On the recordNovember 3, 2021
As we get ourselves sort of organized, last Monday, I did an entire hour here on the floor--55 minutes--and we actually did a presentation up and down the budget. Not this budget cycle, but basically what does our country look like over the next 30 years? What is driving the projections of $112 trillion of debt 29 years from now? Look, it is one of those presentations that is rather uncomfortable for most of us because the punch line is demographics, and that is not what we typically do here. But the reality is, we have a real issue. We are getting old very fast as a society. Let's do a bit of a reminder here and actually look at the math. We are going to walk through a couple of these that are the same as last week, but the difference tonight is we are going to try to talk about a handful of solutions. There is a big package of solutions, and most of them are really hard and are really going to be cantankerous around here, but there are solutions to deal with. Let's actually first walk through where we are at today. Once again, I won't worry about 1965 in the mix. It is important that anyone watching this, fellow Members of Congress, understand. Today, 2021, 77 percent of all the spending that will come from Washington is mandatory. Only 10 percent is defense; 13 percent is functionally what we vote on. I think there is a huge misunderstanding in the public that we march off to Congress and are voting on these $4 trillion budgets. We are not.…
