[Pages H3634-H3637]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       DISMANTLING CALIFORNIA'S CITIZENS REDISTRICTING COMMISSION

  (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. 
Schweikert of Arizona was recognized for 30 minutes.)
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from California 
(Mr. Kiley).
  Mr. KILEY of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, in 2010, California voters overwhelmingly voted to 
establish the Citizens Redistricting Commission. The voters said that 
they wanted to take the process of drawing district lines out of the 
hands of politicians. They said that voters should choose their 
politicians, that politicians shouldn't choose their voters.
  That commission has drawn our district lines through the last two 
rounds of redistricting. Yet, the Governor of California has now 
announced a plan to abolish the Citizens Redistricting Commission and 
to seize its powers for himself. He initially proposed simply ignoring 
the commission, ignoring the constitution, and overriding his maps with 
those that he and the legislature drew. Yet, apparently, someone told 
him that that would get immediately struck down in court.
  What they are now plotting is a special election where they will use 
confusing ballot language and other means of deception to try to 
convince voters--to fool voters--into dismantling the very independent 
commission that they recently established.
  The point of this is that the Governor would like to reduce the 
representation of Republicans in Congress in our State to 3 Members out 
of 52, so that Republicans will hold 6 percent of the seats even though 
Republicans typically get over 40 percent of the vote in statewide 
elections. It could be the single most egregious act of corruption in 
the history of our State.
  Mr. Speaker, you don't need to take my word for that. You can take 
the word of Common Cause, which is a group that typically, almost 
always, aligns with Democrats on elections and voting issues. Its 
executive director said: ``Point blank, it is a dangerous move.''
  Or take the word of Patricia Sinay, a Democrat sitting on the 
Citizens Redistricting Commission, who said: ``The very purpose of the 
State's independent redistricting commission is to protect voters from 
partisan power grabs like this. If this were to succeed, it would set a 
dangerous precedent for suppressing voters across the Nation.''
  Mr. Speaker, this is a moment for every Californian and every 
American of decency, regardless of party affiliation, to speak out 
against the abject corruption that our Governor is attempting.


       Recognizing Tevis Cup Winners Heather and Jeremy Reynolds

  Mr. KILEY of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize 
Heather and Jeremy Reynolds, the first- and second-place winners of the 
69th Annual Tevis Cup, a grueling 100-mile endurance trail ride from 
Robie Park to Auburn, held on July 12 of this year.
  This year's competition proved even more challenging than usual, with 
the heat and rocky road providing unforgiving conditions for all 
competitors.

                              {time}  1800

  Of the 105 entrants, only 43 were able to complete the ride to 
Auburn. However, the couple persevered through, crossing the finish 
line in 17 hours 45 minutes.
  Over the span of more than 20 years of competitive riding, the two 
have accumulated countless awards, including eight Tevis Cups and five 
Haggin Cups. Despite their many accolades, the one challenge they had 
never conquered was crossing the finish line together. In this year's 
competition, they did, crossing the finish line with their hands joined 
together, marking an astounding new achievement that has been a goal of 
theirs for over two decades.
  Together, Heather and Jeremy Reynolds embody perseverance, teamwork, 
and competitive excellence. Their achievement serves not just as 
personal fulfillment but also as an inspiration to their peers, fellow 
competitors, and our community at large.
  It is an honor to represent remarkable individuals such as Heather 
and Jeremy in Congress. Therefore, on behalf of the United States House 
of Representatives, I proudly extend my heartfelt congratulations to 
Heather and Jeremy Reynolds for their exceptional athletic achievement 
at the 69th annual Tevis Cup and commend them for their unwavering 
dedication to the tradition and sport of equine endurance riding.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from California for 
his remarks, and as I always say to Californians, don't take Arizona's 
water.
  Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bresnahan). The gentleman from Arizona 
has 25 minutes remaining.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to do a run-through of 
a couple things here. I am going to try to walk through some economics. 
Then I am going to actually try to walk through some warnings that are 
in the documents that are around us that very few people seem to bother 
to read. Then I am going to actually do some things that are hopeful 
because I think sometimes I am a bit dour, and I don't do enough of 
this.
  First off, in August, Republicans are going to go out and tell the 
morality of people's taxes not going up next year. What we did in the 
reconciliation budget: incentives to invest in America, to build new 
plants of equipment, for working people to have some things to actually 
draw them back into the labor force, no tax on tips, no tax on 
overtime, some of these things.
  If you actually look at one of the reasons those things are in there, 
and we are actually starting to see some of the models of the economic 
side, seeing some very optimistic things that we think are going to 
change labor force participation, small changes.
  The left will actually sort of do a bit of schizophrenia such as you 
cut spending over here, but too much of this money is borrowed. I agree 
too much is borrowed. I want to cut more spending, but then you attack 
us when we try to actually point out misalignment, bad acts.
  What was the report that just came out a couple days ago, where we 
found 2.8 million of our brothers and sisters enrolled in subsidized 
ACA plans as well as Medicaid plans.
  They don't want to talk about that because it screws up their pitch 
when you actually walk through what we see in the math. We know the 
American people believe and understand the morality and the great 
economics of encouraging those that are able-bodied, able to work to 
participate in society.
  If anyone is a geek out there--it is probably 4 or 5 years old--the 
University of Chicago, four of their Ph.D. economists wrote a brilliant 
paper talking about: If you actually ask people to participate in 
society, in the economy, to take a job, even if you give them welfare 
or government subsidies, because they have an attachment to the 
economy, to work, at the

[[Page H3635]]

end of 10 years, those who had the work requirements actually end up 
much wealthier and off of government support. It is the morality of 
learning to get up, building an attachment, learning skills, and moving 
up in an organization.
  There was a time when it was actually the left's ethos, that the 
argument of work is moral. Somehow that left the Democratic Party.
  Let's walk through a couple things. I have used this board for months 
now. It will probably be the last time I use it. Understand baseline 
over the next 10 years, according to Congressional Budget Office, we 
are going to spend $86 trillion. Think of the screaming and gnashing of 
teeth and protests that are all ginned up, you cut $800 billion from 
this, and a little bit from a couple other things, it was less than 2 
percent of that spending.
  Are you telling me that the left doesn't believe that if you are 
spending $86 trillion as your baseline spending, and understand--I am 
going to show you some of the charts and how much of this is basically 
demographics. We got old. Our healthcare costs money.
  I am going to show you a couple charts that I really want folks to 
understand. But for the American people, when you see someone from the 
Democratic Party behind a microphone saying, they cut spending. It is 
this off of the base of this. It is the lack of understanding.
  One of the points that you keep trying to make over and over again 
is, was it the Democrats' plan that they wanted to raise taxes on 
everyone? Because that was automatic; that was coming at the end of 
this year.
  Your taxes were going up back to the pre-2017 tax reform. Every once 
in a while, you will get someone who says, well, you shouldn't have 
extended the tax policy for the highest income. Okay. That is a tiny, 
tiny portion of the total dollar amount. When they had control of 
everything, they didn't do it.
  But just from a point--and this is more for everyone to understand, 
particularly even staff. You see the blue here, nondefense/defense, 
every dime of that is borrowed. I think this year we will probably 
borrow, let's call it, $400 billion for Medicare. We are going to 
actually hold a contest shortly to see who can guess the final 
borrowing for this year.
  The economy has actually been pretty good. We are tracking customs 
receipts. Many of you think of it as tariffs. We may have another $70 
billion on top of baseline. It is probably going to come at $2.2 
trillion of borrowing this year.

  This doesn't have the tax reform, many of those things built into 
that base. How do I help folks understand? Here is where we are already 
at, and this will make sense in a little while.
  For every dollar we take in in tax receipts, we spend $1.39. We spend 
$1.39 for every dollar we take in tax receipts. If you saw that 
previous chart, you would have noticed that only about 24 to 26 percent 
is in discretionary, what we really get to vote on. That is why we end 
up having to use what we call these reconciliation budgets.
  The 1974 Budget Control Act allows us to move a bill, if it has 
certain fiscal properties to it, through the Senate without having to 
get 60 votes. It is all a dance to deal with the 60 votes. If we were 
actually a little more honest about math, maybe we wouldn't have to do 
this dance.
  Why this is important is--I am a little freaked out because this is 
the MedPAC report. I know every Member of Congress has read every word 
of it because it is really important. There is a chart in here that if 
you actually read the footnotes--now, look, for anyone that is paying 
attention, I am trying to bring Medicare Advantage back where the 
incentives actually are about helping populations be healthier and not 
about risk scoring them that--it is a concentration of illness, but the 
incentives are that if populations are healthier, the plans can make 
more money.
  But inside here is also a great data point, Mr. Speaker. This year, 
we are going to spend, let's call it, a trillion dollars on Medicare.

                              {time}  1810

  How many of you would guess what we are going to spend in 7 years? 
The model in here says in 7 years, we go from $1 trillion a year on 
Medicare to $2 trillion. We double Medicare spending in 7 years.
  Now, part of that is demographics. Starting, functionally, 30 years 
ago, we started having a lot fewer children. So if we took today and 
stepped back 20 years ago, we had about 35 million of our brothers and 
sisters who were 65 years old, 30 years ago. Today, we are approaching 
about 70 million of our brothers and sisters who are 65 and up, so more 
than double.
  Go back 20 years ago, the number of 18 years olds we had is pretty 
much the same as the number of 18 year olds we have today. Next year, 
the number of 18 year olds goes down, the year after that it goes down, 
and the year after that it goes down.
  Is that Republican or Democrat or is it just demographics? It is a 
little hard to campaign on that. It is a little hard to attack the 
other side, but the fact of the matter is, if we all read our data, we 
don't have a choice.
  This is the Social Security Medicare actuary report, another thing I 
know every Member here has actually read. Seven years from now, the 
Medicare part A trust fund, which is about 38 percent of Medicare 
spending--the rest comes out of the general fund and members' 
participation, I think is about 15 percent, the fees they pay--but that 
38 percent, that trust fund is gone in 7 years, meaning hospitals, 
surgery centers will have an 11 percent cut, but I know we are all 
going to talk and work on how we are going to revolutionize the cost of 
healthcare.
  One of the classic problems around here, Mr. Speaker, is for some 
reason the left--and many of us on the right--we talk about healthcare 
as a finance problem. The ACA was a finance bill. It was who had to 
pay, who got subsidized. Medicare for All is a finance bill. I would 
argue the Republican alternative from a few years ago was a finance 
bill. It had a little better actuarial curve, but it was a finance 
bill: who got subsidized, who has to pay.
  I beg of our brothers and sisters around here, open up your brain. We 
live in a time of miracles. We are going to have some conversations 
about how you change the view of healthcare. It is all about what we 
pay. Can we change the cost by doing it better, faster, cheaper with 
technology and our brothers and sisters being healthier?
  If we don't, we will have problems like what is shown on this chart. 
Today, 16 percent of all tax receipts go just to interest. In 9 budget 
years, actually 9 years straight up, in 9 years, 30 percent of all U.S. 
tax receipts go just to interest. Heaven forbid, if we had a 1 point 
movement in interest rates, my math is 45 percent of all tax receipts 
would go to interest.
  When you see people come behind these microphones, how many people 
are saying: Hey, how do we convince the bond markets? The bond markets 
are basically on the edge of running this country now because when you 
borrow $6 billion a day--next year, I think we borrow $6.5, maybe $7 
billion a day. In 9 years, we are over $10 billion a day. Let's see. 
That is, what, $70,000 to $72,000 a second.
  I have this aggregator on my news, and there are some crazy articles. 
A couple leftwing economists are saying: Borrowing doesn't matter, 
people are always willing to buy U.S. debt.
  Okay. Let's pretend these leftwing economists are right. We can 
continue to borrow and borrow and borrow. They purposely sort of forget 
the punch line. Let's say we could borrow forever. At what point are 
there no more services, purchases, government helping our brothers and 
sisters because it is all covering the interest costs on the bonds?
  So let's say--I think you are a little insane--you believe we can 
just borrow forever, you are a monetarist, but even the fragility in 
the monetarists, you saw in the previous few years of inflation that 
their model didn't work. Also, in addition to that, we are going to pay 
the interest. In 9 years, baseline under a favorable interest rate 
model, 30 percent of all U.S. tax receipts go to interest and, Heaven 
forbid, if interest rates were to come up 1 percent because we have 
to--this coming year, I think we are going to refinance $11 trillion, 
the year after that I think it is $13 trillion because we stay so short 
on the financing term, we sell short-term debt instead of longer-term 
debt because it turns out there is not as big an appetite. We are in 
this world where in 9

[[Page H3636]]

budget years, it will be $10 billion a day.
  I am just going to run through a number of these things fairly 
quickly just to sort of get to the point. National health expenditures 
as a percentage of GDP, this will make sense in a moment. In 2033--so 
functionally, what, 8 years from now--over 20 percent of the economy 
will just be healthcare. Why?
  The Joint Economic Committee 2 years ago wrote a report--and I 
thought I was going to get the crap kicked out of me, but we spent 
months and months and months grabbing every bit of literature and 
saying: Can someone tell me what obesity costs America? What it costs 
society? What it costs family formation? What does it cost? We came up 
with a number 2 years ago of $9.1 trillion in additional healthcare 
costs. We had some mortality statistics, the number of multiple chronic 
conditions, the misery out there.
  What is fascinating is we have some articles right now talking about 
that we may have actually hit something crazy, and it is an odd way to 
phrase it, but it is what the researchers think, we may have already 
hit what we call peak obesity.
  When we published the report 2 years ago, we still had about 4 or 5 
more years of growth of obesity. In some States, actually approaching 
50 percent of their population are technically obese under the BMI 
calculations.
  It looks like in the last 12 months we may have started to bend the 
curve. We are trying to recalculate. Is this a sign of incredible hope 
that we know so much misery in our society--because there is a 
brilliant paper from about 7 years ago saying the leading contributor 
to income inequality in America, it turns out, isn't education. It 
turns out it is health.

  When you think about it, the cascade of costs of someone with severe 
diabetes, when we already know diabetes is 33 percent of U.S. 
healthcare. What if things like this actually could help our brothers 
and sisters? Is this Republican or Democrat? It is just good policy. It 
has just always been uncomfortable to talk about.
  Maybe society is starting to open up, saying, hey, maybe a healthier 
society actually is a really good, really moral thing.
  Look, as we walk through these, I want to come back and sort of hit a 
punch line here. These charts have been available to us for years. The 
curve keeps getting steeper. When you have someone say they are a 
protector of Medicare, that is great. I am with you. It is an earned 
benefit. We made a societal promise, are they telling the truth about 
its financing? Oh, David, we can't do that, someone will say something 
mean about us.
  In 7 years, what else will also be empty? The Social Security trust 
fund.
  I am sure you all dove into the Social Security Medicare actuary 
report and saw the point in there where it says in 2032, 2033--actually 
we think it is 2032--our brothers and sisters on Social Security will 
take a 24 percent cut. Our model says we double senior poverty in 
America. That is absolutely immoral.
  Have you also read the papers, the scale of tax hikes, of policy? 
Now, is the left offering to work with those of us on the right who are 
willing to step on the third rail and do the moral thing to actually 
take these on? Hell, no.

                              {time}  1820

  Mr. Speaker, I have talked to so many people on the Committee on Ways 
and Means and other committees who basically look at me in terror and 
run out of the room.
  The political consultants care more about the power of the politics 
than the fact that in 7 years, Medicare is $2 trillion a year. In 7 
years, the Medicare trust fund is empty. In 7 years, the Social 
Security trust fund is empty.
  In the first full year, if we want to backfill that shortfall on 
Social Security, one of the rough numbers we have is $618 billion. 
Basically, what is that? It is two-thirds of what the entire defense 
budget is.
  There is a lack of understanding of the scale of almost the 
dystopianism that comes from what happens when these trust funds are 
empty.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is 
remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Arizona has 6 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I will learn to talk faster.
  To the poor person trying to take my words down, I apologize.
  I am going to skip over some of the other charts.
  Mr. Speaker, you get the punch line. In the next decade, the vast 
majority of debt is driven by interest and healthcare costs. We are 
often very uncomfortable talking about it.
  Let's actually talk about things that are great and that if we would 
get the policy right, we could lower that healthcare cost. It is not 
just an argument about who gets subsidized and who gets financed. It is 
what would be really good for society and really good for the budget.
  We all saw The Economist article the last couple of days that talked 
about the miracle of how much the statistical benefits were having on 
the number of cures for cancer, particularly lung cancer and blood 
cancers, and their model that we are on the cusp of having major 
breakthroughs.
  We saw this article a couple of days ago about a Microsoft platform. 
I didn't even know they were specializing in this. What was stunning 
about the datasets they had in here was that AI systems diagnosed 
patients four times more accurately than a human doctor.
  I just upset some of my brothers and sisters in the doc caucus, but 
the data is the data. Mr. Speaker, should we legalize technology? If I 
have something I can blow into called a Breath Biopsy and if it is 
statistically as accurate or more accurate than a human and knows what 
I have, should it be allowed to prescribe?
  It is uncomfortable, but it would help crash the cost of healthcare. 
It would actually help us with the fact that we have a shortage of 
medical professionals.
  We are on the cusp of these things. As a matter of fact, that 
technology has been around for 5 years except it is functionally 
illegal. We don't reimburse it, and we don't allow it to prescribe. We 
are on the cusp.
  An hour ago, Sam Altman with OpenAI was down the hallway. He and I 
had a few minutes of conversation about a new healthcare stat that is 
going to go public in about a month. He seemed incredibly optimistic 
that its accuracy will be off the charts.
  Should we legalize the use of technology to help our society be 
healthier? Should we allow it to prescribe? It is uncomfortable because 
this place is a protection racket. We have to understand. Congress is 
mostly about one thing. It is about money. The left pretends it isn't. 
The right pretends it isn't. It is about money.
  When we start to say maybe we can use technology as a competition to 
help our brothers and sisters be healthier and, therefore, change the 
cost of healthcare, somebody is going to say: I make money on that. You 
are now going to have me compete against a data system that is more 
accurate than I am?
  We see it over and over. A new Apple Watch AI model can reveal hidden 
health conversations. Here are a couple things I have been most 
interested in the last couple of years. There is a great article. I did 
a whole speech on it a couple of years ago.
  AI discovered a whole new categories of antibiotics. Remember we were 
all panic-stricken that we had diseases and bacterial infections that 
we didn't have antibiotics for. The antibiotics weren't working. AI 
discovered a whole new category of antibiotics that the literature said 
it would take humans 20 years to develop.
  Instead of being afraid of the technology, maybe we should get our 
heads straightened up. In our society we have a shortage of young 
people. Baby boomers like me with gray hair are getting older, and we 
are going to consume a lot more healthcare. Can we embrace the 
technology? That technology sets us free when we start to realize the 
things that are going on.
  We just had a doctor of radiology in our office. He walked us through 
the statistical abstract of breast cancer and the scans and showed that 
his AI platform was remarkably more accurate. It is cheaper, faster, 
and more accurate. Why wouldn't we embrace it? We don't reimburse it.
  The barriers to entry here are protection rackets saying we are not 
fighting

[[Page H3637]]

for what is fastest, best, and cheapest. We are often here because we 
know our incumbency.
  We really are on the edge of miracles. How do I get the left and the 
right to understand the math is the math? Demographics are the primary 
driver of U.S. sovereign debt. It is hard to campaign against the other 
side. Maybe we can take a couple of months off and actually do good, 
quality policy and legalize properly vetted and properly certified AI 
to prescribe.
  This August, with the wearables, I am going to do an experiment with 
this Oura Ring. I am buying some Dexcoms to manage my glucose. Have we 
all seen the app where we can take a picture of food and it calculates 
glucose and calories?
  How can we create the incentives? Maybe we should look at the ACA. 
Instead of just smoking in three age categories, we can add a fifth 
category that is an incentive for our brothers and sisters to manage 
their health.

  Mr. Speaker, 16 percent of U.S. healthcare spending is people who are 
not taking their drugs for hypertension and are not taking their 
statin. Mr. Speaker, 16 percent of U.S. healthcare spending is over 
$600 billion a year.
  There are solutions. We can make a difference. Embrace the 
technology. Change the cost. Have a healthier society. It is the most 
powerful thing we can do for U.S. sovereign debt.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________