On the recordFebruary 10, 2016
You are incredibly fit. Understand, I am going to show you some slides under the new projections by the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, that came out 3 weeks ago. {time} 1845 Mr. Speaker, Social Security, the trust fund has about 14 years, but Medicare part A is gone in about 9 years. You are going to see Social Security disability may have only about 58 months, and that trust fund is gone again. So understand how fast these things are eroding. Look, we are going through a lot of data and a lot of slides. I know you and I and a couple of other Members, we are going to be putting this deck of slides on our Web sites. For anyone that is actually interested in the fiscal sanity and health of this country, this is the ability to take a look at them, analyze them, give us suggestions, and give us creativity. This one right here, so, in 2026, think of this: only 22 percent of the spending will be in what you and I get to vote on. Half of that is going to be defense; half of that is going to be nondefense. Oh, and by the way, the one good thing I can tell you about we are getting from the slow-growth economy right now is we have reprojected our interest rate. Because if I had shown this slide a few months ago, we were expecting trillion-dollars-plus interest. Now, we only expect a much lower mean interest rate 9 years from now. So only 12 percent of our spending will be interest coverage. Think of that. Interest will be greater than defense in 9 years.…
