[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 13 (Wednesday, January 31, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H978-H979]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  PASS A CLEAN DEBT CEILING EXTENSION

  (Mr. PALLONE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, again I wanted to comment on the 
possibility of the default on March 1. I find it incredible that the 
Republican leadership 

[[Page H979]]
first attempted to shut down the Government on several occasions in the 
past few months in order to try to enforce their radical agenda and 
essentially hold the Government hostage because the Democrats would not 
agree to major cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, environmental protection, 
and education.
  Now, realizing that the American people could not support the 
Government shutdown and that they were losing the support of the 
American people, they decided they would leave the Government open 
again, and now they are moving towards this default. They are 
jeopardizing the credit rating of the United States which, as of March 
1, there is a real possibility that this Government would default.
  What they are saying is, that is OK. We will go home for 3 weeks. We 
will adjourn after tomorrow. We will come back at the very end of 
February, just a few days before March 1. And if you do not go along 
with our radical agenda and cut Medicare and cut Medicaid and do the 
other things that we want to you to do, based on our ideology, then we 
are going to default.
  I think it is a terrible way to operate. We should put a stop to it.

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