[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 10 (Thursday, January 25, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H854]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            RUSSIAN ROULETTE POLITICS CAN BRING NATION DOWN

  (Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, let us recognize what is 
going to happen in the next few weeks if this debt limit is not 
extended. We are going to raise the cost, if the interest rates in this 
country go up just 1 percent, the average cost of a home mortgage will 
go up $1,200. The cost of borrowing by the Federal Government will go 
up by $150 billion; more than our entire education budget in the course 
of the next 7 years.
  Mr. Speaker, my Republican colleagues are talking about fiddling with 
the fundamental economic system that this world has developed to pay 
its bills. What we can have here is the extremism of the Republicans. 
Not that they want just a balanced budget, which I want; not just a 
balanced budget scored by CBO, which I want; but, they want their 
particular version of the balanced budget or else they say they are 
going to send the entire debt of the United States of America into 
default.
  Mr. Speaker, it is blackmail. It is the kind of Russian roulette 
politics that brings a nation down, and does not make it greater. We 
have a Constitution in this country that divides power between the 
President and the Congress, the House and the Senate. Let that policy 
of compromise move forward. Do not let one particular group of freshmen 
Republicans put their extremist views on the people of this country.

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