David Schweikert

Oh, heaven forbid. I don't know if I could actually talk any faster. I'm so sorry. Sometimes I start to talk like a machine gun. Mr. Speaker, another piece of legislation we have is you talk to doctors' offices, you talk to surgery…

Every week I come behind this microphone, and I walk through the demographics and the debt and try to demonstrate that the primary driver of debt is our demographics and our health. I have brought lots and lots of charts here over the last…

I have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows: Page 36, line 18, after the dollar amount, insert ``(reduced by $10,000,000) (increased by $10,000,000)''…

I have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows: Page 26, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert ``(increased by $1,000,000)''. Page 35, line 23, after…

I thank the Chairmen, and one of my favorite ranking members. Mr. Chairman, part of what we are trying to accomplish here--we are going to have two amendments basically in different categories doing this--is if we look over some of the GAO…

To the Members here: I appreciate the kind words. Mr. Chairman, we are on the edge of a revolution of being able to understand these massive data sets. If we do this well, maybe the constant conversation we have here between the left and…

I appreciate the gentlewoman being willing to tolerate me and engage in that. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. The Acting CHAIR. The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert). The…

You have a much higher degree of expertise. Both of you do in regard to VA issues. I do taxes and Medicare financing. One of the reasons we were hopeful about this is because it is sort of a closed ecosystem. It gives us the chance, as we…

This is sort of a derivative of the previous amendment. The previous amendment was to speed up and expedite claims. This one is actually now to crawl through, and if my colleagues geek out like I do on how the artificial intelligence…

You have to keep trying. My argument is that there is a path. Madam Speaker, I appreciate you tolerating us, but there is a path where you can make this math work. The problem is it is going to be hard. There are going to be people who are…

The gentleman from Texas is my buddy. In some ways he is much more elegant with language. He has the misfortune of being a lawyer. I show up at townhalls and things like that and they say it is defense spending. Then they don't believe you…

Medicare spending, when I checked about 6 weeks ago, was already up 10 percent in spending this fiscal year.

The running joke in our office, and this is one of our tests for the interns--you are going to be tested on this later: What is your government? In one sentence, describe it. It is an insurance company with an army.

That is coming out of part of the FICA tax, but it is the labor force participation. When you create incentives in society not to be part of society, then you lose all sorts of things. Let's do this slightly out of order. I was going to do…

No. Now, it is a little more complicated than that because Social Security is on the FICA side. Interest is general fund. Defense is general fund. Medicare is a little tricky, because it is about--I have a chart here I wasn't going to use…

The gentleman may want to leave before I do this chart because this chart really upsets people.

It really is the vast majority of the money. Now, it is earned benefits. You earned it. We just don't have the money for it. I am going to light myself on fire. I am going to go out of order.

It is more complicated, and I have to do about a half-hour presentation to talk about it because it is more than just the disability payments that are part of Social Security and SSI.

Oddly enough, I get this crazy thing where I will get business models that are built on today's way of healthcare reimbursement, which need sick people to exist. They will come in and say: Okay, I am wearing two hats. For my business, I…

This is probably going to be the first time you have ever heard this, Chip. I don't think you are cynical enough. That is actually very funny for those of us who know Chip. We have actually created a motto in our office: Money, power…

This election you just saw, you have the prosperity of your family and the tax code, but you have an opportunity to use that stressor. Mr. Roy, this is actually where my punch line at the end was going to be: Are we nimble enough to use…

You said this, and I actually stole it from you months ago, Mr. Roy. Every dime we as Members of Congress vote on is borrowed money. Every dime we vote on is borrowed money, and if you actually sort of work it out on the annual, all…

Forgive me, Madam Speaker, as we get our boards all lined up. Madam Speaker, I am going to try something a little different than starting with the debt pie. We are going to actually sort of walk through some of the chaos that is coming…

I thank Dr. Harris for joining me, and I yield back. ____________________

Doctor, the morality argument I really want us to make is the way we have designed these programs, as they were originally designed decades and decades and decades ago, we now understand, we are financing people's misery instead of…