This view breaks the statement into its steps and names what each one does.
Positioning · 29 wordsWe did what to shore up the trust funds? We did what to basically incentivize our brothers and sisters to stay in the labor force if they wanted to?Positioning Claims · 10 wordsWe had dozens of things--I have been here 16 years, Positioning · 24 wordsand I have spent most of that time trying to get this place to actually deal with the reality of let’s save Social Security.Positioning The ask · 24 wordsLet’s actually save Medicare. Let’s do those things that help us grow. Let’s adopt the technology so we can crash the price of healthcare. Claims · 33 wordsI have had some success on the edges, but I lose to the armies of lobbyists that are in the hallways here that lose their minds because we may change their business models. Mr. Speaker, Claims · 48 wordswe are now borrowing about $90,000 every second.1 Today, we will borrow about $7 billion.2 The current burn rate so far this fiscal year, just this fiscal year, we are going come in close to $2.2 to $2.3 trillion of borrowing, 3and yet, we have higher interest rates. Positioning · 38 wordsHow long is the bond market going to keep saying we are going to finance you because how much of the benefits that our brothers and sisters who are older have earned we are actually borrowing the money?Positioning Procedure · 11 wordsSeniors per hundred workers--and actually, here is just the simple math.Procedure Claims · 42 wordsHow many of us grew up always hearing you have got 23 people per retiree, and that is how we finance Social Security? I have shown some charts here where in the end of a decade from now, you have about 2.3, Procedure · 4 wordsand it is this: ProcedureClaims · 55 wordsIn 2011, we had 21.9 working-age folks per senior.4 Today, actually, that number has eroded 47 percent increase in that change. It is almost a 50 percent change in that time, and it actually steepens. Part of the steepening isn’t because we have more seniors. It is also because we have substantially fewer young people. Procedure · 2 wordsAll right.Procedure Mr. Speaker, Claims · 69 words65 will continue to grow as a share of the population. In 9 budget years, 21.4 percent of the population will be in their benefit ages.5 Our system wasn’t prepared for this. In 25 or 26 months from now, I should have double checked the math, over half of the Federal spending will go to those of us 65 and up.6 That is not half of the tax receipts. Procedure · 1 wordsRemember, ProcedureClaims · 11 wordsif we are borrowing $2.3 trillion on top--but think about that. Positioning · 10 wordsOur government functionally is an insurance company with an Army.Positioning Procedure · 2 wordsAll right.Procedure Claims · 8 wordsThis is actually one of my intense frustrations. Procedure · 4 wordsLet’s take a look.Procedure Claims · 136 wordsThe trustee’s report projects this significantly more optimistically than the other sources. Remember I showed you a chart there, and I was somewhat mocking the trustee’s report, basically saying they have this magic thing where fertility rates crash and crash and crash, and that is within the next 9 years, and then suddenly, magically it explodes upward. No one else has that.Unearned certainty Here is the Medicare and Social Security actuary’s trustees saying, oh, well, we are going to go along, but magically when we get to 2030, they are going to start to go up. This has created a distortion. That is actually why you see groups like my Joint Economic Committee, Penn Wharton, so many of the others, saying the trustees are missing it. The debt the United States is in is dramatically more devastating. Mr. Speaker, Claims · 6 words2030, 2035 isn’t that far away. Positioning · 68 wordsI am sure we are all going to get together and decide we are going to do a debt deficit commission. I am sure we are all going get together and lay out the incentives of how we actually manage this crisis. I am sure we are going to do those things to convince the bond markets that we are creditworthy because here is part of the frustration.Positioning Claims · 47 wordsGreece, today, can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than the United States.7 Greece today has a better forward credit rating than the United States.8 We are now 13 or 14 on the credit stack where other countries can actually sell a 10-year bond cheaper than we can.9 Procedure · 4 wordsAnd I keep wondering.Procedure Claims · 74 wordsI have been coming behind this microphone for almost a decade and a half. We have been introducing pieces of legislation that could revolutionize the costs of healthcare, could actually make government dramatically more efficient, and I almost can’t get a single Member of Congress to consponsor any of this legislation because you have to go to war with all the lobbyists because it means changing the bureaucracies or the business models out there. Positioning · 30 wordsIt is like they basically have this attitude: Screw the society. Screw my kids. Screw your retirement, as long as I don’t have to tell the truth about the math.Positioning Claims · 37 wordsToday, your government borrowed about $90,000 a second. Yesterday, we borrowed about $90,000 a second. Tomorrow, we are going to borrow--that is like $7 billion today. We will argue for hours here on the floor for millions. Positioning · 35 wordsI need you to see a chart. If this is a billion dollars, if this is a trillion dollars, millions is basically this tiny little--the lack of calculators here is a destruction of this Republic.PositioningLogical leap Claims · 63 wordsThere are those who actually tell me, David, it is waste and fraud. It is this and that. I have done presentations to show you our best calculations of waste and fraud. It is a problem, but it is a sliver because the majority of what we call waste and fraud is actually the waste. It is the way we have designed programs. Mr. Speaker, Positioning · 59 wordsI don’t believe my brothers and sisters here are actually willing to do the hard things and tell the truth about the math and then redesign these programs because it means getting the crap kicked out of you by the lobbying and the business models out there. That means creating a revolution of taking on the debt and deficits.Positioning Claims · 33 wordsWe will pay a remarkable price for the fact that the Penn Wharton models within a decade had us actually already approaching the no-go numbers of being able to sell our U.S. debt. Positioning · 13 wordsAt that point the bonds explode, and the bond market runs this country.Positioning Mr. Speaker, Procedure · 8 wordsI yield back the balance of my time.Procedure
Analyzed on