On the recordNovember 7, 2023
I actually give the ranking member kudos for being intellectually honest. That is actually part of my point. The numbers now are brutally uglier than even Simpson-Bowles. It is one of the things we don't like to say because it doesn't look good on a campaign brochure, but functionally every dime of future debt from today into the future is actually demographics. It is healthcare. In 9 years, do we backfill Social Security? It is intellectually honest to say: We are borrowing every dime we get to vote on as Members of Congress. I keep wanting to say that over and over and over. Every dime of military, every dime of nondefense discretionary is now borrowed, plus, probably my math is about $4 billion to $5 billion of mandatory. Now we will live on borrowed money. Until that starts to hit our intellectual lexicon of what we say and how we think, it makes it very hard to try to make the argument that if we don't step up and do this, the bond market is going to do it for us. Remember, we borrowed 8.4 percent of GDP last year. To my brothers and sisters who say the solution is often to raise taxes on the wealthy, the best model says that we can only get about 1\1/2\ percent of GDP by maximizing every tax on $400,000 and up. Mr. Chairman, 1\1/2\ percent isn't anywhere close when you just borrowed 8.4 percent. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
