[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 70 (Wednesday, April 26, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H2042-H2044]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TACKLING THE NATIONAL DEBT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bergman) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. BERGMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks 
and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Michigan?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. BERGMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to be leading this Special 
Order to discuss the ongoing efforts to tackle our national debt and 
the looming debt ceiling crisis.
  Since my first day in office some 7-plus years ago, I have said that 
one of the single greatest threats to our national security is the 
Federal Government's reckless, uncontrolled spending. This is now more 
obvious than ever.
  To be clear, it is essential that the United States honors its debts 
and pays back every single dollar that we have borrowed.

[[Page H2043]]

  However, this cannot come without reforms to fix the unsustainable 
and dangerous spending habits that threaten our long-term solvency.
  The Limit, Save, Grow Act, which I am happy to say the House approved 
only moments ago, is a good faith, middle-of-the-road approach to 
raising the debt ceiling while reining in--and I repeat--beginning to 
really rein in unnecessary, wasteful Federal spending.
  Included in the bill are popular provisions, which would reclaim 
billions in unspent COVID funds, now that the pandemic is over.
  It will also defund President Biden's army of 87,000 new IRS agents. 
It will strengthen the workforce, lower energy costs, and end the era, 
again, of reckless spending in Washington, D.C., all while protecting 
veterans, Social Security, Medicare, and national defense.
  I am grateful to be joined by several of my colleagues that are here 
tonight to further discuss this issue, and I urge the administration to 
come to the table, sooner rather than later, to address the debt 
ceiling and begin the necessary reining in of spending.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time this evening. Thank 
you to my colleague from Michigan for leading us on this and for being 
a fighter in the trenches on what we are talking about.
  Indeed, we are talking about the Nation's debt issues, the necessary 
measure we have of having to extend the debt limit as the dollars have 
already been committed. They have already been spent. We have to pay 
for them.
  The Limit, Save, Grow Act is, indeed, a responsible way to try and 
turn the tide on what had been much spending over the last few years 
that has extended our national debt to just unthought of numbers; over 
$31 trillion.
  In this measure that we are speaking of this evening here--really, 
since January, the Democrats and the President have tried to claim 
falsely that Republicans have no plan.
  We have been talking about a plan the whole time. The difference is 
they don't want to sit down and talk with us about how to meld their 
ideas with ours.
  This week we released our plan, and today we passed it. As always, 
House Republicans have consistently argued for reasonable, responsible 
debt limit increases, coupled with spending reductions in order to move 
toward eventually balancing this budget.

                              {time}  1830

  It is absurd that the Democrats now demand unilateral increases to 
our Nation's debt and balk at Republicans for asking for something in a 
negotiation.
  Our plan, the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, saves American taxpayers 
$4.5 trillion over the next decade. It will limit Federal spending to 
fiscal year 2022 levels, which our government operated on just 4 months 
ago. It does allow for 1 percent annual growth in Federal spending over 
the next 10 years. For those that want to spend more, it is still built 
in but at a flatter rate, flattening the curve on spending. If we had 
been able to hold that for the last 10 years, we would be really close 
to a balanced budget.
  Also included in the bill are important clawbacks for $60 billion in 
unspent COVID funds. When people see that these unspent COVID funds are 
sitting there, then they covet them. You get everybody coming in asking 
if they can shift these COVID relief funds to some other pet project. 
That is not what was intended at the time we had a crisis, however much 
of that crisis might have been exacerbated by false information or what 
have you, but indeed, the opportunity to take $60 billion of unspent 
funds and pull them back, and indeed, have better conversations in a 
budget and appropriation process, not an emergency as was COVID, it 
would be much better for all of us.
  As we know, the pandemic is over. This money has not been spent, and 
it should be rescinded without delay. That is what we did today in this 
piece of legislation, the Limit, Save, Grow Act.
  Also included in the bill is our Lower Energy Costs Act, which has 
already passed this Chamber with bipartisan support previously. It 
lowers energy costs for American families and modernizes our outdated 
permitting process.
  The House Republicans' plan is economically sound, financially wise, 
and allows for a debt limit increase of $1.5 trillion to pay our bills. 
It is a reasonable, responsible plan that will benefit all Americans.
  This body deliberated on the merits of this legislation and has 
passed this legislation. The U.S. responsibly did its job on a debt 
ceiling to pay its already incurred bills. The profligate spending of 
the past years cannot become the permanent way of business of this 
House or of Washington, D.C.
  We cannot afford even more high-speed debt on bills pretending to be 
COVID fixes about infrastructure that actually isn't infrastructure, or 
masquerading as a fix for inflation.
  It is now on the Democrats in the Senate and the White House to meet 
with House Republicans at the negotiation table to actually come to a 
solution.
  The stall tactics by Senate Leader Schumer and President Biden to run 
out the clock and do a last-minute crisis debt limit bill with a 
Christmas tree of goodies that will only cause more crushing debt 
cannot be the way of doing business here.
  Never before in our Nation's history has a debt ceiling been raised 
without spending reductions to go along with it. It is a negotiation. 
This time should be no different. We must demand that the Senate come 
to the table and the White House negotiate.
  By us getting legislation out of this body here now, the ball is in 
their corner. It is time for them to look at our document and come up 
with their ideas and sit down and do as these bodies are supposed to do 
in front of the American people, not on Zoom, not behind masks, not 
remotely, but in front of everybody and make a product that we can all 
be proud of and at least live with and move towards balancing our 
budget longer term.
  This is what House Republicans are trying to do, not all the 
caterwauling we heard about, how it is going take away from this and 
that and the poor and every other group you can name here. It doesn't 
even touch all that. We have already spent the money. We have to have 
the debt ceiling increased and be responsible with the spending 
reductions as we go along.
  What could be wrong with that?
  I appreciate the effort of my colleagues, our leadership, and Speaker 
McCarthy to get this thing through and get everybody at the table on 
our side and hopefully be successful with the Senate and the White 
House to see the logic of what we are trying to do here.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Bergman for leading us here, and I am 
actually fairly excited and optimistic that we can get this document 
out.
  Mr. BERGMAN. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about debt ceiling limits, as 
my colleague stated, we have already spent the money. Now it is time to 
pay our bills. When you think about how that all starts, it starts with 
responsible spending and allocation of funds on the front end, knowing 
that there are limits.
  In my first term in the 115th Congress as a member of the Budget 
Committee, I still remember very starkly a data point that was given to 
us as new members of the committee. The subject was improper payments 
by the Federal Government. Seven years ago, that number was $150 
billion a year in improper payments by the Federal Government.
  When we talk about limiting debt and we talk about clawing back funds 
that have already been appropriated and are sitting in accounts, we 
always have to consider the fact that are we as the Federal Government 
really managing the expenditure of the dollars?
  Because of the fact that there is no incentive within Federal 
bureaucracies to attack improper spending, we haven't addressed the 
entire problem.
  When you think about an example of what that $150 billion annually 
would mean in improper payments, an example would be if a person who, 
God rest their soul, has been deceased, but yet, their Social Security 
check still comes, or other checks come. You know there is an end game 
for that.
  Another example would be that a person is receiving a check for 
$1,000 that really should be for $100. That is just an error. So we 
need to look inside ourselves, within the bureaucracies, within the 
Federal Government to cut down

[[Page H2044]]

the improper payments because we have to look at the debt control, if 
you will, and the debt reduction, or, as you have heard other people 
say, bending the curve down to a reasonable rate of repaying our debts 
without increasing the debt and increasing unnecessary wasteful 
expenditures. We have to figure out a way to incentivize the good, 
hardworking folks within our government bureaucracies to take a closer 
look at all those things and be part of solutions that are going to 
benefit our country as a whole and all of its citizens.

  I will conclude by just saying we got a great start here about 30 
minutes ago when we passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act. This is just the 
next step towards hopefully fruitful, honest, thoughtful negotiations 
with the White House to help us begin to be able to bend that curve of 
wasteful spending.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________