David Schweikert: “I appreciate you and the staff's patience as I am racing up the elevator. We are going to do something that is new to me…”

“I appreciate you and the staff's patience as I am racing up the elevator. We are going to do something that is new to me today. And please wave at me if I start machine gun speaking. And I have gotten teased about it a bit, so this week, I got to become the ranking member for the Republicans, that is sort of the senior Republican over Social Security in the Ways and Means Committee. And it is an area I have had a fascination with since I got here because, you know, it is $1 trillion a year, and it is running out of money. So, the last few times I have come behind these microphones, I have turned to my brothers and sisters on the left and begged them to stop doing what they are doing because we have showed board after board after board after board of how many people they are hurting, the working poor, the poor, the working middle class. It is just being destroyed by Democrat policies. And I appreciate the virtue signaling. I understand maybe for many of them they didn't understand the most basic economics of what inflation was going to do and crushing people. But now, all of a sudden, I have the responsibility--I take this really seriously. How do you save Medicare? How do you save Social Security? And it is not a game, and it is not just little adjustments here. You talk to groups, even fellow Members, and they somehow think a little adjustment here, waste and fraud. A little adjustment here. We are talking trillions.…”