[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 131 (Saturday, September 28, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H5931]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LET'S FIND SOLUTIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA Mr. Speaker, as we all know, we have important deadlines 
approaching this coming Monday--on our fiscal year budget, the farm 
bill, as well as what we see impending with the Obama health care 
takeover of the exchanges implementation.
  What do we have a lot of around here? Drama. Lots of drama--from the 
left, from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle; from the 
press, saying, government shutdown, government shutdown. My daughter, 
who is in school, she tries to avoid drama at school with her friends 
and, instead, stick to what she knows she needs to get done.
  Yet around here, that's a pretty big byproduct. We need to be working 
on a lot of key things to make our country run better, more fiscally 
sound. That would be, for example, working towards actually balancing 
the budget long term. What I see in the plans that are coming from the 
White House, over in the Senate, is that there is no plan to move 
towards a balanced budget in the future. It's going to take hard work. 
It's going to be difficult. There will be a lot of infighting and 
caterwauling in this place in order to try to move to that direction.
  But Republicans actually offer a plan to, in the future, move towards 
a balanced budget, to make those lines finally come together after 
many, many years of overspending. We don't see those ideas come from 
the other side.
  Unfortunately, we're not going to get out of this pattern of having 
to raise the debt ceiling until we achieve the balanced budget that we 
direly need in this country. That's the dirty little secret. Debt 
ceilings are going to be part of our future until we can truly get the 
balance. So real solutions are needed that move us in that direction, 
not more drama.
  Mr. Speaker, stop the drama. Let's get together and work on these 
solutions. I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, talking 
about that this morning, let's do real budgets instead of CRs. I don't 
like doing continuing resolutions either, but I guess it's a way to 
keep the government open in the meantime until we can come to 
agreement. But we have to have some kind of fiscal reality that says 
that we can't keep spending more than we take in.
  We can't implement a program like the Obama health care takeover 
that's killing jobs, that's giving people fewer choices on their health 
care, that's running doctors out of the business. It's no fun for them 
anymore when they see this coming down upon them.
  Let's go to free market approaches. Let's go to what the Republican 
Study Committee is working on, with the American Health Care Reform 
Act, which gives people choices, which actually addresses the high-risk 
pools and allows people that are in a permanent situation, needing 
long-term health care to find those solutions. Instead, we get 
something that we know, we see is not going to work.
  Look at all the delays in the implementation of the health care 
exchanges. Delay after delay after delay. Yes, we need delays because 
it isn't working.
  Instead, we hear threats: Government shutdown; you, Republicans, are 
doing this; you are doing that.
  Mr. Speaker, let's stop the drama and get to the real solutions. 
Let's do the math on the Obama health care takeover, how it's not going 
to work. Let's do the math on how CRs are not really a solution but a 
temporary measure. Let's do the math on moving toward a truly balanced 
budget sometime in the future, which the Republican House has offered 
but doesn't seem to be coming at all from the White House.

  We've asked the White House, Do you have a plan to balance the 
budget? Or the Senate, Do you have a plan to balance the budget, ever? 
We don't see them. We have to balance them in our own personal lives, 
around our households, our businesses. Yet why does government continue 
to have a blank check and get away with it, with the taxpayers' money, 
with the taxpayers' future? How many trillions of dollars of debt do we 
have to get to before we are actually going to learn this lesson that 
we're going to leave for the coming generations?
  I want to be a part of the solution that moves these lines together 
so that we get to a balanced budget sometime in the near future, not 
never. This Nation requires it. If we want to have jobs, if we want to 
have the prosperity that we once knew, we need to go back in that 
direction.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I ask this body, I ask our colleagues in the Senate, 
I ask the White House: Let's stop with the drama. Let's get back to the 
table and negotiate.
  When our President says that he will not negotiate with us, the 
American public should be appalled that in the process of the give-and-
take of the institutions our Founders set up here, with these three 
branches--the House, Senate, and White House--who are supposed to get 
together, compromise, hammer things out, argue, get along, all those 
things--that when one branch of that does not want to get together, to 
even talk and compromise, but, instead, is willing to be on the phone 
with Iran or Russia and not our own colleagues, we should be appalled.
  Let's get back together. Let's stop the drama of the name-calling, of 
threatening government shutdowns, where Republicans are not moving 
towards that at all, but are actually trying to find solutions. Let's 
get it done for the American people. I think the American public 
demands that. Let's have solutions.

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