Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Mrs. Sallie Chalfin, who is retiring this month after 28 years of teaching. Sallie has impacted thousands of students' lives over the course of her teaching career, primarily teaching middle school mathematics and social studies.

Born in Springfield, Illinois, Sallie graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona. She first taught at Alta E. Butler Elementary School in Phoenix, followed by Tavan Elementary School and Laguna Elementary School in Scottsdale. Sallie then spent a short time teaching in Ooltewah, Tennessee at Snow Hill Elementary School before moving back to the Valley of the Sun to spend nearly 14 years teaching at Mountainside Middle School. For the last four years she has

taught at Cooley Middle School in Gilbert, Arizona.

Her passion for education has been evident not only in the classroom but outside of school as well. She founded the Mountainside Middle School Helping Hands Club, a school service club that provided assistance each month to organizations and/or people in need in the local community, and she ran that club for nearly 14 years.

Like so many of our nation's educators, Sallie continued to support students after school hours and tutored a number of them in math, going on to create a successful tutoring program that positively impacted many young people in middle school and high school. She has been a mentor to numerous students, and has always been willing to give her personal time to help them succeed. Her compassion, patience, and strong belief in her students have had lasting impacts long after they leave her classroom.

Sallie has dedicated her professional career to helping students learn and achieve excellence. I join her family, her colleagues and her students, past and present, who thank her for her years of dedication to teaching and for her service to our nation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to thank a very special member of my community. For as long as I have been involved in working for Arizona, Paula Linker has been a friend and supporter. Those who know Paula admire her for her courage and determination. She is forthright and dependable. She works every single day to make sure that the causes and people she cares for most have all the support she has to give. And, it is in that spirit that I am so pleased she is being awarded the Lincoln Lifetime Achievement Award from the Maricopa County Republican Committee.

The community celebrates Paula, and it is with great enthusiasm that I include these remarks into the Record of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, as I get myself organized here, this evening I am going to actually try to do something that is probably a little dangerous and a little tricky. I am going to try to do some math from behind the microphone.

You know, we have a running joke in our office that being a Member of Congress means you often work in a math-free zone but the math always wins.

And, you know, to our friends over here, I guess I should--I don't mean to jump onto this, but we just heard some of the discussion about Ms. Slaughter. I am, obviously, from a different part of the country, a different party, different philosophy, and she was always incredibly kind to me and funny. Most people, I don't know, completely understood. She had a brutal wit, and so a couple of times, when I would go in front of the Rules Committee, sometimes the banter back and forth, you sat there and go: Is she just playing with me? So just for my friends that are just leaving from that.

All right. So I am going to try to do a couple of things here, Mr. Speaker. I am going to actually sort of walk through what was in the most recent CBO report, but also a couple of the previous CBO reports and what is happening in our Nation's debt. At the same time, I am also going to talk about some of the positive things that are happening, and some of it because of the tax reform, some of the things that are happening in our unemployment and opportunity out there.

So, first off, let's walk through a couple of baseline numbers, and then I am going to grind through these so it tells a story of where we are going and where we are at as a country.

When we get behind these microphones and say, ``We have an entitlement crisis coming that we have to deal with,'' they have been saying it behind these microphones for 30 years. Well, it is here. The peak of the baby boom, I think, today, is about 62 years old. There are 74 million of us who are baby boomers, who will be moving into our benefits, and we don't have the resources to cover our promises, the way things are structured today.

Yet if you look at the Pew poll from a couple of years ago, only 15 percent of Republicans believe there is an entitlement crisis coming, but only 5 percent of Democrats believe it. So this is one of the great difficulties in this body where you often hear us saying: Speak truth to power. Well, how about math to power?

Well, what about our own constituents when they don't believe us because maybe there has been crying wolf or because it has been easier to say things like: Well, the problem is waste and fraud. There are problems with waste and fraud, but the numbers are tiny compared to what is about to happen.

So, some baseline math. When I was born, 1962, there were five workers for every one retiree. Today--and let's actually do 12 years from now, because that is when it gets dramatic. Twelve years from now, there will only be two. You and your spouse will be covering one retiree. So, in just my lifetime, we have gone from five workers for one retiree to two.

The math is brutal. So think about this. Over the last decade--so from 2008 to 2018--if you actually look at the growth in the size of spending in the government, 72 percent of it was just Social Security and Medicare. So if you actually look at the growth of the Federal spending, do understand, over the last 10 years, 72 percent of that growth were just those two programs: Social Security and Medicare.

Over the next 10 years, just the growth will be about $1.3 trillion. That is, functionally, just the growth in Social Security and Medicare will be two full Defense Departments. It is important to get our head around telling the truth, because if we are going to save these earned entitlements, we need to have that moment of reflection that comes off of a calculator instead of what happens so often behind these microphones where we try to make public policy by feelings.

So, first board I have up here, this is from the latest CBO report, which I actually have in here, which I am trying to keep from falling off the podium here, and there is actually some good news here. And, that is, because of what is going on the last couple of quarters, this last year, substantially, I believe, because of what is happening through growth-oriented policies, whether it be the tax reform, whether it be what is happening in the regulatory environment, you are actually seeing revenue into the trust funds go up a bit.

It is still a crisis, but if you actually look at SSDI, which is Social Security Disability Insurance, I think it was maybe 1\1/2\, 2 years ago I got behind this microphone, and there were only like 4 years left in the trust fund, and it went to zero.

Well, we gained almost 3 additional years. Now, some of that is because of policy, some of it is because of revenues because we have so many more people working right now. If you actually also take a look at some of the money going into Social Security, some of the money going into Medicare part A, that is the trust fund portion, we are actually picking up a couple of years--1 year here, 2 years there--in additional actuarial soundness of the trust funds.

Think of this as an opportunity. If we are going to have to make policy--and as I stand behind this microphone, I am looking for a unified theory. It is not just entitlement reform because, let's face it, that is the third rail. People go nuts. They run attack ads on you. It is more complicated. We need to do those things in our society that help people be employed, do tax regulatory policies, training policies, opportunity policies, because the more of our brothers and sisters who are working--how do we go from 63 percent labor force participation, which is a wonderful number from where we thought we would be 10 years ago till now, how do we get it to go further?

How do we get more of our brothers and sisters to move from being the long-term unemployed, the discouraged workers, and get them to move into the opportunities that are out there right now because we have, apparently, millions of jobs that are looking for workers, but it also does powerful things to these numbers?

We are also going to have to be honest about mechanisms within immigration. We have a birthrate crisis in this country. The last few years, if you actually look at the number of babies we are having, our numbers have substantially collapsed.

Well, remember, today's child is tomorrow's worker; and if in today's world, when you turn 65 and begin some of your benefits, the math is, you will spend about one-third of your adult life in retirement, but we don't have enough young people because these programs are pay-as-you-go programs. That is really important as we sort of walk through the math.

So if you are looking for that unified theory, it even adds in things like trade. If we are going to be a country that is very slow on our birthrate and immigration, we have designed a talent-based immigration system that also does some rewards for younger demographics, but we are also going to have to have trade with countries that also have positive demographics so we actually have customers.

There are lots of these things that all have to be thought of together. And something I am not going to do tonight, but I have done other evenings and we will do in a month or so, is a fixation on technology and how technology also can provide amazing opportunity in everything from changing the healthcare curve to actually allowing more of our brothers and sisters to participate in the workforce, even those with certain difficulties in life or even those who may be older but choose to work. Instead of being scared of technology, I think it may be our solution, depending on some of these cost curves.

So what is important here is, as you look at this chart, just take a look at this first number here. That is the Social Security trust fund. Now, as you know, our general fund has taken that money and borrowed it, and then we replace it with sort of special Social Security IOUs.

Now, if I remember correctly, last year we were paying the Social Security trust fund like 3.1 percent interest

for those borrowed moneys. So when you see some of the future slides here, or boards, you will actually see, here is the trust fund balance; but, also, here it is with some of the interest revenue that we also pay ourselves back.

So think of this craziness. Functionally, as a society, we borrow money to pay back the borrowed money because that cash that we took out of those trust funds has long since been spent. But on this board, in 10 years, the Social Security trust fund is cut in half. In just a few years, the Disability Insurance Trust Fund is empty, and if you actually can see it, the hospital, the Medicare part A, which is the only part really with the trust fund, in a few years, it is also down to zero.

So just getting our heads around, this is reality, this is math, but it is better than it was a year or so ago, but it is still a crisis. And these, I am going to put up two of these boards that is just going to show--do you see this sort of flat inflection here? That is actually part of the good news because where you see--last year, it would have been a constant curve downward that we were depleting the funds. As you know, they have gone negative this year, meaning that the revenues coming out of Social Security is actually greater than the revenues coming in, except for, since the tax reform and some of the economic expansion, all of a sudden we have hit a bit of a plateau.

CBO actually had it looking like it was going to last for a couple of years. I am actually much more optimistic than some of their baseline numbers, but that is that actual mathematical reprieve. You also see the two lines there. The variance in those is what we are also paying ourselves back as a spiff in interest.

So this one is Social Security, Old-Age Survivors Insurance Trust Fund. But then when we actually move over to the hospital fund--and important, you will see this in future slides. Social Security, in many ways, isn't my crisis--isn't our crisis, because it is a defined benefit. Fixing it, the math is actually fairly easy.

It is Medicare that becomes so incredibly difficult. And Medicare, as you are going to see in a couple of future slides, is a much larger financial issue in our near future.

So you actually just see sort of the same thing in that even the hospital trust fund now is moving negative, meaning we are taking more money out of it than is going in. Yet, you do see the little bit of the plateau we are getting because of the current payroll tax.

Just a point of reference on that. If you actually looked at the Tax Foundation's numbers when the tax reform was coming out, they actually had, I think it was, just shy of $300 billion over the next 10 years in new payroll tax, FICA revenues, and that actually reaches into this area.

This is a chart that I have never seen on the floor before, but is a really interesting one, because I think a lot of us don't really have our head around where does the money in Medicare come from? And, I am sorry, I know this is a little hard to see, but if you see this, this is the entire Medicare.

This 45 percent up here, that is actually general revenue. We are reaching into the General Fund and paying it out to hospitals and doctors and durable medical equipment.

The 36 percent there, that is actually the tax revenue. That is the payroll tax. That is within our FICA.

Then we also have some taxes on higher income earners and Social Security benefits, and it comes into here. And then you see this 3 percent down there. That is actually revenue that we pay ourselves. So we borrowed the money, gave it to the General Fund, spent it, but we paid ourselves last year what was the 3.1 percent interest. Well, that is what that 3 percent is down there.

So if you actually add it up, about half of this, half of what we spend in Medicare is General Fund, half is coming in through the payroll tax.

So if you look at part A, the hospital trust fund, okay, that is almost all payroll taxes. But if you start looking at part B and part D, you see the orange there, 75 and 78 percent respectively, that is all coming out of the General Fund.

On occasion, when I have actually done some of these presentations at home, you will get the hand that goes up and people think that it is all paid for by the payroll taxes. That actually creates sort of this weird misunderstanding of it is not all within the trust fund. Almost half of what we spend in Medicare actually is coming out of the General Fund. And there is actually where, as we see the substantial growth, you see General Fund spending growing, and why a substantial portion of that General Fund growing is actually part of this.

A couple of the other slides, just to understand, as we have 74 million of our brothers and sisters who are baby boomers moving into retirement right now--what is it, about 10,000, 10,300 every single day--it actually has a little bit of a steepening curve over the next 3 or 4 years.

Now, the headline on this is really important: Social Security, Health Entitlements, and Interest Costs. So you have to put in the paying interest on all of the money we have borrowed as a society. Driving 91 percent of the 2008 to 2028 spending hikes.

Remember my number before, that if we just do Social Security and Medicare over the last 10 years, 72 percent of the increased spending we had as a government, in the Federal Government, was just the growth in Social Security and Medicare. Okay. But if you add in also interest on top of it, it goes from 72 now to 91 percent. So understand, those are the levers that are going to squeeze out so many of the other things that are happening, but also the greatest fragility to being safe here.

Let's actually go onto the next board because I think it helps actually sort of show where we are going. But what is also important here is, as you look at these, those on the bottom, you will actually see things like defense and discretionary spending all being fairly flatlined, even with the most recent budget appropriations bill. If you actually look at it over the next decade or over the next three decades, almost all of the growth in spending comes from the two programs and covering interest costs.

This one is really noisy, and we will put these up, or put them out. Over the next 30 years--this one actually goes from 1960, but when you get here, look at the growth. You are heading towards a time, 2047. It seems like a lifetime from now, but you are in 2018 right now. So reach out 20 years from now, reach out 30 years from now.

Defense is 2.7 percent of spending equal to the size of the economy, so this is a per GDP slide. But the explosion, you see that red area, in that time when I am hopefully well into my retirement, 15.6 percent of the entire size of the economy. So we are going to reach in and take--say the economy is this big--we are going to take 15.6 percent of that, and that is just going to be Social Security and Medicare. And another 6.2 percent will be covering the interest costs.

It is unsustainable, when you start to realize you will be approaching 30 percent of the entire gross domestic product of this country in Federal spending. It is not defense, it is not nondefense discretionary, it is actually not even some of the other entitlements, even though sometimes that is easier to talk about behind these microphones. It really is where we are demographically as a society.

And look, demographics is our destiny. We can't pretend it is not happening. We are all getting older. It is the nature of life. And understand also, these numbers are assuming no wars, no recessions, no disasters. These are just baseline numbers, and that should make this really, really scary.

So how do I convince our voters and my fellow Members that we have a little bit of reprieve right now because we are in a time of terrific economic expansion, terrific employment, and good numbers coming in on the FICA tax? How do we use this as a moment to actually say, let's be adults, let's come up with something much more elegant than just entitlement reform? But there is actually ways where we can keep our promises to our seniors, keep our promises to those who are heading into their retirement, but also have it so we are not all here 15 years from now saying we have hit a deficit crisis: we can't sell our bonds, our interest rates are exploding, everyone is going to be taking huge cuts. Let's attack it today.

Because I believe if we do things that maximize economic growth, things that actually help our Nation's demographics, if we adopt a very aggressive adoption of technology, particularly in the healthcare space, and also provide some options within the entitlements, it is all stuff we should have done 10 years ago, but we have been given a little bit of reprieve right now because of what is happening in the economic growth.

So here is something to get our heads around. If you actually look at the numbers, you see the first two bar charts, that is Social Security. It turns out the average American will put in about $543,000 over their working life. And this is someone who would be retiring right now. And they are going to get out $616,000. So, okay, a little variance. Now, the problem is we have obviously already spent all of that money that was in the trust fund and we put IOUs in it, but still, it is a fair deal.

Medicare is our crisis. Apparently, someone who is retiring today will have put in about $140,000 in Medicare taxes. But the person who retires today is taking out about $422,000. So $140,000 in, $422,000 out. Now multiply that by just 74 million of us who are baby boomers and you start to understand the size and the scale of where the gap is coming from. It is math.

I desperately wish there was a way to blind the political rage and just say, it is math, and the math will always win. And if we would step up and be less political and more like accountants for a moment-- and I am sorry, I know as Republicans that is often our problem, is we sound more like accountants--but the violence, the cruelty we are going to do to our society if we continue to avoid the reality of the math, in a decade or decade and a half from now when the crisis is upon us, our ability to fix it will be very, very difficult. It is going to be difficult right now, but it is doable. There are approaches to make these numbers work.

This is also, for those folks who are now deficit hawks or newfound deficit hawks, a time for a moment of honesty and reality. Over the next 30 years--and this is not inflation adjusted, so for those of you who like to do constant dollars, you would probably reduce the number by about a third--but this is over the next 30 years. So if you plan to be alive for the next 30 years, this is what you are facing today: $82 trillion in cash shortfall; $78 trillion of that is just Social Security, Medicare, and the interest on that shortfall.

So all of the other things that we talk about: Oh, it is defense spending. No, it is not.

Oh, it is other nondefense discretionary. No, it is not.

It is other entitlement programs. A little bit, but not really.

It is the two programs that are earned entitlements that we, as Congress, in its wisdom over the last few decades, didn't make the math actuarially sound. And just pretending it is not there doesn't fix it.

So one more time, think about this. Over the next 30 years, the Social Security deficit, $18.9 trillion; the Medicare deficit, $39.7 trillion; and then the interest we are going to spend on those shortfalls is another $23.4 trillion. That is $78 trillion.

Now, if you want to use inflation adjusted, just reduce it by a third.

This is the greatest threat to our society. Because do you see at the very end, do you see the little blue, the rest of the budget actually is in balance over the next 30 years. And that is actually using the CBO scores, which I think sort of underestimate current growth. But that is just the math. This isn't Republican or Democrat; it is math.

Yet, it is the greatest threat to our society. And yet, when I stand in front of my constituents and we will have a meeting and we will discuss what is the greatest threat to society, the hands go up and it becomes all sorts of things, because this is really hard, it is really big, it is really difficult, and it is really, really, really important.

So as we walk through these, I need to do--and forgive my stacks of paper, but sometimes when you are trying to do the math, this is one of those where you lay out the Excel spreadsheet and it goes on and on and on and on.

Think of this. In 9 years, Social Security and Medicare, without the interest, will be 10.3 percent of the entire economy. So the United States Government will say: Hey, the economy is today what the GDP is, $21 trillion, $22 trillion, $23 trillion. Hopefully, 10 years from now, it is substantially larger. But 10 years from now, it is going to be over 10 percent is just being reached in and spent on Medicare and Social Security. It is the math.

But actually, over the next decade, it gets up into the 12s, and then a little while after that it goes up further. But that is of spending equal to the entire size of the economy. That is why it becomes so incredibly important that part of that holistic solution of how we save these programs is also that we maximize economic expansion.

So when we get into the discussion that has happened around here a lot lately, where we talk about the tax reform and the jobs and opportunity it is creating, I have had this running conversation, and I saw it on the floor here I think yesterday, where someone is pounding: Well, tax reform is not paying for itself, tax cuts never pay for themselves. That is partially true. Certain parts don't.

Certain parts are political-societal decisions to allow families to keep more, but there was an interesting little set of numbers. This often happens when you have your spreadsheets and everything laying out in front of you and you are going over them.

So in December, the Joint Committee on Taxation, which, as you know, was our scorekeeper when we did tax reform, actually said: Hey, here is what we think the tax reform costs in the static; here is what we think some of the dynamic growth is going to be.

But they were in two different reports.

I took the business numbers, just the business portion, to see what it was doing growthwise. I thought you would all find this interesting, or maybe I am the only one.

So it turns out that the business tax reform, I think the title II portion of our reform bill from December, said, hey, businesses, $653 billion in less taxes, revenues to us as a government over the next 10 years, but the international business portion of the book, we are actually going to take in another $324 billion.

So $653 billion, if you are here, but because we are bringing those moneys, the repatriation of those moneys back in and actually encouraging companies to actually come back to the United States and work here, we actually gain $324 billion.

All right. So I am still negative $329 billion over the 10 years on those C corps, the big corporations, but then on the next Joint Tax report, they talked about the dynamic scoring, what they saw as the growth estimates.

Not to bore everyone with it, but we have already seen the CBO has actually lifted up the growth estimates from even December, so there are good things happening there. So, hopefully, these numbers would actually expand from that.

But if you actually put the growth back in, they were estimating $384 billion of growth in new revenues because of the bigger economy, more business spending, more jobs, more opportunity. Now, most of that is from what was happening in those corporations.

So it turns out the business portion on the tax reform bill, in the Joint Tax's own numbers, actually is about $55 billion to the upside in their own modeling over the 10 years. I partially put this up because I was embarrassed I didn't see it in their math sooner, but that is what it is.

So I guess, ultimately, Mr. Speaker, I have a couple messages here. I understand we are sort of in a time of very difficult politics, but we need to sort of grow up and deal with the reality.

We are getting older as a society. We have made lots and lots of promises. We need to keep those promises. There are ways to do it, but every single day we don't step up and deal with the reality of math, we make it that much more difficult for all of us.

I am 56 years old. My wife, I probably shouldn't say this, but she is exactly my age. We are incredibly blessed. We have a 2\1/2\-year-old that is the best little girl ever. I have a mug that says so. She actually was with us here on the floor of the House last week. Maybe it is partially because of my little girl that I am going to double down on my efforts here.

How do I get our friends on the left and our friends in the majority and say

maybe it is time we do the most difficult thing any of us would ever do in our elected career, and that is actually take on the biggest issue of our times, and that is the unfunded liabilities and the promises we have made?

Do we do a BRAC commission, not to close things, but to actually look at everything because is a little bit of the solution reforming how we deliver healthcare and Medicare?

Is a little bit of the solution a different type of immigration system that maximizes economic expansion and benefits and demographics?

Is it everything all together? Is it maximizing economic expansion so payroll taxes become much more robust?

Is it actually creating a path for those who have been disaffected or are on certain types of income-based social entitlement programs that move them back into our workforce because there is opportunity?

The answer is we need to do it all at the same time.

But how do you get this body, with all the noise that is around us constantly, all the people banging on us constantly, the chaos that is today's media, which is an entertainment medium, get a number of people to pull out a calculator, pull out some great econometrics, understand the demographics, and do what is necessary to deal with the greatest threat to this country? And that greatest threat is not military. It is actually debt and promises we have made.

As you have already seen on the slides, everything else is pretty much in balance over the next 30 years. What blows us up is the promises we have made in Social Security and Medicare. It is fixable, but we cannot continue to wait.

The last thing I want to share, and I know I am backtracking a bit, there continues to be more good news that comes in from the tax reform and the positive things that are happening within the economy; but there was a great article today about what is also happening at our State and local levels, and this sort of fits into that unified theory of, if you are going to start to step up and do what is difficult, do it in a time when you have economic expansion. It turns out revenues to our States look like they are taking quite a pop upward.

Also, another article, it turns out that the International Monetary Fund did a calculation and fairly stepped up world growth for the next couple years and actually gave half the credit for that growth to the U.S. tax reform, meaning what we did here in the United States actually made a poor family on the other side of the world's opportunities better.

If you actually start to look at all the things that are going on around us, even in a time of turbulent politics, we have some good things happening.

Now let's step up and do the really hard things, because the hard things are how we are going to be judged in our future when all of us as elected Members leave here. Will we have saved the country from its greatest threat, which is the debt that is going to come crashing down on us very, very soon?

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 23 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, April 18, 2018, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to remove my name as cosponsor on H.J. Res. 50 and H.R. 60.

Mr. Speaker, tonight, I wanted to do, actually, two or three things. Some of this has been bouncing in my head since we were on this floor a few weeks ago doing the tax reform discussion debate, and the number of things that were said that just sort of drive you a little crazy because the math was wrong, or there was sort of make-believe.

For those who have been, shall we say, sleep deprived enough to stay up and watch some of my presentations, which I do every couple of weeks, you know I have a theme that Congress is often a math-free zone. So I thought this evening we would actually do a little math history and also talk about some really great things that are happening.

This is important. Think about the economy right now and what was happening in the anticipation of tax reform and now that tax reform is passed. During the tax reform debate, we would hear arguments, often coming from our brothers and sisters on the left, talking about income inequality.

So a couple of weeks ago, we did a presentation here on the floor demonstrating that if you live in the world of the last decade, where you are only growing about 1.8 percent GDP, and that joint tax and CBO--the people who are our scorekeepers--are saying, ``Hey, for the next 30 years, you are only growing about 1.8 percent GDP growth,'' that crushes people.

If you care about income inequality in our society, the way you solve it is growth. And there are lots and lots of data from leftwing groups, rightwing groups, and academic groups that say that growth is the greatest cure to a society that has actually started to move apart where the haves have more and the have-nots have less. It turns out that occurs when you have a stagnant growth society. It is obvious. Think about the last 10 years. Think about the projections of going the next decade at 1.8 percent GDP growth.

One of the things I wanted to talk about is: if I came to you right now and said, ``Let's just drop our partisan hats; you are not right; you are not left;'' are you joyful that we are seeing data right now, today, where folks with felony convictions are finding jobs at a rate that has not been seen in decades?

How would you feel when you see other populations that have actually had a really rough decade finding jobs?

Isn't that what we all come here and stand behind these microphones and talk about?

Well, guess what, it is happening. If you look at some of the unemployment data, populations that have actually gone the last decade in a really rough position are finding employment, and there are some amazing indicators.

Early last year, we came here and did a series of presentations on what was happening to the Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund. It was collapsing.

About a month ago, we had a meeting with the Social Security disability actuaries. Guess what. All of a sudden we went from the trust fund is gone in about 2 years to, hey, they just added an additional 4 years on it.

It turns out that parts of our society, which would have been heading towards disability payments and, therefore, leaving the labor force, were finding employment that actually worked with their difficulties.

This is great. These are good things. I know in this town of Washington it is just a partisan knife fight all of the time. I understand many of our brothers and sisters on the left believe rage is a way to politically communicate.

I would actually like the math. And what we are seeing happen in our communities and our society for the populations we both care about, good things are happening.

So how do we build policy around here that keeps it going?

The chart I have right here is sort of talking about what the projections were as of October 2017--so fairly recent data--of what was going to happen over the next couple of decades in the amount of our society that would be in the workforce, and you see these lines just crashing and crashing.

And all of a sudden--do you see the little dotted line--that is what we were projecting in 2016.

Then, all of a sudden--do you see the solid line--it is up substantially. And that was the 2017.

What was happening between those 2 years--2016 to 2017--that, all of a sudden, we start to see a substantial hopeful increase in people saying there are going to be opportunities in the labor force?

It was a combination of what this body has been doing in 2017, whether it be a rational regulatory model heading towards the optimism of tax reform.

If you love and care about people, providing opportunities to have your income grow, the ability to save for yourself, your family, your kids' education, good things are happening. How do we keep it going?

So I want to walk through a couple examples out there if you follow the press in our communities. I came across this story just last week in one of our counties in the southern part of Arizona, beautiful area. All of a sudden, there is such a labor demand that our local correctional facility is actually now having demand to do skills training and, actually, employment for

folks that, if it were just a year or two ago, were often being discarded.

Look for these stories, find joy in them, because this is what we care about: someone having an opportunity, saying they may have had a bad act in their life, but now that they are going to find employment, maybe they have a future.

This is true, also, for many of our urban populations, for our low- skill populations, for populations that may not have graduated high school. We have story after story after story of employers now having the resources that they are actually providing the training for skill sets for employment.

Isn't this what so many of us have gotten behind these microphones over and over and over and talked about, saying there is a way for everyone to participate in this growing economy and have a joyous, hopeful future and economic stability?

So I want to actually take this a bit further. Some of this is additional discussion on the debate that happened here last month and talking about revenues. Let's see if this makes sense.

My grandfather used to have a saying. He said: It doesn't matter how you play the game; it is who keeps score.

I know; it is an adjustment on an old colloquialism.

It turns out around here, we were having these discussions about previous tax reforms, previous tax cuts, and we would hear things, and you would go back and look it up, and the numbers were just made up. They were not what was actually done. So we are going to actually correct some of that record today.

But the other thing we are going to finish on, the final two boards here, we are going to actually sort of set the benchmark, the goal line of what the tax reform is expected to produce, what the tax reform should be judged by so we never experience what we had last month where people just make math up for their own argument, but we will actually know, saying: This is the goal line. Judge us by what we call the baseline.

So the slide right next to me right now was sort of talking about what we expected revenues to be. This is the history going back to 1967. You will actually see in here, from 1967 to 2016, the mean was 17.4 percent of the GDP came in as Federal revenues, and we had actually expected it to move up to about 18.4 percent.

I am sorry for this, but it gives you an idea.

And you are going to see this on the next couple boards. In times when we have raised taxes, when we have lowered taxes, when we have done all sorts of things, that line of the amount of the economy that comes in in Federal taxes actually stays within a very, very tight band, which lets you know maybe the fixation isn't on the tax rate but the fixation needs to be on a tax policy that maximizes economic expansion; because, if you are going to be always in there about that 17.4 to 18 percent of GDP, have a bigger GDP, have a bigger economy if you believe we need the additional revenues, which we do.

So on this, I want you to sort of take a look, because, overall, you can look at times where we have had recessions and you see the revenues go down; but you will see these dotted lines here, and these are some of the different, we will call them, tax cuts, tax relief. If you look on every location, there is the 2003, and then look a year or so later, revenues spike up.

In 2010, part of the Obama administration and this Congress, there was a tax change that actually gave back more revenues to workers and those who were creating employment, and revenues actually went up.

So it is on the chart. You cannot pretend that there hasn't been societal and economic expansions during these times.

So to actually drill this point down a bit more, in a lot of the debate we had here last month, we had Member after Member from the left come behind the microphones and say there is no such thing as a tax reform tax cut paying for itself. That is just absolutely not true. Now, there are lots of tax cuts over the history that didn't, but there are lots of them that have.

So let's actually walk through the actual data.

This is one of those occasions where, if you know what the baseline was, saying this is what the projections were of revenues before the change in policy, you can't keep moving the goal line after the policy is done to get your own argument to sound like it is competent.

So, in this case, we are going to actually look at when we did the capital gains cuts back in, I think that was, 2003. A handful of Members here on the other side came behind the microphones and talked about how much money it lost. It turns out that is not true.

So, if you actually look at the blue, that is what CBO and Joint Tax actually calculated that the revenues were going to be before those tax changes. Remember, the 2003 was functionally just a capital gains tax with a couple other things. The red was actual revenues.

Now, this isn't the debt, this isn't spending, because, you understand, when you actually look at a deficit number, there are multiple parts. There is the revenue and then there is the spending around here. And this body loves to conflate that argument, saying, well, the debt went up to this. It is because we kept spending.

Look at the revenues in isolation and see what happened in that trend. Well, if you look at this chart here, you actually see the red.

Now, this is capital gains taxes. There were lots of predictions that said capital gains taxes, you are cutting them, obviously we are going to take in a lot less revenue. It turns out it didn't work that way.

Let's walk through a couple more of these to just sort of demonstrate what that calculation is.

Also, as we discussed, the previous slide was actual hard revenues. This one has its percentage of GDP, and you even notice even on a calculation the size of the economy, there were more revenues coming in after the capital gains tax cut of 2003. Many of you actually will refer to it as the Bush tax cuts. I believe they expired in 2008.

Either way you try to judge it, whether it be on hard revenues or as a percentage of GDP, guess what. It not only paid for itself, it made money; and yet we have Member after Member after Member who will come behind these microphones and tell you it didn't.

So let's actually look at what the actual math was.

Prior to the 2003 to 2008 capital gains tax cut--sorry, I know sometimes these are big numbers and you are going sort of as fast as you can--we expected about $13 billion in revenues from those capital gains. Excuse me. It is $13 trillion over that time.

If you take a look at that $13 trillion number, that is what the baseline was before the 2003 capital gains tax cuts.

At the time it was modeled, CBO, Joint Tax came in and said: Guess what. You are going to go from the $13 trillion to only $12 trillion, $12.9 trillion.

Turns out, though, from 2003 to 2008, when you actually calculated the actual revenues from those capital gains tax cuts, what happened? How much money did we lose? Turns out we made $77 billion more than the projection of revenues before the tax policy change.

This is really, really important to get our heads around.

So when someone comes behind these microphones and says, well, there is no such thing as a tax cut paying for itself, sure there is, because here is the goalpost. The goalpost was set--or goal line was set before the tax policy change. That is what the projection was over those coming years. Then when the tax policy changed, it was projected to be down here. You have got to look at the data from 2003 to 2008; and when 2008 added up, it turns out the capital gains revenue was $77 billion higher than the policy before those tax cuts.

So just understand, this place loves to tell stories, but they often don't demonstrate the actual math.

So let's actually talk about what is going on right now. We heard predictions of everything from the end of the world to the end of the world in regards to tax reform. As you know, there is functionally a $1.5 trillion placeholder for the tax cuts and reforms that we did in December that are now in effect.

So let's actually lay this out. This is actually what the projection was going back to June. So this is fair and honest, saying this is what we call the

baseline. The baseline is what we should be judged by. Every year, whether I am here or another Member is here, I am hoping someone will come up here and say: Okay, here is what we took in. Did we exceed what the baseline was? Did we get less?

Well, over the next couple years, we will probably get less than that June baseline. But what also happened to the projections, the curve, the size of the economy? Remember, at the beginning of this discussion, we talked about some really neat things happening in our society.

When we started to work on the actual drafting of the tax reform bill at the beginning of the year, we were living in a world that was only going to grow in the United States about 1.8 percent GDP growth, and today we are over 3. Now, some of that is anticipatory effects. Some of that is a little excitement. There is a lot of confluence. But understand what that means in revenues and opportunities and just good things for everyone in our society.

So we are going to go to the next board just because this one is really hard to read.

So here is what I am asking everyone to do. If you be on the left, if you be on the right, if you happen to be in the media, understand that the June number was that, over the 2017 baseline, for functionally the next 10 years, was $43 trillion of revenue. That is fair. Judge us on that.

So 10 years from now, maybe someone will remember this and look back and say: Did we take in more revenues or less revenues in that time? Because, if you consider what was said by the left, it was the end of the world.

So that is the baseline number. We have on the previous chart sort of what was projected each year for the next 10 years.

So, if I am blessed to be here a year from now, I will come back January 2019, stand behind this microphone, and we will look at the revenues that came in in the 2018 fiscal year compared to what we projected months before the tax reform became real. Judge us by that, but don't come behind these microphones and make up Armageddon and then make up stories about what has taken place in the past.

This is important, because if you care about people, if you care about opportunity, we have some real difficulties coming towards us.

In lots of the data and lots of the charts, in about a decade and a half, 18 years or so, we hit a debt crisis, and your options are really simple. You have to do substantial reductions to the dollars flowing out that are substantially in entitlements because, remember, three- quarters of this government's money rolls out in entitlements.

Only about 15 percent of our spending is actually defense, and another 13 or so is everything else you think of government. Three- quarters of it is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid--all the things that are just formula.

And where we are right now, the peak of the baby boom is 60 years old today. So economist after economist after economist, particularly those on the left, have told us you can't grow more than 1.8 percent GDP. You are heading towards a debt crisis. You are heading towards this Armageddon.

So why wouldn't you stand up here, work to reform regulatory codes, the Tax Code, the immigration codes, these things, and maximize the things that will create growth and opportunity? I think that is just what, at least on the Republican side, we have been doing.

So the reason I put up this chart is more to lay a marker. I used the term ``goal line'' before. Understand that is the number before the tax reform, and I believe a lot of it is anticipatory effects on the economy. Hold us by that.

Now, who knows who will still be around here 10 years from now, but will revenue exceed $43 trillion? That is the benchmark. You can't say: Well, the debt went to this, our spending went to this, because they operate outside the revenues. That is policy decisions made here on what to spend, our disasters--God forbid--military action.

But the revenue number is what we should be judged by. And when you see what is happening right now in our communities, in our society, the number of organizations that have started to pay their employees more, the number of organizations that are bringing back billions of dollars to invest here in our country, the research, the development, maybe a lot of the Malthusian economists out there--and for those of you who don't get that, go look it up--who basically said the next three decades of our life are basically constrained, dear God, I hope they are wrong.

We as a body need to continue this optimistic opportunity of coming and saying: Okay. How do we get more of our brothers and sisters to actually be in the labor force?

We know today we have about 6 million jobs that are going unfulfilled, lack of skills. We also know from recent publications, because of the tax reform, businesses are taking some of those resources and putting them into job training and taking populations that were often being left on the sidelines and they are being drawn in. This is wonderful.

How do you actually turn to others and say: Should turning 65 or 67 be hitting a wall? How do we actually provide you the opportunity, if you so wish and so desire, to actually stay in the labor force and continue to help to grow this country? Because work, we know, is often good for the soul and the individual, but it is also really good for our tax revenues and really good for the size of our economy.

Remember, the bigger the economy gets, the less that cliff, that wall, that debt crisis that is about a decade and a half away, the more that gets pushed off into the future and the demographic curve that is those of us who are baby boomers, maybe that doesn't create a debt crisis. Maybe it actually turns into an opportunity for this economy, for this society to continue to grow and be happy and healthy and prosperous.

This is one of those times I get behind the microphone and I am actually excited from what I am seeing out there in the data. I ask this body, even with the partisan rancor, let's continue to adopt those policies that grow, that bring people, provide opportunities to be part of the labor force, to be part of the American Dream; and by doing that, the thing the left tells us they care about, income inequality, actually closes. The things so many of us care about of not hitting that debt crisis maybe get postponed, maybe never happen.

There is a path here, but it has to be everything. It has to be the tax reform. We just accomplished that. It has to be rationalizing our regulatory system. We are working on that. It has to be an immigration system that focuses on maximizing economic expansion. It has to be the adoption of technology. We are working on it. I think we can get there.

This is just fun having a chance to get behind this microphone and actually be positive and optimistic after the last few years of where things were quite dour.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor and tribute to Michael Ira Wiesner, who passed away April 19, 2015. This past May 30 Michael's family, loved ones, and community celebrated what would have been Michael's 70th birthday.

Michael was a wonderful husband to his wife Beth, and a great role model and confidant to his children: Amy, Adam, Ben, Ana, and Ashley. Michael had great love for his family and always supported everyone in their journeys to grow and learn. Throughout his life, Michael enjoyed playing golf and spending time in Vermont and always shared his interests with his wife and children.

I am proud to honor the life and legacy of Michael Ira Wiesner for his remarkable character, love of country, and care for his family-- which includes his wife Beth Wiesner, Oliver Schwab, my Chief of Staff, his wife Ana Schwab, Ashley Ellis, Amy Wiesner, Adam Wiesner, and Ben Wiesner.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to give everyone a slightly different view.

There was an interesting editorial this weekend in The Wall Street Journal, and it basically said: Hey, those on the left look at income inequality. Those on the right, we look at economic expansion, economic growth.

They are both honorable, but if you actually look at the data of the last 10 years and our own CBO projections of the next 10 years, 1.8 percent GDP, we are in incredible trouble, because you actually look at what happens when you have this flatlined economic expansion and growth, and income inequality gets dramatically worse. You look at the charts when we have had times of economic growth, it closes and everyone gets a better chance.

If you actually do care about the promises we as a government have made to retirees, working people, veterans, young people, we will not have the resources if we continue for the next 30 years, as our own CBO says, of 1.8 percent growth. Status quo is devastating.

Mr. Speaker, as we try to get the boards to line up, we are only going to do three of these today.

Mr. Speaker, one of the things I wanted to do tonight, and we did it during sort of the debate earlier today--I hear lots of the discussions from our brothers and sisters on the left about the tax bill, and we often tease that this place is often a math-free zone, but I wanted to actually go a little bit bigger on why this tax bill is actually so crucial to every American, whether you be on the left, on the right, or just out there working as hard as you can and not thinking about politics.

The chart I have right on the side, this is what our nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has come up with as our economic growth future. If you take a look over here, you will see 1.8 percent GDP growth for the next 10 years. But we then skyrocket up to just, actually, if you saw the details, just slightly under 2. And then the next decade, so 30 years from now, we fall back down to 1.9 percent GDP growth.

Why this is crucial is, as baby boomers are retiring, we have lots of promises. You have heard discussions, just even someone that was behind the microphone 40 minutes ago, on the other side, talking about Medicare.

There are estimates out there that, over the 75-year actuarial window, Medicare is $105 trillion underfunded. It is the largest unfunded liability we know in America and, possibly, the world. This is what happens when you are growing at 1.8 percent GDP.

If you love people, if you want this society to have an opportunity to keep its promises to our seniors, to our kids, to that working family, we must have economic growth.

I talked about this earlier today, a terrific editorial in The Wall Street Journal over this weekend, saying, hey, from the left's eyes, they think about equality, income inequality, and from the Republican side, we often sound like accountants. And I am sorry, but the math is important.

We think about economic growth because, if you look at the next chart, I just want you to sort of look at the very, very end. You see this sort of gold line, green line, the other green line. Do you see the separation? That is income inequality. It has grown dramatically in the last decade.

We have also grown at only 1.8 percent GDP the last decade. Slow economic expansion is where you get the income inequality.

If the left here actually cared about the very issue they talk about all the time, they would be embracing tax bills, regulatory bills, things that would actually expand the size of this economy so everyone has a fighting chance. But you find the politics of division very powerful around here.

Look, we all get the joke. We understand that so many of our brothers and sisters on the left, they are terrified, or their base is angry, however we want to define it. You can't let the Republicans have a victory, particularly on rewriting the Tax Code for the first time in 31 years, even though, if you actually look at many of their records in the past, they have all stood behind microphones and said the Tax Code is abysmal. It stifles economic expansion; it hurts hardworking people; and, in a low-growth environment, with this crappy Tax Code, this is what you get. But the politics are so uncomfortable that, for a lot of our friends, it is more uncomfortable to vote for something that actually might be seen as a Republican victory.

So I wish I had an elegant way of begging my friends on the Democratic side, saying: Just think about it as giving every American a fighting chance because, if we start to grow, you actually get paid more; you have more job opportunities; you can save money for your retirement, for your kids. Because where we are at today and where we have been the last decade, we are in real trouble.

You actually look at some of the nonpartisan groups, and even some of the partisan groups, on their analyses of what the U.S. debt structure looks like, there are many of these models that, in about 15, 18 years, they collapse, our debt to GDP.

What that means is, when we say, ``Here is the size of our economy, gross domestic product--here is the size of our economy, and here is the size of our debt,'' in just a few years, we actually surpass the amount of publicly sold debt.

This is not where we are borrowing from our own trust funds. The publicly held debt passes the entire size of our economy, and it keeps going and going and going and going. That is status quo.

Please understand, the status quo has many of the models collapsing, much of this economy, in about 15, 18 years because our debt is so huge it consumes everything.

Social entitlements right now are about three-quarters of all of our spending. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, that includes benefits of other welfare programs, earned and unearned, that is three-quarters of our spending, and it is going to become dramatically more.

So if you are someone who actually cares about health research, if you actually care about education, if you care about the national parks, if you care about the military, if you care about our relations around the world, all those are getting squeezed because of, substantially, the demographic curve we are already in, the growth of those populations, and our attempt to keep our promises.

If you care about keeping our promises, you care about the economic growth; and the tax rewrite is one of the key elements in that. And, yes, it is going to also require thinking through immigration. It is going to be thinking through regulations. It is going to be thinking through the adoption of technology.

But understand, you can't stand around here and give speeches about income inequality and then support the very policies that actually create it. The intellectual inconsistency around here is so frustrating.

This is a really interesting board, and why it is so important is that I ask for everyone to stop thinking about the actual debt number and think about it as its ratio, as its percentage, as its burden on the size of the economy.

If we have a $20 trillion economy and $20 trillion of debt, we are at 100 percent of debt to GDP. Our economy is actually a bit bigger than that, but if you actually look at this red line, that is entitlements.

Do you notice all those years where it is flat?

That is actually not because we were spending less money on entitlements. What that is about is we were growing as an economy. Yes, we were still spending more money, but we were growing faster than the growth in that spending.

If you care about fairness, if you care about opportunity, if you care about the ability to save, if you care about income inequality, you have got to step up and do those things that are difficult--and they are very difficult--that will maximize economic expansion in this country, because the difficulties that are coming in the next decade in our inability to have enough resources or enough borrowing capacity to continue to pay is devastating. We need this economy to continue to grow.

As we walk through this, I want to actually walk through also a couple of observations. And forgive me, but this is one of those opportunities where you have a few minutes to share.

I hold a seat on the Ways and Means Committee. It has been fascinating. On occasion you will hear folks say: Well, this was rushed through.

Well, except it was built on about a decade's worth of work. If you look at all the years that Dave Camp, the previous chairman of the Ways and Means Committee; and then the chairman after him, who happened to be Paul Ryan; and now the chairman, Kevin Brady, there are volumes and volumes of documentation. There are volumes and volumes of hearings and data. And there has got to be hundreds of hours of video out there of different hearings, both the whole committee and the subcommittees have done, in just trying to understand what affects economic growth, what works and what doesn't work.

An observation. How many people in the last couple weeks have you heard walk up behind these microphones and use the early 2000s as an economic example of a tax cut?

Now, understand, that was just substantially a basic income tax. It wasn't rewriting parts of the Tax Code. What so many folks forget to tell you, if you go back to 2002 and you actually look at what we call the baseline--and I am sorry, this is going to geek out a little bit-- baseline is our model of what we think revenues are going to look like and what spending is going to look like over the next decade. Then you look at those things that are referred to as the Bush tax cuts when they finally expired.

You do realize the revenues--the revenues--that came into this government were $77 billion higher than the projection, yet you will hear people get up behind the microphone and say: Well, these didn't pay for themselves.

But that is not the math.

Now, this government spent a lot more money than was projected. We had wars, we had bailouts, we had storms. We have had all sorts of things. We spent a lot more money. But if you actually look at the revenue line when those 2002 tax cuts expired, there was $77 billion more in revenue than was projected.

Is that because of the tax cuts?

Partially. Maybe. But there were lots of other effects in the economy, adoptions of technology, and all sorts of things. But the basic rule of thumb is: Here is where we thought we would be, and we were $77 billion over that.

Back to this concept of: Are there tax cuts that pay for themselves?

Absolutely.

Are there tax cuts that don't?

Absolutely.

And that was one of the really gut-wrenching parts of this discussion. If you actually spend some time looking at a nonpartisan group like the Tax Foundation and look at a lot of their modeling, they would come back to us and say: Hey, you could spend this money on something that is great politics, but you get almost no economic expansion from it. Or you could spend that same money or something over here that turns out not to be great politics, but is really good for the economy and really good a few years from now and someone being able to find a job, someone being able to be paid more, someone being able to save for their retirement or their kids.

How do you get up in front of an audience and say, ``I know we would love to have this because this gets me reelected. But for that same money, our society, economically, will be healthier, bigger, wealthier a few years from now if you put that money in expensing, in certain types of business tax cuts, because that expands the size of the economy''?

That is something a lot of folks haven't thought about as they grind through the technical details of thousands of thousands of pages of the Tax Code. Parts of the Tax Code are absolutely an economic document.

How you make us competitive in the world again? How do you maximize

economic expansion? How do you maximize opportunity for everyone to have a good-paying job?

But a Tax Code is also a political document. These are things that are very popular. These are things that get us elected. These are things that certain special interests line up at our door, walk around the hallways. If you actually saw the hallways over the last few months, I didn't know there were that many lobbyists in this town, all advocating for something for their business, for their State, for their community. All are honorable. But you have got to understand, when we put together a few-hundred-page bill and grind through it month after month after month and make a change here and a change here, and then realize the interactivity when they actually model it turns out this idea blows up this idea, the number of hours that have gone into making this math work are stunning and it is a really good document.

Is it everything all of us would want? No. Being a Representative from Arizona, I believe it is really good for my State.

But the thing I care most about is it being good for our country. I believe the tax bill, the tax reform, is fair to individuals. It is simpler. It is going to also deal with the hemorrhaging we have of corporations--and these are big corporations--leaving our country, hiding their profits overseas, and moving their expenses to the United States.

Is that fair?

Of course it isn't, but that is what the current Tax Code allows.

If you hear someone saying, ``Vote `no' on this bill,'' if you hear them saying, ``We prefer the status quo,'' understand what they are saying: We want to live in a world of absolute mediocrity, with almost no economic growth, no opportunity to save, have higher salaries and higher opportunities. We are happy having, in a decade and a half, a debt crisis in this country.

And what they are also saying is they are okay with the hemorrhaging of American industry leaving this country because of the tax arbitrage, where they can get a better deal in other parts of the world.

That is the absurdity of some of the arguments you have heard around this body.

So back to my fairly snarky comment: We get the joke. We understand there are many out there who are terrified of Republicans getting a win here. But I want to argue that this is not a win for Republicans. It is a win for our society because, if we start moving away from that 1.8 percent economic growth that our congressional budget has projected for the next decade, we have a fighting chance to financially keep our promises, to have a strong military, to have that money for our education, to have that money for healthcare research, and for you as an American citizen to see your salaries increase, see your ability to save, and know you have a brighter future.

Mr. Speaker, just as an idiosyncrasy, over the last couple months, I have been keeping a little bit of a notebook of many of the comments that have come from my brothers and sisters in this body, some supporting the tax bill and making claims, many opposing the tax bill and making claims.

I am going to make a mark in my calendar, 1 year from now coming back behind this microphone, and we are going to open up that journal and we are going to read what was said. Hopefully the American people at that time will understand this is political rhetoric and this is actually based in math. And that math, I am desperately hoping and desperately believing, is going to be great for our country.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 11 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, December 20, 2017, at 9 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, we all have subjects that we find fascinating.

For 25 years, I have actually kept files of abstracts on this because I actually participated in writing Arizona's 1993 concealed carry law.

I desperately wish this was an intellectually honest conversation about the data, because we all want our communities and families to be safer. I believe I can show you the statistical abstract data.

In States like Arizona, adjusted for population, the violent use of firearms is almost one-half of what it was before the adoption of our concealed carry law.

Now, was concealed carry responsible for that?

Of course, not. But it is a factor. Some of it is mental health, some of it is law enforcement, some of it is incarceration. It is complicated. But if you actually look at these data abstracts of crime statistics in the United States on the misuse of firearms, it turns out that States that have adopted concealed carry compared to States that have gone other directions, States that adopted have gotten safer.

There is actually some brilliant articles when you compare Florida and Illinois: big, populated, demographically complex States. Florida has gotten dramatically safer. Illinois has not.

If you really love our families, love our communities, this needs to be an intellectually sound discussion of what factors make us safer as a society. I believe this bill leads us in that direction.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, before I start, what I wanted to share is I have been blessed to be on the Ways and Means Committee now for 11 months. I have found the members on the left, the right, a group of folks with pretty high IQs. It is a smart bunch. We have different views, even within our own, within your own, but it is fascinating. It is joyful to be on a committee where when you do argue with each other, particularly when we have conversations in the back, they happen at a fairly high level.

Can I give you sort of a personal global view of how I am viewing this tax reform? I truly believe this will be the single biggest, most important vote I make in my life.

We all know what status quo is. Status quo, in many of the models, basically says, in about 15, 18 years, we hit a debt crisis. Are we arguing here for status quo or our change, or are we having an argument here that you don't like our changes, but you also agree we need to have a revolution in our economic growth?

If we build our lives as it is set right now with a 1.8, 1.9 percent GDP growth for the next three decades, my 2-year-old's future is miserable. Those very seniors whom someone was just speaking about, do you understand what happens to those earned entitlements? There is no money. We hit a debt crisis. We are just a few years away from publicly held debt equaling the size of our entire economy.

If you love people, if you care about this country keeping its promises, we have got to grow. We have seen the attempts at sort of managed economy, managed control, managed targeted.

How about something much more elegant: let's make us competitive in the world again; let's get rid of all the lobbyist-created little special deals in the Tax Code, or as many as we can politically, and do everything we can to get this economy growing.

Yes, it is going to require more, in my view of the world, than tax reform. We are going to have to deal with immigration, we are going to have to deal with technology, we are going to have to deal with regulation, but we all know around here that if we do not have a revolution in this Tax Code, our future is pretty dark.

With economic growth, our future is actually really bright. When you see the Atlanta Fed telling us, just in anticipation of tax reform, we have crossed 3\1/2\ percent GDP growth right now, maybe that 1.8 percent misery of economic growth isn't our future, isn't the future for my little girl, isn't the future for every American, but it is an opportunity for this country to start looking as it should: a land of opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the Grand Opening of the Boulder Crest Retreat for Military and Veteran Wellness in Sonoita, Arizona. Boulder Crest Retreat is a facility that provides free accommodation, recreational and therapeutic activities, and breakthrough combat stress recovery programs for veterans and their families as they make the transition home from war.

This desert oasis focuses on healing activities for our Nation's bravest. Here, they have the opportunity to participate in a range of outdoor recreational activities such as hiking the Arizona Trail, and are provided with a number of positive growth activities including meditation, journaling, and music, canine and equine therapies. This is complemented by Boulder Crest's signature Progressive and Alternative Training for Healing Heroes (PATHH) programs, which is based on the science of post-traumatic growth. Its success is visible by the testimonials from those that have benefitted from this program.

I would like to recognize Ken and Julia Falke, who founded Boulder Crest Retreat, the hardworking staff, volunteers and the organizations that have been so charitable in funding these important facilities. Additionally, I would like to recognize the A. James and Alice B. Clarke Foundation's generous donation, which paved the way to bring Boulder Crest Retreat to Southern Arizona.

Mr. Speaker, I have a strong appreciation for our veterans, their families and the sacrifices they made so that our fellow citizens may enjoy the freedoms and opportunities that make America great. I wish only the greatest success for this facility going forward in its mission to help our service members focus on strong, positive growth.

Madam Speaker, this is one of those moments where-- and forgive me, but I sometimes feel like I live and work in a math- free zone, because you can't intellectually have it both ways, where you are talking about the great difficulties coming, and then when you bring in the actual data and you actually start to look at the charts that we all see, it isn't in the future, it is right on the cusp of us, and that is the debt and entitlement crisis.

If we do not start to get some economic growth, we are in so much trouble. If you really care about Medicare, Medicaid, the children, this education program, this health research, where is the money coming from?

It is on the cusp. This is less than a decade away. In just a few years, we cross 100 percent of GDP, and that is publicly held, and then the ability to sell the bonds if we do not get economic growth.

But if you look at the last 30 years in the charts and the data--and I am sorry, I know this is small and I know it is math, so it is uncomfortable for a lot of people in this body. If you actually look across here and you see, this is entitlements to GDP, when we have been in times of economic expansion, all of a sudden our ability to finance, to maintain the promises we have made as a society, if the math works. And this is a commonality we both understand, economic growth is our only path. Because if it is not, are you on your side ready to do fairly draconian cuts?

If we actually look at some of the data that has come from the Tax Foundation, the Tax Foundation's modeling says $1 trillion of additional taxes, but almost $300 billion in additional payroll taxes over the 10 years.

I have already heard a couple people get behind the microphone here and use the term that the trillion and a half is dynamically scored. No. That is a static score. All dynamic scoring is--so we all have a commonality--you calculate back in the size of the economy. You loop back in the size of the economy, and you can't have it both ways. You either support dynamic scoring or you oppose it for global warming. You oppose it for immigration. You oppose it for the stimulus, because we actually, as a body, every March, when CBO brings us the numbers, they give us a number that has been dynamically scored.

I know we all want what is best for this Nation, but as I dig through the math, if we get the economic growth that I believe this tax model, so many of the very difficult decisions we as a body have to make over the next decade get much easier. Let's hope we get there.

Mr. Speaker, I want to do actually two or three things specifically tonight. One is walk through a bunch of data on why the tax reform proposal is actually just sort of crucial to our society and where we are going and, number two, actually walk through some impressions of being one of the new members on Ways and Means.

I have been here in the U.S. House; now I am in my seventh year here. I have only been on the Ways and Means Committee now for a year. It has been one of the most fascinating experiences of my life because of the number of meetings, the diving into data, the ability to sort of make things mesh together and make the math work, with an understanding of how serious this is.

The problem is, in the somewhat toxic partisan environment we are in right now, I know there are some of my friends on the other side who are really uncomfortable with the idea of Republicans having a win.

I know there are others who are constantly looking for what the partisan wedge is. I am going to ask, at least for just a couple of moments, that we sort of think through something altogether.

We are going to walk through some of these boards. If you see this one right here, this is with the borrowing from all the trust funds. But our country is already 105 percent of debt. If you add up the publicly held debt and that from borrowing from the trust funds, it is over 105 percent of debt to GDP.

Lots and lots of economists get really nervous when you start to say: Hey, in just a few years, the amount of debt issued by this government will be the size of the entire economy. This is issue, not borrowing from trust funds.

Understand that the curve is steepening because the trust fund balances are falling. We are finally hitting that inflection period where demographics are moving our numbers. Remember, the peak of the baby boom is 60 years old today.

We have obligations that we as a society have made to our brothers and sisters who are getting older. We have a real problem. You are going to see in a number of these slides that if we continue to stay as a society, as a country, that is only growing. Remember, the projection right now is 1.8 percent growth over the next 20 years. You mathematically cannot meet your obligations. It is called a debt crisis. It is called an entitlement crisis.

One of the key solutions to being able to meet our obligations, to meet our promises, is we need a society, an economy that is growing. If you love people, if you care about them, if you want them to be able to save and have opportunity and a future, you need a society that is economically expanding.

I accept that this body is often about our next reelection. This is an observation that I learned this year. There are some things that are in the Tax Code that are brilliant politics. They get you reelected. They give you something warm and fuzzy to go talk about at home. They are really bad economics.

It is hard to stand in front of a group and say: Hey, we get to deduct State and local taxes. Yay.

Then you look at the economic expansion modeling of it and there is almost no economic growth for a huge amount of spending.

I know it is a sensitive issue with a lot of my brothers and sisters here on both the right and left who are from high-tax jurisdictions, but understand one of the reasons it has been looked at is that it is a tremendous amount of spending in the Tax Code and there is almost no economic expansion from that spending.

Whereas, if that same spending in the Tax Code is in things that grow businesses, grow job opportunities, grow the ability to save, you can actually see the modeling where the economy gets bigger, where all of us have job opportunities, and over the coming years, you get paid more because the economy is growing.

This is great politics. This is good economics. I don't think those of us on the Republican side know it--and I know so often we get behind these microphones and we all sound like accountants on steroids--but the math is important.

How many times has this body made public policy that felt good, that was good politics, and really crappy economics?

That is how you wake up one day and your society is $20 trillion in debt and the curve is about to blow off the charts.

Remember, a lot of outside groups on the right and left have been doing modeling, saying there will be a debt crisis in about a decade and a half. It is coming, and it is coming very, very fast at us.

To have an understanding of just how difficult these numbers are, on this chart I have up here, do you see the red area?

This is for 2027. But you figure we just finished the 2018 appropriations and budgets, so we are already starting to plan the 2019.

Well, 8 functionally budget years from now, only 11 percent of this Federal Government's spending will be for things that people think of as government. Everything else--defense and entitlements, mandatory spending, both earned entitlements and unearned entitlements--will be everything other than 11 percent of the spending.

Public lands, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Park Service, health research, education, all the things you think of as government will be only 11 percent of our spending. Everything else will be either military--the military will also be only 11 percent--and everything else after that is mandatory. It continues to grow that way.

If you are someone who cares about education, who cares about the environment, who cares about these things, understand that if you do not start to get some dramatic economic growth, you are going to be squeezed out.

The dollars spent on your priorities are disappearing. It is math. We do not have the revenues. It is going to get crushed. It is coming very, very fast. This isn't Republican math or Democrat math. It is math.

What if I came to you right now and asked: What is one of the most powerful things we can do as a society to keep our promises?

My brothers and sisters on the left often talk about our promises to retirees. They are absolutely right. The fact of the matter is, I believe that for someone who retires in the next couple of years, they will have put in about $190,000 for their Medicare. They are going to receive over $600,000. That is in, like, dollars.

Multiply that by 76 million baby boomers in that 18-year period. In just that differential, understand that one of the root causes is demographics. We still made a promise. The way you are able to cover that promise is economic growth.

When you look at this chart, it is fairly new from a Stanford economist. I found this in a book about 2 months ago. Do you see that red line on the left-hand side? Do you see where it lays fairly flat?

That is actually a line that says: ``Entitlement spending to GDP.''

The size of the economy, the entitlement spending in the 1990s, in the late 1980s didn't go down. It was still going up. The difference was the economy got bigger.

So when you hear us talk about debt-to-GDP ratios, start thinking about that denominator.

How do you grow the economy so that if we keep our promises, it doesn't crash the economy and functionally almost bring the world down?

We have some charts that make it very clear that when we have been in times of economic expansion, we have even been able to spend more money on these entitlement programs; yet we bent the debt curve and the amount of that consumption to the size of the economy.

I know this gets a little geeky, but at some point the math is important. I know we just spent a couple of hours talking about peoples' feelings on a 400- or 500-page tax bill, but let's get some of the math correct.

Understand that the chart next to me is sort of the CBO projections. The math is worse than even the CBO projections. If you can look--and I know this is small--but the CBO missed the 2017 number by over $100 billion. The fiscal year we just finished, the 2017 fiscal year, we borrowed $666 billion. This is one of the good years.

So, remember, you have heard people talking about in a static score over the next decade--10 years--this tax bill costs a $1.5 trillion. But we borrowed $666 billion last year, with no tax relief and a government policy that functionally gave us a 1.8 percent GDP.

Take a look at this year. It was supposed to get much better, but now that we know we have the spending for the hurricanes and disasters, we know we are going to blow through that.

If you can see it in about 4 budget years, because of that 1.8 percent economic expansion, we are going to start borrowing $1 trillion a year.

Yes, building a tax bill with $1.5 trillion borrowing over 10 years is something you have to really think about. You need to design it so we get the economic expansion so that the size of the economy gets bigger so there are opportunities to take in new revenues.

But do understand that if you are part of the side that you are just hearing supporting the status quo, the status quo is already a disaster and is just on the cusp of time. The disaster is already here. The disaster is status quo and doing more of the same.

In 4 budget years, you are borrowing $1 trillion a year, and it goes up from that. So doing nothing, continuing the status quo, is the entitlement crisis, is the fiscal cliff, is the debt crisis. We don't have a choice. We must get together and do what is necessary to get this economy growing.

We heard one of the previous speakers--who is one of the people I really like; he is a good guy; a Democrat of Illinois--talk about the Tax Foundation. I sort of forgot this part. This is a quote from the Tax Foundation study. It is $1 trillion in new revenues.

Our static score that we are doing--and the Tax Foundation score is higher in spending--but our model says it is $1.5 trillion of spending in the Tax Code static. That means no economic growth. We are going to talk about what dynamic growth is. They say a new, additional trillion dollars of revenue. That is what we call dynamic scoring.

What is dynamic scoring, you may ask. Dynamic scoring is nothing more than asking: How does this policy affect the size of the economy? And then you loop it back and look for the feedback effects.

If you are a Democrat and you are saying, ``I don't believe in dynamic scoring,'' you really need to think about that position because you believe in dynamic scoring when the left introduced an immigration bill. It was dynamically scored.

Global warming. If you actually look at the scoring, it has feedback effects. Go back to the stimulus.

We all use dynamic scoring around here. We just seem to only want to embrace it when it supports our own political views. Every March, the Congressional Budget Office gives us an update that has economic feedback effect in it. That is called dynamic scoring.

For both my friends on the right and the left, you can't just pretend that public policy has no effect in the size of the economy when it is contrary to your certain political pitch that you are making right now.

Just understand, the Tax Foundation says $1 trillion in new revenues. But the other things that are really important--and this actually starts to give you an understanding of some of the effects--is we have close to $300 billion in new payroll taxes.

Understanding that Social Security and Medicare are pay-as-you-go programs, today's taxpayers are functionally paying today's recipients. That is why I have been behind this microphone over the last year talking about things like demographics and birth rates and the really dangerous effects these low birth rates are having in the society, but that is other stuff.

We will have almost $300 billion in new payroll taxes. So I have $1 trillion in new income taxes and close to $300 billion in new payroll taxes for what we model is a trillion-and-a-half-dollar static score.

You may not like the numbers, but the Tax Foundation is really good at this. They have some of the most advanced models that exist anywhere in this country and it is worth going to and reading their information.

Right now, when you hear us talking, we are giving you just static scores. It is important to know that the freaky smart people are out there modeling, saying what we are doing is expanding the size of the economy as you go into the future.

Why is this so critical?

If you see this chart, this is what is being projected for our future. This is the CBO's estimates over the next, I believe it is, three decades.

Functionally, a 1.8 percent GDP growth. This is their projection. This is what they see our future looking like.

But if you go back to the 1950s--to 1973, yeah, we had a demographic bubble that was young and moving into the workforce. If you look at the late 1970s, 1990s, we were actually doing an average of 3.3 percent GDP a year.

If you actually are someone like I am where you just are fascinated-- GDPNow, which is the Atlanta Fed's calculator, right now, has our GDP, as of today, at 3.2 percent GDP. That is amazing. The model we have been given says we should be at 1.8. We are substantially above that right now in anticipation of tax reform.

Apparently, a lot of the economy out there is already anticipating a better regulatory market and a better tax regime, and, with that, they are spending, they are investing, and we are already seeing it in the baseline numbers. This is something we can't screw up. It is incredibly important.

So let's try to understand, once again, if you care and love people and want them to have an economic future, why that growth is so incredibly important. If you actually sort of look at the difference-- and this is sort of a difficult chart to understand. But if we are sitting here somewhere between this 1\1/2\ and 2 percent GDP growth, and you wanted to double the size of the economy, you are looking at having to wait over 35 years.

What happens if we were in the very tail end? And look, from my own math, I don't think we get there. We might have some years that touch it. But what would happen if you were at 4 percent GDP growth? You go from over 35 years to a little over 17 years to double the size of the economy. Well, how about if we could beat 3\1/2\ percent GDP? You go from over 35 years to 22 years.

Just understand the size of the economy has almost everything to do with what you are paid, your ability to have a pay raise, your ability to have enough cash flow in your life so you can save for your retirement. I know this seems like an academic lecture, but it is not. These things affect our lives. They also affect our ability to pay our promises. It also affects our ability to protect our Nation. It is not a game.

So another way to sort of look at the same numbers--and I just happen to like this chart, so that is one of the reasons we are putting it up. You can see sort of the bubbles. What would it take to sort of double that GDP per person? You know, okay, so instead of the entire economy, how about you, as an American citizen, the size of the economy as you-- because as a participant in the economy, this has something to do with what you are paid, your ability on your lifestyle, the things you can own, the things you can do for your family.

The difference between the 2 percent--and let's just jump up to 4 percent, and the number of years, you start to realize the difference between 17 years or 35 years. This is about every one of us as an individual in this country that if we can adopt tax policy, that is good for families, good for the middle class, but also makes us competitive in the world again, and we start to grow, good things happen. Do you do a Tax Code that is great politics or really good economics?

Some of the math is hard. We live in a society right now where if you can look at the very far left side of this chart, the top 20 percent of our society, of our income earners--the top 20 percent of income earners are paying 88 percent of the Federal income taxes.

You start to understand. If I came to you right now, just as a simple math problem, and said, ``Hey, I have got 20 percent of very high income earners who are paying 88 percent of all the Federal income taxes, but I really want to make sure that the quartiles of our hardworking middle-income earners are getting a lot of this benefit,'' you can understand why there were such great math problems in making these things work, because 88 percent of all your Federal revenue is sitting out here with 20 percent of the population.

That is actually why we have had to do a lot of the things we have done. And where certain deductions, certain things phase out, it is just a math problem. But remember, you see that red line, and you see where it crosses the blue line? That is where publicly held debt will exceed the size of our economy.

This government will have issued debt to foreign buyers, to your retirement account, to pension funds that will exceed the size of this economy, and it is only a few years away, and that is what the status quo is. That is where we are going.

I will make you the argument, we don't have a choice. We must make a simpler, a fairer, but a dramatic and more progrowth tax system as part of this country's culture.

In being blessed to now be on the Ways and Means Committee, which I am incredibly appreciative--they are some of the smartest people I have ever worked with, are really smart calculators and people--there is something called Joint Tax. If you ever want to know where all the freaky smart people or president of your high school math class are, there is 50 of them in there. I think like more than half may have Ph.D.'s in math and statistics and accounting. They tell us, the testimony to the committee is, 94 percent of the tax paying population will now do their taxes on this. Only 6 percent of taxpayers in the country will need to itemize.

There is actually some really interesting math that also starts to happen when you have made a tax system fairer, simpler, and progrowth. But the simplicity of it makes compliance, makes the ability to pay, makes the ability to participate so much easier and so much more elegant.

I have been proud to be part of the team that has helped build this tax plan. It is not perfect, and it is still going to go through a couple of more changes. That is the way it works. We will get the Senate product; we will sit in conference committee; we will work out the math; but understand the status quo is disastrous for every American, and I actually believe it is disastrous for the world. The tax reform gives us an opportunity to grow and have an incredibly bright future if we do it the right way.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.