David Schweikert: “Yes. There are a number of times you and I have folks who come to our offices or to our townhalls who have great ideas…”

“Yes. There are a number of times you and I have folks who come to our offices or to our townhalls who have great ideas, and they desperately want some more resources for this research project or for this activity or for this infrastructure or for this and that. You try to explain-- okay--this board here talks about the next 9 years; so from this budget year--where we are right now working on the 2017 budget--for the next 9 years. I know that seems like a long time, but the average over that time--76 percent of all of the spending, three-quarters of all of the spending--is going to be in those mandatory: the formula, the entitlements, the earned benefits. Only 24 percent of the spending is going to be in the military or in other activities of government. As we go back to make that circle again, why do we fuss with each other around here? It is about the money when you have someone standing in front of you and he is not talking about the need to do two things. Now, they are big things. One is to dramatically adopt policy that grows the economy. We are not going to make it under this current growth rate. This Obama economy is just killing us. Number two, we are going to have to be honest about the benefits that we provide and the formulas underlying them. There may be some creative things we can do, but as the political class, we have got to stop being terrified to talk about it.”