[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 133 (Tuesday, October 1, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H6057-H6058]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THE UNSUSTAINABLE PATH OF OUR BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 
Mexico (Mr. Pearce) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, we are here this morning. Many in the Nation 
have questions about how we arrived at this point. It's not that 
complex. Different people across the country elect people to represent 
their viewpoints. Even across my own State, the viewpoints vary widely. 
I probably represent five or six different demographics, different 
economic engines, different needs. We are sent here to make decisions, 
to make hard decisions.
  One of the toughest things that the Nation faces right now is that we 
are on an unsustainable path in our United States budget. Those are not 
my words. They are the words of a specialist, the economist that we 
hired to tell us such things just last week, notating that what we're 
doing is not sustainable.
  The one side, I recognized their viewpoints, that they should provide 
more for more people. Other viewpoints are

[[Page H6058]]

that we should live within our means as a Nation, that we cannot 
continue to borrow from the future to pay for the present.
  And so we arrived at this budget negotiation, this way to fund the 
government, the continuing resolution. What should happen is that we 
pass 12 different appropriation bills funding the government, one unit 
at a time, with great insight coming from both points of view, both 
parties, both sides of the aisle.
  About three or four or five of those have been passed out of 
committee. Some have been sent to the Senate. Those have not been 
processed, but the House hasn't finished its work. So we were forced 
into a circumstance caused by both houses, both parties that said, 
we'll fund the government with a continuing resolution. That is, we 
will resolve to continue how we spent before. Those are sometimes 
inadequate, inaccurate reflections of current spending problems, 
current spending needs. But that's where we were.
  Now on the one side, the President said, We want you to just give us 
the money to spend. Our side said, We will do that, but we want things 
in return. If we're spending more than the Nation can bring in, if 
we're spending more than the government has, then we would like to 
check that spending. We would give attention to the Affordable Care 
Act, to ObamaCare, that we would choose that in order to relieve the 
pressure.
  The bill is unpaid for. We are printing the money to make government 
work now. About $1 trillion a year is being printed.

                              {time}  1030

  We call it quantitative easing because printing sounds so crass to 
the American public. So we're quantitative easing $1 trillion a year; 
and yet we're bringing on another program which is unaffordable and 
which we do not have the trillion or $2 trillion to spend.
  So our side said, initially, we will give you the funding for the 
government, but on our side, we would like to defund the entire 
program. That position simply was never responded to by the Senate.
  In good faith, we said, okay, we understand your unspoken 
communication, so we notched down a bit. We will still continue the 
government funding at the price that you, the President, are asking 
for. And this time, we'll simply delay the program for 1 year. It's not 
working. It has problems in many different States. We still aren't 
certain where the funding comes from.
  And, again, the President and the Senate remained silent, not even 
bothering to show up for work for a couple of days before they sent our 
first opinion back, simply rejected. The second was sent back.
  Last night we were faced with another quandary. We said, we'll notch 
down one more time. We said, we'll fund the government at the level 
you're requesting, but we should, on our side, suggest that we would 
delay the individual mandate.
  The President has given many individual exemptions. He's given 
waivers to companies, to unions. He said to all employers, we're going 
to delay your input for a year.
  Last night the Senate rejected that. That's the reason we're here 
today.
  I call on the Speaker, the President, and Mr. Reid, to gather 
publicly in front of TV cameras and work the differences out.

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