[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 391-392]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1030
                 PRESIDENT'S DEFICIT-CUTTING COMMISSION

  (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PENCE. If you are concerned about runaway Federal spending and a 
rising national debt, you won't find a lot of comfort in today's 
headlines.
  After passing a government takeover of health care costing over $1 
trillion and a budget that will triple the national debt in the next 10 
years, Democrat leaders are now talking about actually bringing 
legislation that will raise our debt limit by $1.9 trillion. But we are 
told by the same Democratic leadership that they are going to get 
serious in 2010 about fiscal discipline.
  I guess, along those lines, President Obama is expected to announce a 
bipartisan commission that will look for ways to reduce deficits in the 
future. Sounds like an appealing idea, but the devil is always in the 
details in Washington, D.C.
  The President's commission on close examination actually looks like a 
guard dog with no bite. It looks like fiscal discipline, but it could 
be easily ignored by Congress.
  Remarkably, the President's proposal, as I have heard about it, is 
prohibited from recommending cuts in any discretionary spending. That 
will be about $1.4 trillion. And the bridge to nowhere, that is 
completely off-limits. And, as many of us know, with the partisan bias 
and the structure of it, as reported, it is likely this commission will 
just be an excuse to raise taxes.
  The American people don't want more government, more taxes, and

[[Page 392]]

more political posturing about spending. They want this Congress to 
show the character and the strength to make the hard choices to put our 
fiscal house in order.

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