[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14083-14084]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   LET'S QUIT RUNNING UP THE DEFICIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate my friend Ms. 
Kaptur's comments and appreciate her insights. It's always very 
valuable.
  And she believes, as I do, that we're making a big mistake by running 
up the deficit like crazy. Well, some say, well, it was going on back 
under the Bush administration. Yes, it was, and it wasn't right then, 
and it's even worse now that it's being multiplied many times. Every 
week, we're running up more of a deficit. It's got to stop.
  China continues to buy our debt. We just sent the Secretary of the 
Treasury over to China to encourage them to keep buying America. Buy 
our debt because we cannot control ourselves. Can you imagine a parent 
going into a bank and saying, I need a loan because I can't control my 
spending, but you see my little children over there, I've even got some 
grandchildren, I am going to pledge to you that some day--I can't pay 
it back, but some day they will? Well, there would be a move to take 
the children away from somebody that irresponsible.
  And yet we sent our Secretary of State over to beg China to keep 
buying our debt because we couldn't control our spending. We send our 
Secretary of the Treasury over there to tell them to keep buying our 
debt because we can't control our spending.
  We've done things in the last weeks, like $25 million we voted for in 
this Chamber to buy land in foreign countries for rare dogs and cats. 
China has some. We'll borrow that money from China to buy land from 
China, so that they can have rare dogs and cats, if they're not eaten 
by people that are starving. And we are paying for that with interest 
while we run up our debt even higher. It makes no sense at all.
  You know, I went back and did some looking. I remember pretty good--
having been a history major, I've loved to follow things as they occur 
because we're told those who fail to learn from history are destined to 
repeat it, which as a corollary to that, those who do learn from 
history will find new ways to screw up, but that's another story. Right 
now, we're not learning from history.
  But you can look back at the Soviet Union, and we were reminded by 
that by bipartisan speeches just yesterday as Ronald Reagan's statue 
was unveiled. It's a great statue, a great tribute to a great 
President. But as he pushed the SDI, the missile defense system, and 
the Soviets tried to keep up, they were spending too much money. They 
were running up too much debt, and people were nervous about loaning 
the Soviet Union more debt.
  Do you remember as Eastern Europe, the Baltic States started 
rebelling,

[[Page 14084]]

what happened? Russia had seen that happen before. The Soviet Union 
would roll in with tanks. They could put it down. But for some reason, 
they didn't roll in with tanks and suppress it like they had in years 
past.
  Well, it appears there's information indicating that they were 
needing us to loan them $100 billion, which 20 or so years ago was real 
money, $100 billion to keep them afloat. And we gave them word, We got 
your country, but if you roll in with tanks, we're not going to be able 
to loan you that money. We owned their future, so we could dictate what 
they could or couldn't do. Does it ring any bells?
  If we keep selling our debt as we can't control it, we can't control 
the spending--we vote in here tonight to spend millions and millions of 
dollars to pay people for not working, while they're called employees, 
when they are millions and millions of Americans who are champing at 
the bit to go back to work and to get paid to actually work. And this 
is what we're passing?
  You know, some believe here in this body that running up the debt is 
what's going to save the country, and I've been told, look, we don't 
think we're wrong, but if we were wrong, we can always come back and 
fix it. The Soviets couldn't because at some point when you no longer 
own your future, you don't have a future.
  We owe the people we represent. We owe our own children better than 
that. Let's quit destroying this Nation's future. Let's quit running up 
the deficit. I yield back.

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