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




               REPUBLICANS ASKED TO PASS CLEAN DEBT LIMIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Radanovich). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of revisionist 
history going on here on the other side.
  First let us understand something. The demand was that the President 
would submit a 7-year CBO-scored balanced budget. The Republicans came 
saying, ``He won't do it, he won't do it.'' He did it. They called off 
the negotiations. Apparently they were not serious about that.
  They spent 50 hours at the White House. The leaders of the 
legislative branch, Senator Dole, Speaker Gingrich, and the President 
of the United States, first time in history, high-level negotiations, 
at the 50-hour point after conferring on a number of topics, the 
President put down a budget that was CBO-scored, 7 years, balanced the 
budget, and the Republicans said the meetings are off. Why did they do 
that? Because apparently they cannot stand success.
  So now they want to up the ante, and what they want to suggest is 
what they are now prepared to do is to jeopardize the credit rating of 
the United States of America, to put this Government into default, and 
to potentially cost American families billions of dollars because they 
want to play fast and loose with the debt of this country and the debt 
limit.
  They should not be allowed to do that. They should not be allowed to 
cost the American people billions of dollars by leaving town tomorrow. 
I guess they are going to stay to hear Jacques Chirac, the Prime 
Minister of France, and they are going to listen to him and then they 
are going to leave for 3 weeks and come back, apparently on the 26th or 
the 27th, 2 days before the debt limit expires, and play brinksmanship 
with the White House or with themselves.
  Or really what they are doing is, they are going to play 
brinksmanship with the American people and their families. Because of 
the speculation and going down to the wire, people in the bond market 
will make decisions, the price of bonds will go up or they will not go 
up, and all of the American families that have automobile loans, that 
have adjustable rate mortgages on their home, that have a credit card 
whose interest rate is tied to indexes, who have home loans that are 
tied to indexes, all of those people will immediately be disadvantaged 
because the Republicans decided they want to leave town for 3 weeks.
  I guess they want to leave town for 3 weeks because their program is 
not working. Someone just said they will not put the President's budget 
on the floor. No, the Republicans will not put the President's budget 
on the floor. That was the decision today. That is why we are doing 5-
minute special orders, because they do not have anything to put on the 
floor, except we have this huge backlog of business to do.
  We have not done the 1996 budget. The 1997 budget is supposed to be 
getting underway. We have not dealt with the appropriations bills. We 
have not dealt with the farm bill. We have not dealt with the 
Endangered Species Act, we have not dealt with the Clean Water Act, we 
have not dealt with regulatory reform, but yet the Republicans want to 
go home.
  If your children did this, you would say, ``Eat your vegetables first 
before you get dessert.'' If a corporation did this who was 
contemplating going into chapter 11 and they said, ``We're going to 
leave town for 3 weeks, we'll get back to you on the day before the 
default,'' they would be fired. But somehow the Republican-led Congress 
can decide that we are just going to take 3 weeks off so Mr. Dole can 
go campaign in New Hampshire and in Iowa, and the deficit be damned.
  That kind of cavalier attitude is going to cost American families 
billions of dollars. It is going to cost this country its standing in 
the credit markets of the world. That should not be allowed.
  It was the same cavalier attitude that led to the tragedy of shutting 
down the Government, to deny American taxpayers the benefits of the 
Government for which they were paying and to jeopardize the financial 
stability of Governmental workers and their families. It was unfair, it 
was rude, it was reckless, and it turned out it was repudiated by the 
American public; repudiated again as late as yesterday in the Oregon 
election where the citizens of Oregon chose not to go with an extremist 
attitude, chose not to go with an extremist agenda but rather to try to 
go with a constructive individual who is interested in working for 
change, to bring about real change as opposed to extreme rhetorical 
charges and rhetorical comments about change.
  Mr. Speaker, this Congress should stay here, it should do its work 
and get its job done. If Mr. Dole wants to run for President, let him 
resign as the leader of the Senate and get on with his campaign, and 
let the American public get the benefit of us meeting the debt limit on 
a timely basis, on a clean basis, without threats of blackmail, without 
threats of taking hostages, without threats of shutting down the 
Government. That is the way we ought to do business.
  This obstructionism, this extremism ought to be brought to an end. 
Maybe the Oregon election will help bring that to an end. Maybe the 
Oregon election will get these people to understand that their agenda 
is being repudiated as being anti-American and American family.

                          ____________________