[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 79 (Wednesday, May 10, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1588-S1590]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Debt Ceiling

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I think everybody in this body now 
knows that, yesterday, President Biden convened a meeting at the White 
House to discuss how the United States would avoid a default--a default 
on the country, a default on our debt, a default which would be 
something that has never happened before in the history of the country.
  The 14th Amendment, section 4 says:

       The validity of the public debt of the United States, 
     authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of 
     pensions and bounties for services . . . shall not be 
     questioned.

  ``Shall not be questioned.''
  Throughout our history, in good times and bad times, we have always 
met our obligations as a country, and that is why President Biden 
wanted to bring together the congressional leaders to discuss making 
sure that we don't do that for the first time.
  He was joined, of course, by Speaker McCarthy. He was joined by the 
minority leader from the House, Congressman Jeffries. From the Senate, 
he was joined by Majority Leader Schumer and Republican Leader 
McConnell.
  I was asked earlier today whether I felt better in the aftermath of 
this meeting having taken place. And I said: I am glad that the leaders 
planned to meet again on Friday, but, no, I don't feel more comfortable 
or confident today than I did before the meeting, and the reason is 
this: because Speaker McCarthy continues to threaten to default on 
America's debts unless he and the MAGA Republicans in the House can 
impose big parts of their agenda on the country, impose their agenda on 
the American people.
  I just want to unpack for a moment what exactly that means. What 
exactly is Speaker McCarthy saying to the country? And he is saying 
this: that if

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the Senate doesn't go along with the very extreme proposals passed by 
the House Republicans and if the President doesn't agree to sign on to 
those extreme proposals, he will allow the United States, for the first 
time in our history, to default on our obligations.
  And what does that mean? It means he is threatening economic 
catastrophe, because there is no dispute among Republicans--I don't 
care if you are a Democratic economist or a Republican economist--
economists across the board will tell you that a default would be 
catastrophic for our economy--massive job losses. We saw an estimate 
the other day of 8 million jobs lost in the country--retirement nest 
eggs that people have been working a lifetime to build up imploding, 
interest rates rising, the credibility of America around the world 
shattered, the dollar as the world's reserve currency being called into 
question.
  I can tell you who will be celebrating if this happens, and that is 
the folks in Beijing, the PRC. They will be very happy if the United 
States undermines its credibility on the world stage, and they will be 
very happy if we lose our position of having the dollar being the 
world's reserve currency.
  So what was President Biden's response? So what the President is 
saying--and I want to be clear about what he is saying. He is saying: 
Hold on, Mr. Speaker. Hold on, Speaker McCarthy. Paying our bills on 
time is not just a Democratic obligation. It is not a Republican 
obligation. It is not an Independent's obligation. It is an obligation 
of Uncle Sam. These are obligations the United States has built up 
during Democratic Presidencies and Republican Presidencies.
  In fact, if you look at the record during the 4 years of the Trump 
administration, we accumulated one-quarter of the total debt owed by 
the United States today. Yet, during those 4 years, the House and the 
Senate, without drama, said: Yes, the United States is committed to 
paying its debts, and we will do so, and we will address the debt 
ceiling in that manner.
  Just to emphasize once again, what we are talking about is 
obligations the United States has already incurred, that we have 
already said as a country: We will do this. We will pay your Social 
Security. We will pay your Medicare. We will pay our veterans. We will 
pay our obligations as a country, including those who have purchased 
U.S. Treasury bonds.
  That is what we said when we passed those things, and it is important 
that we keep our word.
  So what President Biden says is, look, these are Uncle Sam's 
obligations. Mr. Speaker, you don't get to come in here and threaten 
the health of the American economy if you and House Republicans don't 
get to enact your policies, don't get to enact your agenda. So take 
your finger, Mr. Speaker, off the default detonator, and then we should 
talk about issues of common concern. We can talk about the budget. We 
can talk about the deficit and debt. We can talk about spending. We can 
talk about revenue.
  In fact, President Biden has submitted to the House and Senate his 
budget proposal. I serve on the Senate Budget Committee. We as a Senate 
have received that. President Biden has proposed a budget that achieves 
$3 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years. The proposal 
passed by Speaker McCarthy and Republicans in the House achieves about 
$4.5 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years.
  So what the President is saying to Speaker McCarthy and House 
Republicans is: We are happy to sit down as part of the normal budget 
process. We are happy to talk as part of the normal appropriations 
process about how we can address the deficit and the debt. I put 
forward my proposal. You put forward a proposal. Let's sit down.
  But President Biden is not saying this to Speaker McCarthy: You have 
to reduce the deficit by $3 trillion the way I, President Biden, have 
done it, and if you don't agree to my proposal for reducing the deficit 
by $3 trillion, then I am not going to sign a bill to raise the debt 
ceiling.
  If President Biden said that, people would say he is crazy, and it 
would be very irrational. But that is exactly what Speaker McCarthy and 
House Republicans are doing. They are saying: Mr. President, if you 
don't reduce the deficit our way, we are going to blow up the American 
economy.
  So let's step back from the brink here. Speaker McCarthy, take your 
finger off the default detonator, and let's have a discussion about how 
to reduce the deficit and debt, because when you do that, you 
understand that many of our Republican colleagues really don't care 
that much about the deficit and debt. Why do I say that? Because if you 
say ``Let's reduce the deficit and debt by increasing revenue by asking 
some of the wealthiest people in the country--billionaires, people who 
make hundreds of millions of dollars every year--if you say ``Let's 
reduce the deficit by asking them to pay more in terms of taxes,'' you 
won't get any support from our Republican colleagues, the same folks 
who say it is absolutely urgent that we reduce our deficit and debt.
  But we know there are two sides of the equation. There is spending, 
and there is revenue. In fact, if you go back to the last time the 
United States balanced our budget, which was around the year 2000, you 
will find that revenues as a share of our GDP, revenues as a share of 
our economy, were about 20 percent. Today, if you look forward to the 
next couple of years, the projections are that total revenues will be 
about 18 percent of our economy. The difference between 18 percent 
revenues as a share of our economy and 20 percent may not sound like a 
big number, but 2 percent of a very big American economy is a lot of 
revenue.
  So what President Biden is saying is: You know, the last time we 
actually balanced our budget, revenue as a share of GDP was 20 percent, 
so at least let's look at that as a contribution. Let's look at raising 
the top rate on corporations to a level that would still be lower than 
it was just 10 years ago but higher than it is today.
  All this talk about the IRS agents--you know, Republicans say: Let's 
get rid of the additional funds to support IRS agents.
  These are IRS agents who are going to go after very rich tax 
deadbeats. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office projects that if 
you invest in that effort to go after very rich tax deadbeats, you 
actually raise revenue. So the action the House took in this regard 
actually increased the deficit and is just protecting folks who make a 
boatload of money from paying the taxes that are already due and owed.
  What President Biden has said is: OK, sit back. Let's talk through 
the normal budget appropriations process, but don't threaten to blow up 
the American economy.
  President Biden's budget also has cuts in it. In fact, what the 
President has proposed is that the Medicare Program pay Big Pharma--pay 
the pharmaceutical industry a little less for the drugs that the 
Medicare Program purchases. After all, all of us in this room and every 
American citizen contribute billions and billions of dollars every year 
to really important work done at the National Institutes of Health, 
which is headquartered in my State of Maryland. It is an American 
treasure. It is an amazing place, and it is a great engine of 
invention. We spend billions and billions of dollars in taxpayer money 
every year for them to do research that has uncovered really important 
cures and really important treatments and helped the pharmaceutical 
industry develop a lot of the drugs. Yet, Big Pharma uses the research 
developed with taxpayer dollars and then often turns around and sells 
those drugs at prices that American taxpayers can't afford. So what 
President Biden has proposed is that they take a little less. We give 
the Medicare Program even more negotiating authority so we can reduce 
those costs to Medicare and to the taxpayer. So he has proposed those 
kinds of cuts.

  I know a lot of our Republican colleagues don't like those ideas, but 
that is why you come to the table. That is why Speaker McCarthy should 
accept President Biden's invitation to come to the table to discuss, in 
the normal course--in the budget and the appropriations process--how we 
can address issues of the deficit. What are our priorities? What should 
we do on the revenue side? What should we do on the spending side? But 
don't, Mr. Speaker, continue to threaten to blow up the American 
economy if you don't get your way.
  I am just going to end with a story from 2011 because that is the 
last time

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we really faced this kind of crisis. I am especially worried this time. 
It was very bad in 2011. We came very close to going over the 
waterfall. The markets got very jittery. Interest rates did begin to 
creep up. It cost the U.S. Government more to meet our obligations. I 
am more worried this time because we apparently have a lot more folks 
in the House of Representatives who don't seem to fully appreciate and 
understand the disastrous consequences of default for American 
families, for our economy.
  So I remember back in 2011. It was right after the 2010 elections. 
Republicans had won a big majority in the House of Representatives. 
President Obama was in the White House. And they were threatening early 
on to hold the issue of default and threatened to use it for budget 
purposes. It is true and we have heard it said that Vice President 
Biden at the time came down to the Hill, and they formed what was 
called the Biden group. They met in an office right around the corner 
here on this floor of the U.S. Senate. I was one of the House Members 
who participated in that. There was a total of about 10 from the House 
and Senate, Republicans and Democrats. We had at least 10 meetings.
  Vice President Biden would begin each meeting this way--he would say: 
I know today we are going to talk about the cuts that are being 
proposed by House Republicans, and we will do that. But I want you to 
know two things. One is, nothing is agreed to until everything is 
agreed to, and after we go through these proposed cuts, we are going to 
go through proposed revenue increases. We are going to close tax 
loopholes for very wealthy people. We are going to attack the deficit 
from both sides of the equation. We will do some cuts, but you also 
have to be prepared to talk about revenue.
  Everybody at the table nodded their head--Senate Republicans, House 
Republicans, Democrats.
  Well, after 10 meetings of discussing cuts, a lot of us were getting 
concerned that we hadn't really begun to dig into revenues.
  Vice President Biden said: You know, I said at the beginning of every 
meeting that we have to get to revenues. We are going to do that.
  At that moment, the talks broke down. Eric Cantor, who was the 
majority leader in the House at the time; Speaker Boehner was Speaker; 
Kevin McCarthy walked out of the talks, largely because he was afraid 
he was going to be fingered by his House Republican colleagues for 
having agreed to talk about revenues. Imagine that. You care about the 
deficit, but you won't talk about any ways to raise even a penny of 
revenue from very wealthy people. That sort of exposed the whole 
charade at the time.
  Now Joe Biden is President of the United States. I am sure he is 
thinking about those days when he served as the head of that budget 
group, and I am sure he is thinking back to the fact that our 
Republican colleagues came to the table and said they cared about 
deficit reduction and all nodded their heads and said ``Yes, after we 
talk about cuts, we are going to talk about revenues'' and then walked 
out of the room when that moment came.
  That just shows that what we are dealing with here is not a 
commitment to deal with the deficit and debt. What we are talking about 
is a power play to threaten the health of the American economy in order 
to impose the MAGA House agenda.
  President Biden is absolutely right to say: I am more than willing to 
talk about the budget and deficits and fiscal policy, but first, Mr. 
Speaker, take your finger off the default detonator.
  That is what Mr. McCarthy needs to do, and then we can deal with this 
in a way that the country deserves.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hassan). The Senator from Colorado.