David Schweikert: “To our stenographer, if I start talking too fast, just give me that horrible look because my staff was telling me last…”

“To our stenographer, if I start talking too fast, just give me that horrible look because my staff was telling me last week that I was sounding like a machine gun. Madam Speaker, this is something I try to do at least half an hour every week. It is basically to have a little bit of honesty about math and a little optimism about what policy can do to make things work. Once again, I have a couple of my old slides here. I am sorry that I haven't been able to update them because there are some new numbers, but it is a really simple concept. Let's walk through it. How many times do you hear Members from both the right and the left get on television and talk about things? Why does no one talk about the debt and deficits? I can tell you why we don't talk about the debt and deficits, because to tell the truth of what is driving the debt and deficits is really uncomfortable. We are going to try to do a little bit of that math honesty because it is demographics. It turns out, demographics are not Republican or Democratic. It is just math. We continue to exist in this pretend world, saying: Well, if we would tax rich people more, if we get rid of waste and fraud--none of those. I have brought these charts here before. There are fractions of fractions of variance. Why is it so hard for us to tell the truth? Why is it so hard for us to own calculators? We basically are a math-free zone.…”