[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 114 (Wednesday, July 27, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4954-S4955]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              DEBT CEILING

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I wish to say to the Senator from Oklahoma 
that standing and going through the list of things that offer 
opportunities for saving is very important. I have a list as well. For 
example, on my list, we know of well over $1 trillion of money owed to 
the United States of America by people who have not paid it. If we even 
got a portion of that over a 10-year period--that is over a 10-year 
period--we could do that. I look forward to working with the Senator on 
that.
  But tonight we are not facing a 3-week timeframe as my colleague 
perhaps suggested, we are just facing down a 5-day timeframe and we are 
facing a manmade crisis and, by that, I have to say a Republican-made 
crisis on raising the debt ceiling.
  We have never in the history of this country faced a situation such 
as this. Why do I say this? Because the debt ceiling has been raised 89 
times--89 times--and I can tell you because I voted for it a number of 
times and voted no four times.
  Yes, on occasion you vote no on it and send a message, but you don't 
bring it down. I have never seen anything like this. We are going down 
a dangerous path. When I say we have raised the debt ceiling 89 times, 
that is in the Record--55 times under Republican Presidents, 34 times 
under Democratic Presidents. The debt limit was raised the most times 
during Ronald Reagan's Presidency. During his 8 years, the debt limit 
was increased by 200 percent. And this is what President Ronald Reagan 
said when it was time to raise the debt ceiling, which, again, under 
his Presidency was raised 18 times:

       The full consequences of a default--or even the serious 
     prospect of default--by the United States are impossible and 
     awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and 
     credit of the United States would have a substantial effect 
     on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the 
     dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to 
     allow such a result.

  That was in a letter written to Senator Howard Baker in 1983.
  The debt limit was raised seven times during the Presidency of George 
W. Bush. During his 8 years, the debt limit was increased by 90 
percent. Honest to goodness, I don't remember one Republican 
colleague--and I could be wrong on this--who suggested that we don't 
raise the debt ceiling when George W. Bush was President.
  I will tell you something. We all know that when you raise the debt 
ceiling, it is for debts already incurred.
  George W. Bush took a surplus of over $200 billion a year and he 
turned it into a deficit. The reason we have to raise the debt ceiling, 
mostly, is because of George W. Bush. I never heard one Republican in 
those years say: Let's bring this down; let's not raise the debt 
ceiling. They went on a binge. They put two wars on the credit card. 
They never paid for those wars. They put a tax cut for the richest 
people in America on that credit card. They didn't care. They put a 
prescription drug benefit which tied the hands of Medicare and said: 
You can't negotiate for lower drug prices, and instead of being 
affordable for the government, it became a budget buster--they put that 
on the credit card. I never heard them say: Let's not raise the debt 
ceiling, even though, under their policies, they took a surplus and 
turned it into a deficit. They took us off a path where we were about 
to finish up with our debt, frankly, and added debt as far as the eye 
could see.
  The hypocrisy, honestly--and I am being cautious in the way I express 
myself--doesn't even begin to describe what is going on here. It is 
disingenuous, it is just plain wrong to play politics with this.
  We know politics is at play here. I have run for election many times 
in my career--I think 11 or 12 times--and I know you have to pay 
attention to politics when you are running. We all understand that. We 
are not naive about it. We are tough on the trail. We know. But there 
is a time to govern. There is a time to set aside the politics and 
govern. If ever there were a moment in history, it is now.
  I have to say that my friend Senator Coburn said people are anxious 
in the country, but they are not anxious--he basically said 
specifically that their anxiety has nothing to do with the debt 
ceiling. I disagree respectfully. Anybody who has a 401(k) and has seen 
the stock market down 400 points is worried. Anyone who gets a Social 
Security check is worried. Anyone who fears we could default is 
worried. Anyone on Medicare is worried. Anyone on veterans disability 
is worried. Every Federal employee is worried. Every Federal private 
contractor in business is worried. Every worker who works for those 
people is worried, too, because they know very well that if we don't 
come together in a fair compromise, we will not be able to pay all of 
our bills. Again, raising the debt ceiling is something you have to do 
because you have already incurred all of the debt.
  I would like to talk a little bit about how we got into this 
unnecessary crisis and how we need to get out of it. We got into it 
because Republicans said they would not vote for a clean increase in 
the debt ceiling, as has been done 89 times before. They wanted to 
extract a pound of flesh and say: We demand that you cut spending now, 
tie it to this debt ceiling, and that is what we want. We said: OK, we 
are ready to talk.
  As a matter of fact, the Democrats on the Budget Committee put out an 
excellent plan. It cut not $850 billion, as John Boehner's plan does, 
but $4 trillion, and it protects Social Security, Medicare, and it 
basically said: We have a problem, and we are going to solve it with $2 
trillion in cuts and $2 trillion in revenues--50-50, which is kind of a 
fair way to approach it--and we are going to ask millionaires and 
billionaires to pay their fair share.
  Frankly, that plan is the ideal plan. It is a fair plan; it gets us 
on safe, good, solid fiscal ground; and it says we will have cuts and 
we will have revenue, and we will move forward and look at Medicare and 
Social Security to make them stronger--not to cut benefits. If I were 
acting like the Republicans over in the House, I would stand here and 
say: That is the only plan I will ever consider. I love that plan. It 
speaks to my values. It speaks to my State's values. But I understand 
that in a negotiation, in a situation such as this, no side gets 
everything they want.
  Now President Obama says: Let's all come together and work on a plan. 
Let's do something big, something real. First, Eric Cantor, the 
Republican whip, marched out of there with his teddy bear and his 
blanket, and then a few weeks later Boehner walks out.
  I have to say that I watched Speaker Pelosi sit at the White House 
many times. She sat across from George W. Bush. She did not agree with 
him. She felt that he had added to the debt, that he had added to the 
deficit. She disagreed with him on protecting millionaires and 
billionaires. She disagreed with him on the environment and on the war 
in Iraq. Nancy Pelosi never stalked out of a meeting. I find it, 
frankly, appalling that that is what happened.
  But the President keeps reaching out because he will take the 
personal hits because this country gave him everything, and he is not 
going to allow it to fall and to default and become a deadbeat nation.
  Speaker Boehner said: I am going to put together my own plan. So he 
puts together his own plan. Frankly, it hardly has any cuts. He comes 
back very short--$850 billion in cuts--and doesn't get past this 
problem we are facing. He only says it is for 4, 5, or 6 months, and 
then we are going to be back in the soup, in this mess, in this chaos, 
and back into the market selloffs, back into the uncertainty, back in 
the time when people can't even sleep well at night because Speaker 
Boehner and his people over there

[[Page S4955]]

want to keep this thing boiling over. They think somehow it is good for 
them. I say it is not good for them.
  But you know what, I don't care if it is good or bad for them or 
whether it is good or bad for us. What I care about, what you care 
about, what we care about is this Nation that is everything to us. We 
have to stand up for this Nation. That means we have to leave the 
political labels at the door and set aside our favorite plan, as I have 
set aside my favorite plan, and support a real compromise.
  Let me tell you the real compromise we have before us. It is the Reid 
approach. It is a real compromise because what does compromise mean? 
Nobody gets everything they want, but everybody gets something they 
want. What do the Republicans say they want? They wanted cuts and no 
revenues. They got that in the Reid plan. Our leader, Majority Leader 
Reid, has heard them. Not only does he have cuts, he has twice as many 
cuts as the Boehner plan--cuts that hurt a lot of the things that many 
of us don't want to hurt, but we understand we have to give something. 
So they get that. What do we get? We get certainty. We believe it is 
very important that we take this issue of the debt ceiling and get it 
past the election, past January or February of 2013, and get back to 
the business of job creation and all of the things we need to do--we 
get that.
  We also talked about a committee that would look at the long-range 
problems of this deficit and debt and the need to do reforms and the 
need to look at what revenues make sense. There is a committee in that 
bill. This is a true compromise. I agree that the other things the 
Democrats got are no cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
  But if you really, truly look at this, the Reid plan gives the 
Republicans more than even he gives the Democrats. But it is worth it 
to us to get certainty in the markets, protect Social Security and 
Medicare, avoid the chaos of the Boehner plan, and avoid the danger we 
face if our bonds are downgraded.
  The Boehner plan risks catastrophic default, and we are concerned 
that if it were to pass, we would again see this economy being held 
captive; we would again be facing deep cuts in Medicare and Social 
Security; we would again be facing all kinds of hostage-taking to 
protect the millionaires and the billionaires.
  I believe that no one who loves this country, regardless of political 
label, should take any action to result in America becoming a deadbeat 
nation.
  I am a first-generation American on my mother's side. My mother never 
even went to high school because during her time in high school her 
father got very ill and she had to go to work. Because I was born in 
this country, even though we had barely anything, I was able to get an 
education. I was able to go toe-to-toe with my colleagues who went to 
fancy schools. I remember when I went to Brooklyn College in New York, 
they raised the tuition from $9 a semester to $14 a semester. My dad 
said, ``Honey, you are getting awfully expensive.'' But I got a college 
education in this country. I got to the Senate in this country.
  But I have to say, if we are going into a circumstance where 
everything we do to fight for the middle class is held hostage to 
protect the richest among us--the billionaires, the millionaires, the 
multinational corporations--if that is the pattern we are getting into 
here, I fear for this country. We can't let it happen, and that is why 
we have been very clear that the Boehner plan just continues this 
hostage taking. So the Reid alternative is the true compromise. It 
gives us substantial cuts in deficits, it gives us a process for more 
deficit and debt reduction, and it gives us certainty in the 
marketplace.

  In closing, I would say this: When each of us has won our election, 
we go up there to the place where the Presiding Officer is sitting and 
we put our hand on the Bible and we swear to uphold the Constitution. I 
had the honor of serving with Senator Robert Byrd--and most of us here 
have--and he always carried around this Constitution in his pocket. 
Today, I took a look at section 4 of the 14th amendment, and it says: 
The validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be 
questioned.
  I held up my hand and I swore to uphold this Constitution. It says 
the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by 
law, shall not be questioned. So I am not going to play games with 
this, and I am not going to allow the public debt to become a political 
football.
  Before I leave the floor, let me show a couple more charts. This is 
what Speaker Boehner said on July 22 of this year. He said:

       I'm not really interested in a short-term increase in the 
     debt limit.

  And on May 9 he said:

       Our economy won't grow as long as we continue to trip it up 
     with short-term gimmicks from Washington.

  That is what Speaker Boehner said. So what does he give us? A short-
term extension of the debt limit. A few months. We can't do that. In 
his own words he says that would hurt the economy.
  Eric Cantor said to Politico:

       If we can't make the tough decisions now, why would we be 
     making those tough decisions later? It is my preference we do 
     this thing one time. Putting off tough decisions is not what 
     people want in this town.

  Yet what do they do? They send us--and we don't know if they will get 
the votes to send us, but they are planning to send us--a short-term 
deal which leaves this great Nation in chaos.
  You talk to every businessman and they will tell you the thing they 
worry about the most is uncertainty. And that is the path of 
uncertainty. Eric Cantor said it, Boehner said it: No short-term deal. 
But they are sending us a short-term deal.
  I will close with this from the New York Times. The headline reads: 
``The Mother of All No-Brainers.''

       If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see 
     that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans 
     were not. If responsible Republicans don't take control, 
     independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused 
     this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit 
     to govern. And they will be right.

  I appeal to our Republican colleagues in this Senate Chamber who have 
shown, working with Senator Durbin, working with Senator Warner, 
working with others on our side--Senator Conrad--they are willing to 
come forward and do something meaningful and put the politics aside. I 
hope they will do just that. They will find in Leader Reid someone who 
understands the art of compromise, who understands we have to put aside 
our party labels and do what is right for this Nation.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). The Senator from West Virginia.

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