Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, this is one of those moments where I ran out of the Financial Services Committee where we were voting because I thought it was important, being an Arizonan, but also spending lots of time in this part of the State, which is a beautiful part of the State. And many of these little communities there have devastating unemployment, and they're literally furious with Washington, D.C., for destroying their timber jobs and squeezing their mining jobs. And then we stand here with something that, for a little State like Arizona, could be billions and billions of dollars of economic growth.

When you think about this one ore deposit could represent 20 percent of the Nation's copper, how can we even be debating this when you also realize an average single-family home uses about 440 pounds of copper? Do you want housing? How about a car? A car uses 55 pounds of copper. This is where it will come from.

The last thing I want to say is my good friend Congressman Gosar from northern Arizona, and actually from all over Arizona, is deserving of a gigantic thank you here. To be a freshman Congressman and to step into this body to deal with what ultimately is sometimes a cantankerous issue but incredibly important to the Nation and the Southwest and to those of us that live in and love Arizona, this is important. This is a lot of jobs, a lot of economic growth. Congressman Gosar gets a lot of credit for getting it this far.

Mr. Speaker, during this last district work period I had the opportunity to attend a press conference announcing the expansion of the Mayo Medical School in Arizona. This expansion, which will be done in cooperation with Arizona State University, is an exciting event that will lead to continued improvements in the field of medical education and provide research to meet tomorrow's needs.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to insert into the Record the comments of John Noseworthy, M.D., Mayo Clinic president and CEO, on the announcement of the partnership between the Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University. This is a truly wonderful relationship between these institutions and I look forward to having the Mayo Clinic in Arizona for many years to come.

Remarks of John Noseworthy

We are here today because of a convergence of three

imperatives. First, there is a strong need for new models of

health care delivery in our country. Second, Mayo Clinic

believes that one answer to this need lies in new models of

training future physician leaders. Third, we are ready to

take a bold step in this direction today with our

collaborator, Arizona State University. This new Arizona

branch of Mayo Medical School is firmly aligned with Mayo's

commitment to patient-centered academic excellence and

redefining the field of medical education. Together with ASU,

we will create the health care workforce of the future.

Clearly, the United States is a leader in bringing

innovation and new technologies into health care, yet health

care in the United States is fragmented, the quality of care

is variable, imperfectly measured, and expensive with costs

rising every year. Many patients struggle to find answers

that integrate the opinions of their physicians. Patients

don't always benefit from advances in

medical knowledge. Studies have shown that it takes up to 17

years for important new knowledge to be broadly applied in

medical practice--to move from research bench to bedside.

Patients struggle to pay their bills and our country cannot

sustain the growing costs of health care, now exceeding 17%

of our GDP.

Mayo Clinic believes that one answer lies in new models of

training future physician leaders. Today we are taking the

lead and announcing a bold new educational model to train the

physicians of tomorrow. This model addresses the importance

of delivering patient-centered, team-based care--the two

essential elements of how we practice at Mayo Clinic. This

new model will teach the requisite skills to design models of

evidenced-based, data-driven care. Our experience at Mayo

Clinic leads us to believe that this model will ensure better

patient safety, better patient service and improved outcomes

using systems engineering, health economics, and other

disciplines.

Mayo Clinic has expertise in this approach. We recently

announced the opening of our Center for the Science of Health

Care Delivery. We are redoubling our efforts to bring

innovation into the medical school classroom--to shape and

arm physicians of the future to be leaders in the development

of new models of care.

Today and together, Mayo Clinic and Arizona State

University are advancing this new discipline--the science of

health care delivery. I am very pleased to announce that Mayo

Clinic will expand the Mayo Medical School, based in

Rochester, Minnesota, to Arizona. The branch campus we

announce today will be known as Mayo Medical School--Arizona

Campus. It will operate under the governance and oversight of

Mayo Medical School. Each class here in Arizona will include

48 students. This branch will build on the academic

excellence of Mayo Medical School while also reflecting the

need for medical school curriculums to be geared toward

training the physicians of tomorrow. This new medical school

will be an important pipeline for future leaders in the field

of medicine around the nation, the world, and right here in

Arizona.

The students of this new campus will earn an MD degree from

Mayo Medical School and a Master's degree in the Science of

Health Care Delivery from Arizona State University. This is

the first medical school in the nation to embed the science

of health care delivery into its four-year medical education.

Other medical schools are moving in this direction because

they too believe this is the right approach.

Today's announcement reinforces Mayo Clinic's commitment to

Arizona and helps secure Mayo's role as the premier academic

medical center in the southwest. We are one step closer in

fulfilling our commitment to being a beacon for clinical

excellence in the western United States.

Health care is about treating patients in a manner that

delivers optimal outcomes and quality of life in the most

efficient way possible. Well trained physicians are one of

the centerpieces of our collective future. We're excited to

be here today to make this important announcement for Mayo

Clinic, for Arizona, and for patients today and in the

future. We're eager to get started and look to the future

with great confidence.

I thank the gentleman from Florida.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I promise I will not take the whole 60 minutes, because I know many folks have flights to get to.

Madam Speaker, one of the reasons I'm here--and we are also working on some additional, shall we say, display items for maybe next week. Maybe I'm out of my mind, but this last couple of weeks I've been actually reading from top to bottom, beginning to end, the Medicare trustees' Federal hospital insurance and Federal supplemental medical insurance trust fund actuarial report for 2011. It's actually more interesting than you would think, because you go through about 270 pages, lots of great information, not that hard to read, so anyone that's actually watching this, I strongly suggest, if you have the stomach for it and you really need a little help in falling asleep, this might be the occasion. Google it, take it off the Internet, but do this for me: This is one of those occasions I'm going to ask you to go to the very end of the report and start with the last three pages, because that's what I'm standing here to talk about is you have a report that basically gives a window of a dozen-some years of actuarial soundness, but when you get to the last three pages, it basically says something like Roseannadanna, that character from Saturday Night Live from 20 years ago: ``Never mind.''

I brought a couple of the boards we already had printed up to sort of demonstrate what's going on, and then I wanted to talk about this.

Day after day after day after day in the political theater of this Congress, I see Members walk up to the floor, walk up to the press, send out press releases saying, ``We don't want to change Medicare as it is in law today.'' How many times have we heard the attacks on the Republicans saying, ``They're trying to change Medicare as we know it''? I need you to think about that comment, because what's in this report is Medicare as it is in law today. You need to understand what the left is defending and the crash that is just a few years away; and I'm standing here today to defend the fact that, as Republicans, we're saving the program. We are actually trying to find a way to make Medicare actuarially sound so that you and I can have it but also our kids and our grandkids can have it.

So let's actually first walk through the numbers, and then I'm going to read parts of these last three pages. I promise it's more interesting than it sounds, and it's more depressing than you can ever imagine, and this is the current law.

All right. A couple of primers on some spending out there.

2010, how much of our spending is mandatory?

2016, you'll start to notice mandatory spending is consuming everything we are.

Another point of reference. Today, when we borrow, we're actually having to borrow to cover all the discretionary. That's defense. That's all the alphabet agencies. We even have to borrow today to cover a portion of the mandatory spending. Think of that. The Medicares, the Social Securities, the Medicaids, the VA benefits, interest on the debt are actually living on borrowed money. I would think that would set off an alarm bell in someone's head that there's something horribly wrong out there.

So let's actually bounce on to this graph and just sort of give you a concept of how fast these numbers are eroding and why things like the battle over cut, cap, and balance are going on in this body, because there seems a willingness here by many Members--and I've got to be very careful how I phrase this--that I believe telling the public the truth of how difficult these numbers are and how dangerous they are to our Republic may mean they don't get reelected, may mean they have to stand up in front of an audience that for years and years and years they've said, ``Don't worry. It's fine.'' How do you go back in front of that same audience and now tell them, well, maybe the numbers weren't fine, because the truth is in front of us right now.

Here is the 2010 sort of breakdown. Department of Defense, Military, Other Discretionary. We use this one, because this is last year's numbers. It's all done. We know what it was.

Do you see this? That's probably about 62, 63 percent of all spending was in the mandatory category. Think of this. This here, from the President's own numbers, is the 2016 projection, which is four budget cycles away, because, remember, right now we're working on the 2012. This is the 2016.

Do you see the difference in these two boards? Do you see that growth in that blue area? We go from something in the low sixties to 72, and I have one person who keeps telling me it's 73 percent of all spending.

But think of this. In about 13\1/2\ years, every dime of this pie chart, every dime of spending, will be consumed by the mandatory portion of our spending. So 13\1/2\ years. There's nothing left in defense. There's nothing left in the alphabet agencies. Mandatory spending, the entitlements, consume everything we are. And, remember, this is as the law is written today. So every time you see a Member walk up and say, ``I don't want to make changes; I want to keep everything as it is in law today,'' they're basically saying your future is a crash. Everything will be consumed in these mandatory numbers.

Now let's actually walk through a couple of things that are in these last three pages of the 2011 Medicare actuarial report. Once again, please, I ask you, if you don't believe me, if you're someone who has trouble believing these statements that I come here to the floor and try to walk through, go take it off the Internet yourself and read these last three pages.

Part of the premise here is, to his credit--and I believe he is actually the chief actuary for Medicare, actually wrote a little Statement of Actuarial Opinion, the last three pages, and he puts it in perspective. He basically says, yeah, the numbers in here are fine if you live in a fantasy world and assume Congress will never make certain changes. And understand, baked into these numbers, you'll love this one. I'll read it, and then I'll explain what this means. This is in the second paragraph. I'm going to read the second half of this paragraph:

``They are not reasonable as an indication of actuarial future costs. Current law would require a physician fee reduction of an estimated 29.4 percent on January 1, 2012--an implausible expectation.''

Did you hear that? Built into these numbers, January 1--what is that? Five months from now? January 1, doctors are to get a 29.4 percent cut in their compensation, and that's built into these numbers because these numbers don't work without taking that type of hit to the doctors.

How many doctors are going to see Medicare patients come January 2 when they've taken a 29.4 percent cut? So what traditionally happens around here is the Members of this body sometime in November, December, we're going to run to the floor, we're going to say that's not fair, we want to make sure Medicare recipients can actually see their doctor, and we're going to go back and raise up that compensation and keep it flat. We're going to get rid of that 29.4 percent cut that's already built into the law. The next day we should have a new actuarial report saying, oh, by the way, the dozen-some years that we said Medicare was fine is crashing, because it's built on premises that don't have reality.

I'm trying to find nice ways to phrase this. When you read an actuarial report, it's based on current law. What happens if built into that current law is absolute fantasy, and that 29.4 percent cut, which I will be one of the people who will walk onto this floor and do my best to stop that because that's not fair. It's not fair to the doctors. It's not fair to the people in the program. But you've got to understand. Then when Members of this body walk up here and say, ``We want no changes to Medicare,'' when they say they want no changes, are they saying they want the law as it is today? They want doctors in January to get a 29.4 percent cut? You can't have it both ways. You can't walk up here and say, ``We want to keep the law exactly as it is, no protection, no changes.''

``Oh, by the way, you're never going to see your doctor again after January 2.''

You have to actually go through more of these last three pages, this statement of opinion. It's devastating. And you start to realize the political theater around here hasn't been telling our public the truth. They're more concerned about winning political points than helping the American people understand we have a huge, important program here that's about to collapse under its own weight. We have the documents. We have the data. We're trying to step up and be responsible. But by being responsible, you get demagogued, you get attacked, you have people going out and holding up little protest signs. And then you talk to them and say, ``Hey, read this,'' and they read it, and they look at you with these eyes saying, ``I can't believe my own side's been lying to me. Why didn't they fess up and tell us this was coming?''

There are a couple of other things in here. Medicare prices for hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health, hospice, ambulatory surgery centers, diagnostic laboratories, and many other services would be less than half of their levels under prior law. That is built into this Medicare actuary report. Think that through. Built into the formulas today, those groupings are going to be receiving half the compensation? How many of them are ever going to treat, take care, diagnose, or provide hospice care for Medicare recipients? That's what the Republicans are trying to save. We're trying to fix it. We're trying not to let that happen.

Anyone that says they do not want changes to Medicare, they are actually supporting the downfall of the program. And that is actually why I stand here. I will be back next week with a series of slides that actually break out a number of segments from this Medicare actuary report, because it's time we start having Members come to this floor and tell the truth.

One last little thing here. For these reasons, the financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations. What the Medicare actuary is basically saying is, What we've based much of the rhetoric on around here, if you dig into the numbers, this program has already changed as people know it. It was changed last year when they did the health care takeover vote. It's already built into the law.

As a Republican, we're trying to find ways to save this program, make it actuarially sound so it is there for the folks who are on it, for our children, for ourselves, and for the next generation. We are here to do the right thing. And if you don't believe me, go pull the report, and read through it yourself.

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

Mr. Speaker, my reason for coming to the floor today is, look, there's already been some wonderful arguments, hopefully on our side, talking about cut, cap and balance being a realistic path to get there. But I'm here because the political rhetoric seems to lack basis in math. So let's have a little fun here.

How many times today have we already heard the comments about those corporate jets? We need to get rid of that depreciation.

Okay. Time for a little bit of mathematical reality. We borrow $4.7 billion every year. If we were to eliminate that incentive for those corporate jet purchases, fine. But it takes care of 15 seconds of borrowing a day. How can 15 seconds of borrowing a day be an honest discussion?

So let's go on to the next one. How many times today have we already heard about evil fossil fuels, those subsidies to Big Oil?

Well, let's do this. If we were to wipe out the subsidies to all fossil fuels, it would take care of 2.2 minutes of borrowing a day. How's that an honest debate? So we're living in that fantasy world.

So let's actually go on to one of the other ones, the Bush-Obama tax extensions. You know, because how many times do we hear around here, oh, it's those millionaires and billionaires. Well, let's do this. What would the math be if you got rid of those tax extensions for all Americans? It would buy you 28 minutes of borrowing a day, and that's assuming you don't slow down the economy, you don't raise unemployment. Actually, we use the President's numbers and pretend you get every dollar in, 28 minutes a day.

So think about that. The rhetoric you've heard here for hours wouldn't even buy, or would actually only buy one-half an hour of borrowing a day.

So I turn to my brothers and sisters on the left and say, what would you like to do with the other 23\1/2\ hours of borrowing every single day?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

One of the reasons I'm here today is, have you ever had one of those moments where you've been watching some television, you've been hearing some of your friends here on the floor, and the level of frustration starts to boil over, and you decide, look, I even need to get up behind that microphone and do a series of explanations of why I'm bouncing off the walls frustrated, and think about what we've heard just today.

We had one Member come down here, meaning well and trying to find some way to tell his story, but treating the U.S. sovereign debt issue as a game. I heard the President today in a press conference once again throw out items like: Well, those corporate jets. Well, we need to tax the rich more.

And here's the problem: The math just doesn't work. So I thought, okay, I have these boards in the office that I use for a lot of other speeches. It's time to bring them here to the floor and walk through. And, I'm sorry, I know I'm running two easels. I'm going to do this fairly quickly because I know I have some other friends of our conference that want to speak. But, first, let's do the big picture.

This is our world today. This is a dollar bill. Today, every dollar this Federal Government spends, 42 pennies of it are borrowed. Get that through your head. Every time we send out a check, every time we pay a vendor, that dollar that we pay that vendor, 42 pennies of it had to be borrowed. Once you understand that, a lot of the other rhetoric you hear around here is just bizarre, if not bordering on silly.

Let's actually bounce onto this next board. This one here is just to sort of help understand how fast our numbers are eroding and why we need to do it now. This is not the day we come to the floor next week and vote for something, so let's just raise the debt ceiling and we'll all have an honest discussion next month about the scale of the debt. We'll have an honest discussion some other day about what we're going to cut. You've got to understand, every--what is it?--7.2 seconds, someone now turns 65, and the money that this body, I think, had the moral responsibility to set aside for those baby boomers is gone. The most beautiful example I can give you of that is how many of you, when you think about it, have always heard from the politicians, oh, don't worry, Social Security's just

fine. But didn't we just hear the President say, well, if we don't raise the debt ceiling, there might be a problem?

Well, okay, which is it? Is Social Security just fine, or is it actually living on borrowed money? You can't have it both ways. Finally, I think the American people are waking up and understanding the scale of this debt and the crisis it brings us. So let's have a little interest here.

Here we are in 2010. Here's where we are in four budget years from now, 2016. This blue line is mandatory spending. It continues to grow and grow and grow. I'm told in about 13\1/2\ years, this blue line consumes every dime of Federal spending. We are consumed by the mandatory spending. The entitlements consume everything we are as a people. But here's one of the rubs. If I look at even last year and this year, we don't take in enough revenue today to cover just the mandatory spending. So when you think about what we call discretionary, military, EPA, all the other alphabet agencies, all those exist on borrowed money. This is our world today.

I've been struggling and struggling trying to find a way to say how do you help people understand the scale of these numbers? And then we came up with this idea, we'll make a clock. Everyone knows how to read their clock, I hope. Of course, the problem is, as one of my staffers pointed out, all the kids today are wearing digital watches, but we're going to try it this way. How many of you repeatedly, whether it be today or the press conference a couple of weeks ago have heard the President over and over and over and over say things like, those corporate jet owners need to step up and start participating more.

Okay, fine. Let's say we all agree with that.

How much does that actually buy us? Think about this. We borrow $4.7 billion every single day. This whole discussion over here where people--and we heard it just an hour ago from a Member and the leadership on the minority--saying, Oh, corporate jets. You've got to be willing to give up those.

Okay. Let's say we do. What does it really buy us? Well, you'll be happy to know that we did the calculation to make it easy. It will buy you 15 seconds of borrowing a day. Work through this with me. There's what, 1,440 minutes a day, you know, out of those 24 hours. And we're having discussions about things that are 15 seconds. This is absurd. So let's actually go on to some of the other really brilliant suggestions that seem to be coming out here.

How many of you remember about 6 weeks ago the majority in the U.S. Senate, how literally hearing after hearing about those subsidies to Big Oil, and acted like if we get rid of these, they'll actually do something. We even heard it again an hour ago over here from the left, saying if we get rid of those subsidies, that's our first step in the balancing of this budget.

So let's do the math. But let's actually do it my way. We wipe out the depletion allowance and all of these other subsidies for not just Big Oil but for all oil. It equals $2.44 billion a year. And just for a reference standpoint over there, I thought it would be fair for everyone to understand, that $2.44 billion that we call subsidies to Big Oil, there's $8.72 billion that goes to green energy. So understand the scale here.

But right now we're only going to fixate on fossil fuels. What does that really buy us?

I did it both ways for those people who like charts and for those people who like a clock. It buys you 2.2 minutes.

So you see our little hand here? This whole discussion--and they act like it really does something.

So we had the corporate jets at 15 seconds, now this whole discussion about Big Oil and taking away those subsidies. It buys you 2.2 minutes of borrowing a day. Think of that.

This is what holds up around here as honest debate? These are the honest proposals that this government is throwing out and letting the American people think we're actually talking about, saying, Well, if we raise the debt ceiling we're going to go after these things, and we'll get rid of those corporate jet subsidies, and we'll get that Big Oil, and, yes, we'll have almost gotten 3 minutes of borrowing covered today. It's absurd.

So let's actually bounce on to one of the other bits of discussion that bounces around here.

We actually just heard it a little while ago, those tax cuts--do you remember those Bush tax cut extensions?--which actually now are the Obama-Bush tax cut extensions because the President signed them back in December under the lame duck session. We all remember that. And we hear the discussion we need to take those tax cuts away from those millionaires and billionaires. That will balance this budget.

Does anyone out there actually pull out their calculator and do math? So I thought, Why don't we make a clock out of it. We'll make a slide out of it so we understand reality.

If you remove the tax cut extensions for everyone--not just the millionaires and billionaires, let's just do everyone because math was easier to do that way--it buys you a whopping 28 minutes of borrowing a day. Think of that. I've watched people walk up to this well of this House, stare into this audience, this august body, and act like it would solve the problem.

How can this place be operating under math fantasy? Twenty-eight minutes. And that's playing the assumption that it doesn't slow down the economy, doesn't raise up unemployment, and every dime actually comes in. But if we're willing to engage in that fantasy--because why not, the argument is fantasy--it takes care of 28 minutes of borrowing.

So let's see. So far we've covered 15 seconds with the corporate jets and 2.2 minutes with going after all fossil fuels, and now we found another 28 minutes of borrowing can be covered if we wiped out what we call the Bush tax extensions that are really important to economic growth, but we'll just give it and just also pretend every dime comes in.

Are you starting to realize we're barely at a half an hour of borrowing a day, and these are the types of proposals we're getting from the left on what we should do? You start to realize, where is this basis in reality?

So let's actually go for a big one. Let's actually hop on--because, you know, I'm not a big fan of war. So I thought, hey, why don't we calculate the big kahuna. What would happen if we took in all that money from those corporate jet subsidies and all of that money from getting rid of anything that incentivizes fossil fuel exploration, and we also get rid of those Bush tax cut extensions and we're willing to slow down the economy and assume that every dime comes in, and we just didn't have any of the wars--we didn't have Libya, we didn't have Afghanistan, and we didn't have Iraq. They just all magically went away tomorrow. Because we've had repeatedly Members from the left stand up behind these microphones and tell us this would take care of the problem. We just wouldn't have that $1.6 trillion we're going to run in debt this year if we just didn't have these sorts of things.

Once again, it's time to put some batteries in the calculator. If we pretend every dime of that all went straight to paying down the debt, it's 3 hours.

And we've actually put these slides up on our Web site so people can actually download them and look at them.

But I want to turn to my brothers and sisters on the left here and say, Okay, if I assume everything you're saying equals 3 hours, do you have any honest solutions for the other 21 hours a day instead of some of this silly rhetoric that I hear our President walking up to microphones and throwing things out and acting like, this is my solution to the American people?

The American people need to understand the scale of this debt. It is going to destroy us as a people. For once you are seeing your Congress, at least on our side, stand up, be tough enough and say, We're going to use this opportunity to save our kids and our grandkids and we're going to save this Republic. Please, learn the numbers. Understand how devastating this is. It's time for the fantasy to come to an end and to start dealing with real math.

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

Mr. Speaker, I actually didn't intend to do this this evening, but I got so frustrated with a number of the things I've been watching, both on television and from our brothers and sisters in this body, it became time to actually bring some of the slides we actually do in our town halls back in Arizona. I like to refer to it as a combination of truth on the

numbers and also dispelling some of the political folklore that is rampant, both in this town.

I'm going to say a number of things this evening that I promise you will offend all sorts of Members, all sorts of this Washington, D.C. But, look, I'm a freshman. I've been here 140-some days, and Washington, D.C., has systemically not told the truth to the American people. I don't know if they're fearful of looking the American people in the eyes and saying, Look, here's what we've done to your future, your kids' future, your grandkids' future is so scary that they don't get reelected.

Well, I got elected to come here and do the numbers, and so my goal is very, very simple. The numbers are straight up. The numbers come from 2010 on a lot of the charts, so we know exactly what was actually spent. On a number of charts outside that, we're also going to use the President's numbers.

But let's run through this. We were just watching Judge Carter a couple of minutes ago walk through some of the economic impacts of what happens with drilling. I'm going to even touch, through this, on the folklore of, well, let's go tax Big Oil and what it actually produces.

First of all, the slide right next to me, this one we put together just to make it simple and visual. Imagine a country that borrows 42 pennies, 42 pennies out of every dollar we spend. We all know that's not sustainable. We can't do this. You couldn't do it in your family budget. Think of it. Over the last couple of years, it's been tough out there. Your family, my family, we all cinched our belts. The American families got tough and did what was necessary.

What did the Congress do? What did this government do? What did Washington, D.C., do? They just kept spending. But the way they spent is they found people who were willing to buy U.S. sovereign debt, and they kept borrowing. And today we now borrow 42 cents out of every dollar.

Now, why is that so terrifying? Well, it's terrifying because you start to realize the speed the debt is growing, and then you start to understand some of the other drivers in that debt.

One of the things that happened January 1 this year, you know, what was the big change? Baby boomers. Every 8 seconds, someone turns 65 in this country for the next 18 years. So think of that. Ten thousand a day for the next 18 years.

That's why you see many of us around here saying we need to tell the truth how devastatingly ugly these numbers are, and that if we step up and deal with it now, we can fix it. But you can't deal with it with a bunch of silly rhetoric.

So let's walk through some more of these slides.

Right here is the 2010, and you see this blue. The blue is, we'll call it mandatory spending, entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest on the debt. But look, when you step up, when you step up to what is functionally four budget years from now, because we just did the 2012 budget, looking at 2016, you start to realize the growth in the spending, the growth in the entitlements. One of the things that keeps not being shared with the American people is, when you look at our 2010, and the 2011 number here would be out a little bit further, we don't take in enough revenue today to even cover the mandatory spending. If you see our revenue line, it cuts through right about here.

So think of that. Every dime of defense is borrowed. Every single dime of discretionary is borrowed. And we're about $100 billion short on even covering the entitlements, the mandatory spending. We borrow a little piece of those dollars that go into the entitlements, and it continues to explode in the future years.

I know these are a lot of slides, but when we get down to the ending part, I think you're going to find some of them sort of fun. But we first have to walk through sort of an understanding of the pie chart.

This is 2010. 2010, the mandatory spending was sitting about 63 percent, 62 percent of all the spending in government. Defense Department, other discretionary. And when I said ``all the spending in government,'' understand things like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac aren't even part of this. They're off the books on this.

Now, when you look at this line here, that blue, look how fast it starts to move up. In 2016, it goes from here, where we're about 63 percent, and now we hit 72 percent. Think of that.

We just did what? The 2012 budget. 2016, four budget cycles from now, the mandatory spending, the entitlements are consuming 72 percent of our budget. The amazing thing is, in that cycle, the money that is going to discretionary, actually, we predict to go down in those 4 years.

So you start to understand the mandatory is consuming what we are. You get folks who start to raise their hands at some of the town halls and say, well, why not just raise the marginal tax rates? Let's go out and tax everyone a little bit more.

There's some fascinating math on that, and we've got 60 years of history looking at it. This is one of my favorite charts. For someone that wants to follow this, you can actually go--and I have a tough last name--it's Schweikert.house.gov. You'll see these charts on there.

This is when we had very high marginal tax rates back in the forties, fifties, early sixties, very high marginal tax rates. Over here is where we have very low marginal tax rates. And there's this normalizing effect. There's actually a couple of Ph.D.s who've written very detailed papers on this normalizing effect. Or even during times of very high marginal tax rates and very low marginal tax rates, guess what happens? We take in about 18.2 percent of gross domestic product.

I don't know. Maybe in the math out there, maybe in the logic out there, maybe in the human nature there, when you tax people a lot, they find other ways to take their income. Maybe when you tax them low, they are willing to work more hours. But somehow, high marginal tax rates, low marginal tax rates, we basically take in the same percentage of gross domestic product, of GDP. It hits that 18.2 percent.

So when folks look at you in the eye and say, oh, just raise marginal tax rates--we're going to tax the rich more; we're going to tax everyone more--it doesn't do it. It doesn't take care of this massive debt that is consuming us as a people.

What you have to do is you have to grow that line, which is the size of the economy. You must grow this economy. Because as you start to look through these numbers, you come to the realization, yeah, we have a huge spending problem. But we can never cut enough. We have to grow, because it's two sides of this pendulum, and both of them have to be in motion. We have to grow, we have to cut the spending, and we have to deal with the reality that the mandatory spending, the entitlements, are eating us alive.

Let's actually start to walk on some of what I would like to refer to as political folklore.

When we hold many of our town halls back in my district, and I am blessed to represent Arizona's Fifth District. It is an amazingly wonderful place. It is Scottsdale and Tempe, Fountain Hills, Ahwatukee, and Mesa, and we will often get hands that will pop up in the back of the room and say, ``Mr. Schweikert, or David, why don't we do this. If we go out there and tax Big Oil, we could balance the budget. Right?''

They mean well. I believe the participants at our town halls really mean well when they raise that hand, because they have seen members of this body tell them that, and they haven't been told the truth.

When you look at the numbers, here is 2011, hard dollars. You can call them subsidies, you can call them depletion allowances, you can call them incentives to drill and produce more petroleum products, but the gray here is fossil fuels. And just for comparison, we also put the $8.72 billion of the subsidies that go into green energy. But for the fun of it, let's just talk about this part right here, the $2.44 billion that is in 2011.

Well, think about this. If you are borrowing about $4.7 billion every single day, how can a Member of Congress look in the camera, look at you, and say, ``Well, if we would just tax Big Oil more, maybe that would help solve the debt problem?'' It doesn't even make a drop in the bucket.

We can have a little fun with this, because I have been trying to find a way

to talk about big numbers. I was blessed in my previous life; I lived in a world of big numbers. But how do you visualize $1 trillion? How do you visualize $1 billion? How do you visualize $1 million for many people? So we have been playing with the idea of, Let's make it time.

So your government right now is borrowing about $4.7 billion every single day, every single day. So let's just think about it, $4.7 billion every single day. Those taxes on Big Oil--let's make it this. Let's make it taxes on all. Let's just remove those depletion allowances, those tax credits, which are also tied to depreciation that all other businesses get. But let's just wipe them all out. Guess what it buys you? It buys you about 2.2 minutes of borrowing a day.

Now, how many of you feel like you have been told that?

You know, once again, we are engaging often around this place in political theater instead of math. That's been one of my greatest frustrations in my short time here: I wish I saw more Members carrying around their financial calculators so they could look the American people in the eye and tell them the truth.

But think about that. The whole, we will call it, fossil fuels subsidies, tax credits, depreciation allowances, incentives to drill would buy you about 2.2 minutes a day. Oh, come on. And that's just assuming that every dollar came in, and you didn't slow the economy down and didn't slow energy drilling down or energy production down. So this is just throwing your hands up and saying, let's just pretend for a moment that we got rid of those, and it becomes pure income.

Let's actually go to the next level, because there's always that other person that raises their hands and says, ``Well, David, I have heard that if we would go out and we would tax the rich more.'' Remember, that lame duck Congress last December extended what a lot of folks call the Bush tax cuts. Now, around here we often call them the Bush-Obama tax cuts because President Obama is the one who signed them in December. But they extended those tax cuts. And weren't those tax cuts for the rich, and wouldn't that balance the budget?

Well, back to that small problem called math. Let's pretend for a moment that they hadn't happened, and let's pretend that it didn't slow down the economy, and let's pretend every dime that some folks have predicted came in. A lot of this place operates in a fantasy world. Why can't we? So we never had the tax extensions that happened in December. What would it buy you? Well, we once again borrow $4.7 billion every single day. It would buy you about 28 minutes. Think of that, 28 minutes.

So now I'm at my town hall. I've had two hands go up. The first one saying, ``Well, David, if we would tax Big Oil, then that would balance the budget.'' Well, what did we learn on the last slide? That was about 2.2 minutes of borrowing every day.

And then the other hand goes up saying, ``If we would tax the rich more.'' As a matter of fact, why don't we do in this slide that tax extenders never happened, so everyone, rich, poor, middle class didn't get the benefit of that extension of the tax cuts last December? Well, guess what. That buys you 28 minutes.

So think about it. We are doing really well here. We are up to 28 minutes plus 2.2 minutes. So now, let's see, what if we do this, because there's always the other hand that goes up and says, ``David, I bet you we could balance the budget and wouldn't have this debt and deficit if we did this: We tax Big Oil. And those Bush-Obama tax extenders that happened last December in the lame duck session, we never had that, because those help the rich. Oh, and by the way, if we had never had the wars, you know, if we didn't have Afghanistan, if we didn't have Iraq--and I believe actually in our number here it didn't even have Libya--we could balance the budget then. Couldn't we?''

So we actually, literally a couple hours ago, sat down and said, Let's add it up, and let's make it on a per hour basis so the American people can understand the crazy spending that's going on around this place and how fast the numbers are eroding on us.

Back again to our math: We borrow $4.7 billion every single day. And let's go back to our pretend world. Every dime of those oil subsidies and depreciation allowances and tax credits come in, and it doesn't actually slow down jobs or the economy and every dime of those taxes were to come in. Even though probably if you did that, you would slow down the economy and people would work less and you would have less dollars. But we are living in our fantasy world here. And because we didn't have the wars, none of that money would be going out the door, even though certain portions of that are actually already built into the defense budget. But every dime that is equated to Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya.

What would it buy us? Well, we are borrowing that $4.7 billion a day. Guess what? It buys you 3 hours of borrowing.

Think about what you have heard around here, and how many people you have seen walk up in front of a microphone and a camera look you in the eye and say, ``Well, if we did these things, we wouldn't have this debt?'' They are not telling you the truth. All those together are only 3 hours of borrowing.

And, let's see. If I remember correctly, there's like, what, 24 hours in a day? I'm looking for some honest discussion about the other 21 hours a day. You've got to go back to those first boards that I put up and have an honest discussion about entitlements, about the mandatory spending, because they are what are exploding on us. They are what are consuming us as a people.

We can do this. We can save the future for our kids and our grandkids. We can make sure that these programs exist. But we have to do it rationally, and we have to for once do it honestly, fact-based, maybe someone actually holding a calculator. Because the rhetoric around here, the political folklore around here, when they are willing to look you in the eyes and base their whole world on something that only buys you 3 hours of borrowing a day, you are not being told the truth.

We try to add literally two to four slides a week. We are engaging in a little project. We are a freshman office, but we have some very smart young people who are very good with their calculators, and we are trying very hard to find a way to make these gigantic numbers digestible so we can all understand them so we can have a rational conversation of how we save our country.

If you will go to Schweikert.house.gov, you are going to find a number of these slides. As a matter of fact, all of them are on there, and every week, I promise you, there are going to be more coming. And maybe if we all start to tell each other the truth about the math, we can actually tell the truth about how we are going to save the country.

With that, 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 9 o'clock and 39 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 11, 2011, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

I thank the gentleman for the time.

It has been fascinating. I accept that I'm a freshman, and I know it's April Fool's Day, but it's been funny hearing the discussion about how this isn't constitutional.

Now, let me see. I'll walk through this.

It's a piece of legislation with a trigger mechanism in it. Okay. I know the other side does not like that trigger, but it still would require the Senate to pass it and the President to sign it. It was fun seeing something from my childhood, from the 1970s, of how a bill becomes a law. If I remember correctly, that's still how a bill becomes a law.

The most important thing going on here is not the gamesmanship about, ``Oh, it's April Fool's Day. Let's try to demagogue this piece of legislation.'' What's important here is that the American people know we're taking the job seriously and giving the Senate another chance to step up and do their job. We're sitting here--how many weeks after we passed H.R. 1?--and we're still doing this dance. At some point, the American people have to expect us to do our job. And if we don't do our job, not a single one of us here or in the administration or in the Senate deserves a paycheck.

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

Mr. Chairman, first, I really do want to thank the chairman here for his hard work. Let's face it. This is a tough bill to put together. There's a lot of moving parts. And I truly appreciate the diligence that you and your staff have done to ensure that this FAA authorization continues to move forward.

The current DCA slots language in the bill does offer some relief to travel restrictions imposed by the DCA perimeter rule. It would make a handful of additional--what's the proper term?--``beyond perimeter'' opportunities available, and those flying opportunities would probably go to new carriers or those with limited presence right now at Reagan National.

But there needs to be, and there really should be, more done. My amendment would allow carriers which currently have slots at National Airport to convert flights now servicing large hub airports inside the perimeter zone into flights serving any airport outside the perimeter zone. This approach would result in greater access for communities beyond the perimeter zone without adding any new flights and without jeopardizing service to small- and medium-sized communities. There is substantial support for the idea. There are many other ideas worth considering in this basic concept of dealing with this perimeter zone.

The perimeter rule restriction for flights coming in and out of Reagan National really are outdated. It's a vestige of a long time ago when the government thought really it should control and manage and, shall we say, manipulate markets. Whatever justification there might have been a long time ago, the perimeter rule has surely outlived its purpose. Our constituents, particularly those in the western part of the country, are penalized by continued imposition of this perimeter rule. Broader relief of this rule, broader definition, broader expansion--this competition would benefit consumers and allow a better market to function for all of us.

I would like this opportunity to work with the chairman to achieve the result of more competition. This is a very important bill. This is important to us in the West, and I do believe we should broaden the scope of the perimeter rule.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Florida, the chairman of the Transportation Committee.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, in reclaiming whatever time I still may have remaining, I actually appreciate the comments.

My ultimate goal is: more competition, more options, more choices. In the quick conversation I just had with the chairman, he assured me that he'd be willing to work with all of the parties that want to reach this goal.

And so with unanimous consent, I would like to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, look, I've been a Member now of this august body for 75-some days. And I'm starting to learn much of what we do seems to be more based in theater than reality.

If I read this amendment correctly, what we're trying to do here is add language that basically says, well, we could repair neighborhoods with the last billion dollars. Of course it didn't happen with the previous money.

But think about it, if we take a step back. What's the money been used ultimately for? It's been used to bail out lenders. In many ways this is another back-door bailout to the very folks that my constituents are furious with, and handing them more government dollars in the name that, well, this time we passed the cash to those lenders, but this time we did it through local governments.

Madam Chairman, on this Richardson amendment, it's interesting because I always like amendments that are trying to do something technical. But where I'm finding actually sort of a problem in the flow of logic is--think about this: We have a neighborhood stabilization program down to its last billion dollars, we've already spent what, 6 billion? And the concept written in this amendment is saying that, well, it's going to keep acquiring one, two, three to four units, fourplexes, properties, and it's going to keep acquiring them until a certain number of mortgages are--only this percentage are underwater, or the mortgage value is greater than the value of the house. Does that seem like I'm going in the right direction?

But here's the classic problem in the design of that. If the Neighborhood Stabilization Act does what I think it does, it's either a municipality, a nonprofit, this and that, buying a property, sometimes rehabbing it, sometimes removing the boarded-up windows, sometimes just buying a property and competing with the private investors and the first-time home buyers in that neighborhood and then turning around and putting it back on the market.

Well, if one of our problems out there is we have a glut of properties on the market, and that's one of the things holding down our values, and I'm going to continue to support a program that's going to drop another billion dollars buying properties and then putting them back on the market. We have a circular logic here where I can't imagine the mechanics within this, well meaning as they may be, actually have any basis in economics or particularly real estate economics.

Madam Chair, first, this is one of those few moments I get to stand behind the microphone; and I say, having met the good woman from California, she has actually been very gentle to me as a freshman, so far.

But one of my concerns here is very, very simple: there is $6 billion out there. And I won't call it a slush fund. Back in my days as Maricopa County Treasurer, we would call it a revolving fund. There is $6 billion out there already that goes out, and if the property is sold, comes back; and that I believe operates for 5 years from the enactment of the bill.

Well, a letter like this goes out and says, Oh, well, the last $1 billion isn't going to be there for you, but please keep using the $6 billion you already have to go do more good works in the neighborhood.

My great fear is something like this doesn't really accomplish much good.

Madam Chairman, I am pleased that we're actually accepting this amendment, because if we get an honest study from it, it could be some very interesting numbers. But I hope it's an honest study that also looks from top to bottom. Such as in the Neighborhood Stabilization Program in the previous $6 billion that has been spent, what crowding out has it done? What first-time homebuyers, what investors, found themselves competing with government? It would be interesting to know.

Also, we keep hearing the numbers of saying, well, with our government money we created this many jobs. How many jobs were being created if they were private investors or first-time homebuyers or other families that were acquiring the same sort of properties and fixing them up? If we're going to get like for like, it will be fascinating.

Then we also have to deal with the reality of it as we saw in the previous amendment. In that amendment, it was claiming there were about 1,061,000, we'll call them vacant units in the country. Okay. If we start doing the math with the remaining billion dollars of additional money, how much impact does that have? And will the study also step up and say, with the $6 billion that's out there that's supposed to be acting like a revolving fund, 5 years from the beginning of this program, which was what, last summer? How is that money being used? How much velocity is it really getting? Or is it now sitting in houses that are competing with other neighbors who are trying to sell theirs.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt Dam, the cornerstone of water resource operations in Central Arizona. The reliable, sustainable water supply provided by the dam and its reservoir, Theodore Roosevelt Lake, has served as an economic catalyst that spurred decades of growth and helped create the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.

The Salt River Valley, home to metropolitan Phoenix, was little more than a few military outposts and prospecting camps until the first modern canal company was organized in 1867. The success of this venture encouraged more irrigation concerns. Most used the ancient canal networks created and maintained by an indigenous civilization that thrived in the area more than 1,000 years earlier.

As a result of these canal companies, settlements cropped up across the Valley. Local leaders agreed a dam was needed to regulate the flow of the Salt River, which fed the canal networks, to ensure a reliable source of water and sustain development.

A group including a surveyor, journalist, and canal company superintendent identified a possible dam site in 1889 about 80 miles east of Phoenix near the confluence of Tonto Creek and the Salt River. The site was nestled among the Superstition wilderness area, the Sierra Ancha Mountains, and the Salt River Canyon.

Next, residents had to determine how to pay for such a massive undertaking. The Salt River Valley Water Users' Association was organized in 1903 when Valley landowners pledged their property as collateral for a government loan to build the proposed dam. It was a unique arrangement only made possible by an act of Congress the previous year, the National Reclamation Act of 1902.

Dam construction began in 1905 under the supervision of the U.S. Reclamation Service, now the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. When completed in early 1911 and dedicated personally by the president whose name it bears, Roosevelt was the world's largest masonry dam.

Hydroelectric generation from the dam provided early power to, and served as the basis of, power operations for the Salt River Project (SRP), a water and power entity that includes the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association.

Roosevelt Dam has undergone various improvements through the ages, including three separate upgrades of its hydroelectric generating capacity. A major modification of the dam and reservoir was completed in 1996 when the height of the dam was raised by 77 feet and the dam envelope was strengthened.

This modification was part of a comprehensive project to increase water storage, improve dam safety and enhance flood control throughout central Arizona.

Through a partnership with SRP, the federal government, and state and local communities, central Arizona has grown into a vital metropolitan region in the Southwest.

Mr. Speaker, as Theodore Roosevelt Dam embarks on its second century of service to the people of the Salt River Valley, it deserves special recognition for its historic and invaluable contributions to my state.

Mr. Chairman, the gentlelady from Ohio may actually have stumbled upon something, and if she's ready to actually help us, so a State like Arizona, we can actually own our land, great. But until that time, you've got to understand, only 18 percent of our State is privately owned. Tribal lands, Federal lands, BLM lands, other government lands. Are we ready to start paying the full property tax load? I was the county treasurer in Maricopa County and huge portions of our county, we can't even touch. If you want a sense of fairness, then we step up and we give the land back to the State. Until that time, this borders on silly.

Offered By: Mr. Schweikert

Amendment No. 525: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Mr. Speaker, today is one of those special days, and for many of us, you think of it as Valentine's Day, but for Arizona, this is our 99th birthday. Today, we begin our 100th year, and the wonderful folks in Arizona, which is a stunningly beautiful State, for those of you who have not had a chance to visit us--from the Grand Canyon, down through the mountains, down even further to the desert plateaus, to the grasslands down south--come join us for our 100th anniversary celebration.

All through this year, all up and down the State, there are going to be special activities, special dinners, special commemorations for the baby State, the valentine State that is Arizona, as it begins its 100th anniversary today.