David Schweikert: “Yet, I promise you, tomorrow, we will have things on our phone attacking us for telling the truth. Mr. Speaker, I am…”

“Yet, I promise you, tomorrow, we will have things on our phone attacking us for telling the truth. Mr. Speaker, I am going to argue our willingness to come here and tell the truth--I love people. I want them to flourish. Doctor, we are about to have our fifth year of prime-age males where their life expectancy is shorter. You were actually walking me through some of the math earlier. Does anyone care? The concentration I see of the lack of family formation, productivity, the ability to participate in society, the healthcare costs--what would happen if we had a society where we were not afraid to talk about the stigma? We are saying there are policies. I have the stacks of charts and these things, but there are policies we can engage in to make a difference. This is on topic and uncomfortable, but one of the things I come here and talk about over and over--let's just use this chart down here. Medicare is singularly the primary driver of our debt. It is healthcare costs. It is an earned benefit. You paid your 40 quarters for Social Security, but the average couple will have paid in $227,000 in FICA taxes, the portion that goes toward Medicare, but they get back $725,000. That differential right there is the primary driver of U.S. sovereign debt. Do you do what some of the folks around here want to do, my Democratic colleagues, where they want to basically say Medicare for All? We are going to ration it. It is going to be government everything.…”