own a calculator, or our brothers and sisters here, maybe we are all so busy we don't actually read the details of the very proposals.
So one of the other proposals is something that is referred to as the tax gap. And the Green Book from Treasury was saying, Well, we are going to find $700 billion of under-collected taxes. Except when you start to dig through it, that number isn't real. It doesn't hold up to any type of scrutiny. So is this another occasion where we are going to do a placeholder? We are going to put a pretend number in here, so we are going to somehow meet certain CBO scores that we all know is a fraud, because if you actually sit and read what CBO wrote, they even make it clear that, Hey, you can do all these things, but within 3 years, those very people that you are chasing their taxes have changed their process.
We are also using really outdated math. We are using math from before tax reform. So a lot of the very mechanics of how taxes are collected, what they are, are very, very different, but we haven't updated our numbers, and we are going to spend $8 billion dollars at the IRS. But one of the really creepy things we are also going to do, is we are functionally going to turn the banking system into the IRS officers.
So almost everything you will do will now be part of the IRS system to track you. And if you really read through the reports, it makes it clear what we are going to do is take a lot of the very tax revenues, receipts that we are after, and we are going to force them into ether conduits. I don't know if you are about to create a whole new crypto banking system that is going to run under the radar, but be careful.
If it is really about finding the tax sheets, a number of us, and actually some Democrats on the Ways and Means helping, we have been playing with a model that would use data, but publicly-available data. These data services you can buy, you bounce off. You see if, Hey, here is what is reported. Does it actually match what we are able to find on these public records? Instantly, you know if have something that needs to be pursued. And, yes, it will require a capital infusion to update the data systems.
But there is this weird fixation in government that they want to own and control everything, even though the very best data that would help us find the folks that are cheating actually isn't ever going to sit on the government server. It is actually on all these lists that are out there.
There are some great articles talking about how the $700 billion number is fraudulent. It is just not real. But once again, we are going to build our spending and tax policy on it.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 8 minutes remaining.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I also apologize. I have had a stunning amount of coffee already today.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to mix a couple metaphors. I am going to both talk about the cost, but I am also going to talk about the environmental impact.
A lot of my brothers and sisters on the left are fixated on high-
speed rail. Now, understand, rail is what, a 300-plus-year-old technology. So the infrastructure of the past is functionally what we are about to fund. We are not funding the infrastructure of the future. But you do realize, for one of those high-speed rails to work, you have got to be running about 10 million people on it a year for the environmental impact.
I am not talking about the huge amount of debt, the fact that they never will collect anything close in the fare boxes. But just to do the environmental impact. Are you going to carry 10 million people a year? No.
It turns out it is virtue-signaling once again where the math of the environmental impact doesn't actually match. But we have a bunch of our constituents, Oh, those choo-choos; I like it; fast ones. Oh, look at the Japanese ones. But as you also know, the Japanese high-speed rail system is also collapsing financially, too.
If you really want to have an impact in the infrastructure bill, one of the most powerful things we can do is we can change the cost structures. How long it takes to get through NEPA. How long it takes to finance. How long it takes to get through all the litigation.
This is almost unreadable--and we will try to put some of this up on our website. But we are right now over $500 million per kilometer just to lay new rail. We are up here in the very top tier. And you look at the countries that are ahead of us, they have great geographical distances or they are going through highly urbanized areas. We are not.
Something is terribly, terribly wrong in our cost structure. And so how many times have we seen those who are promoting the infrastructure saying, But we are going to put a clock; we are going to make things more efficient so we can actually get this.
And I will give you one of the great living examples:
In New Mexico, they have this amazing wind asset. This place that produces tremendous amounts of wind energy. And California really needs that green energy to meet their rules. They are now going on 15 years just to get the permit to lay the power lines. And they are still not done. They are actually about to go through their NEPA again.
One of the article says they are not going to get it by 2025. I talked to one of the consultants for it yesterday; he is optimistic they might get it by 2023. But they started in 2006 to move the power from this incredible wind area. If someone really says, I want green energy, but I am terrified of getting crosswise with my trial lawyers, who are making a fortune suing on this. I am terrified to get crosswise with my environmentalist, who sue and make money stopping the line sighting. I am terrified to have to deal with the military, my Tribal lands, my State lands, my Federal lands--all these others--where the power lines have to go.
Stop pretending you really want green energy if you are not willing to change the clock on getting a permit to move it. It is just irrational what we are allowing.
We actually have a piece of legislation that will actually just put the clock on these things so it would help pull substantially more money. Because you actually knew what the investment of that power line, for those things to move that green energy. But until my friends on the left start to adopt these NEPA reforms, it is a fraud.
We are going to put all this money into new wind or geothermal, or this and that, but we are never going to allow the line sighting to move the power to the urban areas that actually need it.
I have more of these types of samples where if the public policy here is my brothers and sisters on the left really want more revenues from the wealthy, my pitch to them is stop subsidizing the rich. Because what you are talking about doing in raising capital gains, raising this--you do realize that tax foundation number the other day said the capital gains tax hike actually loses $33 billion. It loses $33 billion over 10 years.
The only thing that actually makes money is raising what they call the bases. It is how much you are able to put into the different tax rates. And with inflation right now, have my brothers and sisters on the left realize what they are about to do to people with homes?
How many of our homes have gone up dramatically in value? How much of that is actually appreciation? How much of it is just inflation?
How many of our kids or friends will ever be able to buy their first home anymore because what we have done in skyrocketing the prices? But how about the person that is going to retire or trying to sell the house because that is their nest egg, and we are now going to tax them on inflation. We are not going to tax them on appreciation, because the other house they have to buy is also inflated.
This is one of the math realities. We don't tell the truth that much of the capital gains that my brothers and sisters on the left are so excited about getting isn't actually capital gains on--So I made all this money. It is just the fact that we have had a bunch of inflation and the values went up.
Mr. Speaker, if you were to sell your house today, and run down the street and go buy something similar or even better, that other one you are buying is also just as expensive. You didn't really gain anything. But if the gain was over, what, $250,000 per person, you are going to pay taxes. You are going to pay capital gains on it.
This is absurd the way we are approaching the financing of this. And I will argue, I think we have some proposals that would make the environmental impact of infrastructure greener, more sustainable, financeable, workable. But so much of the bill right now reads as financing cash flow for those people that write checks to the left. We are better than this.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your patience with me, and I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 129
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
House Representatives' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
Alerts Sign-up