[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 50 (Tuesday, March 27, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H1578]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1010
                        EVE OF THE BUDGET DEBATE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. The House is about to consider a budget in a 
dangerous hour in the life of our country. Last year, we barreled past 
several urgent warning signals--the loss of our Nation's AAA credit 
rating; the size of the national debt surpassing our entire economy; 
and a record third straight year of trillion-dollar-plus annual 
deficits. I believe this is one of the last opportunities to avert a 
financial crisis unprecedented in our Nation's experience and on a 
magnitude far greater than that which is now destroying Greece.
  The blueprint passed by the House Budget Committee last week is a 
disappointment to those who believe that the budget can and should be 
balanced much sooner, and I certainly don't entirely disassociate 
myself from those sentiments. But the immediate issue before us, as 
Lincoln put it, ``is not `can any of us imagine better?' but, `can we 
all do better?' ''
  The approaching financial crisis demands first and foremost that we 
turn this country away from the fiscal precipice and place it back on a 
course to solvency. This budget does so. Indeed, it improves upon last 
year's House budget that died in the Senate, which, according to 
Standard & Poor's, would have preserved the AAA credit rating of the 
United States Government. This budget, I believe, will restore it.
  It is, of course, a long road back, balancing by the late 2030s and 
ultimately paying off the entire debt by the mid 2050s. But even 
relying on the static scoring of the CBO which presents a worst-case 
scenario, it still means that my children, who are now in college, will 
be able to retire into a prosperous and entirely debt-free America.
  True, there's a great deal in it for conservatives not to like, but 
that is not the issue. The issue is will this Congress and, ultimately, 
this government change its fiscal trajectory enough to avert the 
sovereign debt crisis that fiscal experts across the spectrum warn us 
is just a few years dead ahead.
  This is not some moonless night on the Atlantic. We can see this 
danger right ahead of us, and we can see that it is big enough to sink 
this great ship of state. We have precious little time remaining to 
avert it. This budget will turn us just enough to avoid that calamity--
and I fear we won't have many more opportunities to do so.
  The alternative is unthinkable. The President's budget would subject 
our Nation to one of the biggest tax increases in its history, striking 
especially hard at the small businesses that we're depending upon to 
create two-thirds of the new jobs that Americans desperately need. And 
even so, by its own numbers, it never balances and, thus, courts the 
fiscal collapse of our Nation.
  Hemmingway asked, ``How do you go bankrupt?''
  ``Two ways,'' he said. ``Gradually, then suddenly.''
  For the last decade, this Nation has been going bankrupt gradually. 
History warns us that if we don't change course very soon, we will 
cease going bankrupt gradually and start going bankrupt quite suddenly. 
It may happen through a chain reaction set off by a seemingly minor 
international incident. It may happen one day when a routine bond 
auction sours. Interest rates will start rising rapidly. Financial 
panics will begin. The government will have to respond by increasingly 
frantic efforts to maintain a stream of capital, either through massive 
policy dislocations or catastrophic inflation.
  The approach of great cataclysms that are so obvious to historians in 
retrospect are often unheeded by contemporaries at the time. Just 30 
days before the outbreak of World War II, Neville Chamberlain recessed 
Parliament to go on extended holiday. Let that not be how history 
remembers this Congress. This budget is not perfect, but it is adequate 
to spare our country from the convulsions of Greece.
  I wholeheartedly support this budget for that reason, and I expect 
that we'll have the overwhelming support of this House. I can only hope 
that the Senate this time will put aside its own differences and heed 
Lincoln's plea that:

       The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy 
     present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we 
     must rise--with the occasion. We must disenthrall ourselves, 
     and then we will save our country.

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