'Look At The Actual Data': David Schweikert Responds To Dem Accusations About The Big Beautiful Bill

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On "Forbes Newsroom," Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) spoke about the Big Beautiful Bill and Democratic accusations that millions will lose health insurance.

Transcript

00:00When you hear people say Democrats, even some Republicans in the Senate are concerned about

00:05cuts to Medicaid, concerns about cuts to SNAP, around 3 million people could lose food assistance

00:11from SNAP, and anywhere between 8 to 14 million Americans could lose health insurance over the

00:16next decade. So when you, based on this bill, so when you see those ads, when you hear that

00:20from Democrats, what's your response as someone who spent hours negotiating this? Yeah, and my

00:26response becomes, take a look at the actual data. If you actually look at the spreadsheet,

00:33and I tried to do that last night, partially in the floor speech, is walk through the population

00:38statistics of where these benefits are going. And particularly in the Medicaid space of when you

00:48have things like in Arizona, we had a two and a half billion dollar fraud of what we call sober

00:54living homes. When you actually take a look at one of the economic problems we have in the United

01:00States is there's close to 7 million prime age males missing from the labor force. And if you

01:07under, and this isn't conservative, liberal, it's actually just the data is some of the incentives

01:14for the population not to participate in the economy, is how we deliver these social services.

01:19And it but there becomes the battle is one side will talk their book because they're being funded

01:29by the folks who make money off these programs, instead of the willingness to say, all right,

01:35here's our actual statistics. Here's what we know are misalignment, here's actual fraud. And you have

01:41this list of what we've been actually building a list of actual frauds within the Medicaid system,

01:48let alone the work we're doing on the Medicare system. And then the incentives of how you help

01:53our brothers and sisters, particularly brothers participate in the economy again, because we all

01:59have the economic literature, it says unless you're participating in the economy, you become poor,

02:06because you don't develop the skill sets, you don't move up in in your in your ability to make a

02:11living. And it was pretty harsh about this last night in the floor speech. But you have the

02:18literature, it makes it clear, we're hurting people by not expectation of participating back in the

02:25economy. But somehow that is a violation someone else's economic model, where they want as much

02:33population with the government subsidy. And then you actually have the three legged stool of how many

02:40states use a provider tax to not actually meet their economic obligations in the system.

02:47So what's been so sad and frustrating is much of the discussion in regards to Medicaid has been

02:54completely void of how the system actually works. And also the differences in a state like Arizona,

03:00where we buy managed care policies, we function by capitated policies for our indigent population,

03:06compared to a state like California, which is just the Wild West of profligate spending.

03:15Should a state like Arizona be rewarded for doing certain things very well? And should other states

03:21that are off the charts in their spending and their costs be punished?

03:25That requires math. And right now the debate has very little math in it.

03:32And so how I guess would be my next question, are you adding math into the conversation when it

03:37comes to the Senate? Because you've acknowledged this Speaker Johnson has acknowledged this,

03:41everyone essentially has acknowledged that it has, it is going to be changed, this bill is going to be

03:47changed in the Senate, and then will need to be passed again in the House. So what are your

03:51conversations looking like with Republican senators? You're absolutely brilliant. So one of the joys is

04:00I chair the Joint Economic Committee. So it's one of the few things in life where it's bicameral. You

04:05know, I have senators as part of the Joint Economic Committee, and it always annoys them when a House

04:10member is actually the chairman over them. And to the credit, there's been a handful of senators who've

04:16been using our staff, the Joint Economic staff, to try to understand how you maximize efficiency,

04:25how you make sure that the populations who need and deserve the services get them. But how do you

04:33remove the noise? And the noise is hundreds of billions of dollars, if you actually read what's out

04:40there? There's also the other side. I've had a couple senators we've walked over our information to,

04:48and they've had very little interest. And the excuse is often, well, that's going to be too hard to

04:55explain to my voters. Others who seem quite willing to do programs like you have, where it's one of the,

05:03this is one of the few formats left in DC, where you can have an adult conversation of how to make

05:09things work. It's still to be seen what becomes ascendancy in the Senate. Is it folks who actually

05:22want to manage debt and deficits by modernizing the delivery? Or is it those who just, you know,

05:31are afraid of someone throwing out numbers, even though those numbers are often self-serving to the

05:35folks that make money off of it?

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