David Schweikert

“I ask the chairman whether it is tireless or annoying. It is one or the other. Look, I have an absolute fixation, and I have got to thank my Democratic colleague and a number of the team here for tolerating my fixation on the fact that one of the ways you work within the IRS budget to make things more efficient is the adoption of technology. Imagine a world--because it is the one we live in--where some of the number one calls we get to my district office are IRS questions: Where is my refund? Do I owe money?”

“I first came up here to talk about three of the bills, which were in waste and fraud, but I will make a simple point being from a border State. The chaos that was allowed to happen in my State and other border States for functionally 4 years, millions and millions and millions and millions, you didn't think there was ever going to be a societal cost, a government cost?”

“Mr. Speaker, we are going to actually try to do something that is a little complex, so I apologize. I apologize for those trying to keep track. If I start speaking like a machine gun--once again, I have had a stunning amount of coffee--just wave at me, and I will slow down. I am going to try to actually explain and walk through what we talk about constantly, and that is waste and fraud. I have got three silos here, and I am going to try to fight for some understanding: What is real in its fiscal impact. What is sort of commercial fraud.”

“This is sort of our weekly attempt to see if we can use math to annoy people, so let's actually have some fun here. I am going to try three different things in this presentation. One, we are going to actually talk about the real driver of interest rates, housing affordability. The second thing we are going to actually talk about is sort of the cycle of fraud in so many of these government programs.”

“Let's try something I have never done before, but I also need to sort of lock something down. Mr. Speaker, if there is anyone from your staff watching--and we said we would make it public-- my team and myself were made a promise today that when we get back we are going to sit down with a couple of the committee chairs and some of my joint economic economists because we have been sitting on pieces of legislation for over a year to cut spending and borrowing, without removing services. There will be lobbyists who will yell and scream.”

“have you ever had a piece of legislation--we all go through this--where you have your friends on the opposite side who say things, and you think, wow, I can't find that in this piece of legislation. I guess we are all sometimes in the pandering business. About a year ago, in my community, we had a woman who came running out of her house holding a knife. She was having some sort of horrible mental health issue, and she was charging a police officer with a knife.”