Dear ,

I hope you and your family are doing well. I wanted to provide a few updates on my work this past week for the residents of Arizona’s First Congressional District.

Telling the Brutally Honest Truth About Balancing the Budget in 10 Years

Click here or on the image above to view my remarks.

In my speech on the House Floor last week, I walked through the Congressional Budget Office's baseline projections of the federal budget over the next decade and the amount of bloodletting that is required to actually achieve a balanced budget.

The main obstacle in the way of stabilizing the budget doesn't reside with the Left or the Right — it's actually our demographics. We got old, and we have fewer people participating in the labor force today than we did before the pandemic. We need to incentivize workforce participation and encourage innovation to cause disruption, which will help shrink the size of the federal government and create a healthier society. We have these types of disruption in society all the time. Congress should embrace fiscally responsible tax reform that saves our nation from the looming debt crisis.

Investigating the Scale of Pandemic Fraud

Last week, the Ways and Means Committee approved legislation to give states incentives to recover hundreds of billions of dollars of COVID unemployment insurance payments stolen by fraud. During the hearing, I spoke about my priorities as Oversight Subcommittee Chairman to leave no stone unturned as we work to identify the extent of pandemic fraud. Investigating bad acts and preventing them from committing such blatant theft of taxpayer dollars will play an outsized role as part of our Oversight agenda.

Holding the IRS Accountable for Publicly Releasing Confidential Taxpayer Information

On Thursday, Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08) and I sent a letter to Acting Commissioner of the IRS Douglas O'Donnell demanding the agency release documents related to the improper disclosure of private taxpayer information leaked by the government. The IRS improperly published confidential taxpayer information twice just months apart in 2022, jeopardizing the private information of over 100,000 taxpayers. 

The fact that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) improperly published confidential taxpayer information once is bad enough. The fact that the agency put months into resolving the issue only to republish the exact same confidential taxpayer information again raises alarms about whether the agency is capable of upholding the fundamental principles – both legal and ethical – that are supposed to be part of the agency’s core mission. The Ways and Means Committee needs to gather documents and information to understand how this happened multiple times, and what the agency – and potentially Congress – needs to do to make sure it does not happen again.

To read the full letter, click here.

Thank You for the Birthday Wishes

I enjoyed celebrating my birthday last week with my son, Matthew, and members of my district staff at Hello..India Kitchen. I appreciated the kind hospitality of the restaurant staff. Thank you all for the birthday wishes!

What I’m Reading & Why It Matters

Tired of receiving spam messages? Not sure how to spot the difference between fake text messages and real ones? This article gives helpful tips on how to avoid having your personal information stolen by scammers.

Here are several methods that scammers might use to get your information, according to the FTC:

• A scammer might try to say they’ve noticed suspicious activity on your account
• Claim there’s a problem with your payment information
• Send you a fake invoice and tell you to contact them if you didn’t authorize the purchase
• Send you a package delivery notification
• Promise free prizes, gift cards, or coupons
• Offer you a low or no interest credit card
• Promise to help you pay off your student loans

Thank you for taking the time to read this update on my latest work in Washington, D.C. and Arizona's First Congressional District! If you have any comments or concerns, I encourage you to reach out to my office.

Sincerely,

David Schweikert