[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 13 (Wednesday, January 31, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H986-H987]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  BOEHNER SEES NO PROSPECT OF DEFAULT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, there has been an awful lot of talk about 
the credit of the United States of America. Over the last 15 years, the 
Congress of the United States has consistently used the statute to 
increase the debt limit to move their agenda, the congressional agenda, 
through the White House and into law. We have seen this over these past 
15 years by Democrat Congresses.
  Over the last year, Republicans in Congress have felt pretty strongly 
about the need to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington, DC. We 
have accumulated some $5 trillion worth of debt that none of us in this 
room are ever really going to pay off. Our children and our 
grandchildren are going to pay that off. We are imprisoning our 
children and our grandchildren by our irresponsibility over the last 25 
to 30 years.
  So now is the time to do something about it. The President of the 
United States wants us to give him a clean increase in the debt limit. 
He wants to put more debt on the backs of our children. What we are 
going to insist is that we make a down payment, a down payment on 
saving the future for our children and theirs, a down payment on moving 
us toward a plan to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington.
  Our friends on the other side and the White House are making this big 
issue about whether we are going to default. Well, there is going to be 
no default, not now, nor is there going to be any default in the 
future. We believe that the debt limit is being handled by the 
Treasury, probably not in a way that I would do it, but it is being 
handled.
  But I have to tell Members the frustration amongst Members on both 
sides of this Capitol about the refusal of the President of the United 
States to deal honestly with trying to bring fiscal responsibility to 
Washington is excessive. We sat through 6 weeks of meetings at the 
White House over trying to find some agreement on balancing the budget.
  I have got to tell Members, looking back over those last 6 weeks, 
nothing really happened other than we were diddled with. We were props 
for the cameras at the White House, because the President of the United 
States in fact made hardly no movement toward any honest effort to 
balance the budget. Oh, yes, the President wants to agree on some 
numbers but never agree on the policies that would actually get us 
there. He wanted to do the same thing the politicians from both sides 
of 

[[Page H987]]
the aisle over the last 30 years have done to the American people, and 
that is to sell them out.
  We are not going to get into a debate with the President about 
balancing the budget unless it is real. We are not going to do to our 
children and theirs what has gone on in this town far too long. So if 
we are going to have a plan to balance the budget, it is going to be 
with real numbers, it is going to be with real policies that will move 
us toward actually balancing the budget.
  But the President has refused. Negotiations and discussions have 
stopped. So what we are going to do this year is that we are going to 
make attempts to get down payments on our plan to balance this budget. 
One such down payment will come as we bring the debt limit extension to 
the floor of the House the last week in February.
  The President has said that he needs a debt limit extension by March 
1. The President will have a debt limit extension by March 1. There is 
no threat, let me repeat, no threat that this country will default on 
its debts now, nor is there any threat in the future that we will 
default on our debt. There is not going to be any default.
  But we are going to have a down payment on this debt limit. The 
Balanced Budget Down Payment Act that we passed last week to extend to 
the Government funding authority for those six departments or 
appropriation areas that had not been funded continued that process. We 
are seeing funding for these agencies reduced over what we spent last 
year. We are seeing grants by agencies, that have been agreed to by the 
House and Senate, not allowed to make new grants.

                              {time}  1230

  If you look at that one-third of the budget which is discretionary 
spending, we expected to save about $23 billion this year. These are 
real dollars, less spending this year than what we spent in the last 
fiscal year, and if we continue on this course with continuing 
resolutions for the balance of this year, we expect to save $29 to $30 
billion in real spending.
  This is a downpayment for our children's future, and it is the right 
thing for our kids and theirs.

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