On the recordSeptember 25, 2024
For everyone's sanity, I promise to use only a couple minutes of it. Mr. Speaker, this is 2024. We functionally are going to take in $4,898,000,000,000. We are going to spend $6,880,000,000,000. Anyone see the math problem? Then, if you want to tell the truth about actual debt and actual budgets, where you actually say, okay, here is the interest we have to pay back to the Social Security trust fund, here is the Medicaid trust fund, the other things, you are functionally looking at a $2 trillion, $2.2 trillion deficit in a year that things are good. The other point back to this board, how many Members of Congress will stand in front of you and say: Do you understand every dime--so like my friend, Mr. Green, and I get to vote on--every dime we vote on is borrowed. When 14.1 percent of all Federal spending is just interest, it turns out the most powerful thing you and I can do to stabilize borrowing--I have done hours on this floor trying to present it. Am I just an idiot for trying? Showing debt can't come from tax hikes--okay. Fine. Do that, but it is marginal. Many of the things we want to cut--I actually believe government is dramatically too big and too intrusive. Cut them. Unless you tell the truth about the primary drivers of U.S. debt, which is demographics, healthcare. Are we going to change the rules so technology, so cures are moral? Fixate on those things. Turns out, those are what you do to bend the debt curve.…
