[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 158 (Tuesday, September 14, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S6465]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              DEBT CEILING

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, here is a quote to start the day:

       I do think we're in very serious danger of repeating almost 
     all the mistakes of the 1960s and early 1970s.

  That is Larry Summers, the senior advisor to two Democratic 
Presidents, about the risk of inflation we face today.
  As one report explained:

       The former Treasury secretary has been warning since 
     February that President Joe Biden's big-spending agenda was 
     creating the risk of an inflation spike this year, 
     potentially cutting into the economic recovery from the 
     COVID-19 pandemic.

  Oh, but Washington Democrats have spent trillions--trillions--of 
dollars on pet liberal projects. They have been printing and wasting 
money like there is no tomorrow, and American families are hurting as a 
result.
  Inflation has more than overtaken the average worker's wage growth 
since last year. Employers are raising wages higher and higher, but 
their workers' paychecks go less and less far. Families' incomes and 
savings are eroding right before their eyes.
  Democrats have done this proudly--proudly--on a party-line basis. 
Back in 2020, during the teeth of the COVID emergency, Congress worked 
across party lines to pass massive rescue packages that Republicans and 
Democrats had written together. Virtually every serious expert agreed 
that after the last relief bill that we passed in December, the economy 
was primed and ready to go.
  But our Democratic colleagues wanted more. Like they admitted from 
the start of the pandemic, they wanted to use the crisis to 
``restructure things to fit [their] vision'' [from a temporary 
emergency to permanent socialism].
  They bragged the bipartisan bill they passed in March was the most 
leftwing legislation in American history. Now they want to dwarf that 
bill with a reckless taxing-and-spending spree that would cost 
trillions more and bury the country in job-killing tax hikes.
  When it comes to spending and the economy, President Biden, Speaker 
Pelosi, and the Democratic leader have made a conscious decision: They 
don't want Republican-governing partners. They want to go it alone. 
Well, with one exception--just one exception.
  No, Republicans won't have any input into the massive, reckless 
taxing-and-spending spree that will stick middle-class families with 
higher costs, lower wages, and a socialist country they didn't vote 
for.
  But Democrats do want Republicans' help with just one thing. They 
want us to help raise the credit limit to make it happen. They want us 
to help clear the path for their partisan, job-killing agenda, which we 
oppose.
  So let's make this perfectly clear, in case anybody is in doubt. The 
debt suspension that just expired in August automatically covered the 
borrowing that had been accumulated before that date. This is the 
discussion about the future. This isn't the last 4 years, when we were 
reaching bipartisan government funding agreements, bipartisan 
appropriations, and bipartisan COVID bills.
  Democrats have made a different choice. They want to make policy all 
by themselves. So they can come up with the financing on their own as 
well. The Democratic leaders have every tool and procedure they need to 
handle the debt limit on a partisan basis, just like they are choosing 
to handle everything else.

                          ____________________