David Schweikert: “One of the things we are going to do tonight is touch on some of the numbers that have substantially come out since last…”

“One of the things we are going to do tonight is touch on some of the numbers that have substantially come out since last Thursday and Friday, and then even more numbers that came out yesterday and today. This is sort of the continuation of the theme that we have been doing since the very beginning of the year, a theme of what do we as a society have to do to keep our promises. The number of times--and I don't want to be too snarky--that we will have Members come behind these microphones or in our committees and want to do policy by anecdote--because telling stories is great. They make people happy. It is easy to understand. But it is not math. It is not public policy. We have to stop trying to make public policy by feelings, by impressions, by stories, and start doing it by the numbers because the numbers ultimately make our lives better when we get it right. The greatest fragility in our society right now, if you look, is the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. We have a moral obligation to keep our promises, but the only way mathematically we keep our promises is to do a handful of things. It turns out, by doing this handful of things, my 3\1/2\-year-old little girl has a great future, and the person who is a baby boomer who has moved into retirement also has a stable future.…”