[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 10 (Thursday, January 25, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H840-H841]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          DUMB AND MUCH DUMBER

  (Mr. SCHUMER asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. Speaker, if this were a movie, it would be called 

[[Page H841]]
  ``Dumb and Much Dumber.'' It was dumb to shut the Government down for a 
month, but it would be much dumber to default on the national debt.
  Yesterday Moody's, the world-renowned bond rater, put $400 billion of 
U.S. securities on the credit watch list, and Moody's has reason to 
worry. Many in this House, exhibiting a combination of arrogance and 
ignorance, a dangerous combination, want to allow us to default, in the 
vain hope it will bring a budget agreement. Not in the 220 years of our 
country's existence has America's credit rating ever been downgraded 
from triple A.
  Some in the Republican Party are playing with fire, and if they are 
not careful we will all get burned. The Speaker is dancing on the edge 
of a fiscal abyss.

                              {time}  1015

  He may go down and take all of us with him if he does not stand up to 
the extremists in his own party.
  Mr. Speaker, a month ago I would have said not even this Congress 
would be stupid enough to default on the debt. Today I am not so sure, 
because the inmates in a real sense, are running this asylum.

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