[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7869-7870]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE DEBT CEILING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Washington (Ms. Herrera Beutler) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. Mr. Speaker, decades of a spending party by both 
parties have led to the point where we are today. We're under crushing 
amounts of debt. Now we are borrowing about $58,000 per second--$58,000 
per second.
  As some of my colleagues have shared, I'm going to read this as well. 
It's a quote for those who can't see it:
  ``Leadership means that `the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is 
shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children 
and grandchildren. America has a debt problem. America deserves 
better.'' Senator Barack Obama in 2006.
  Now the President has asked those of us in this Chamber to vote to 
increase the debt limit without any structural spending reforms. Let me 
repeat that. He has now asked us to send a bill to him that has no 
structural spending reforms.
  We are borrowing $58,000 a second. Does that sound like a failure of 
leadership? I think it does. Here is what that's like. It's like an 
irresponsible teenager taking out a credit card in your name. They fill 
it out. The bill will come to you. You get that bill and you see that 
your irresponsible teenager has run up that credit card, and now the 
bill is coming due. You have a couple of choices. You could pay that 
credit card and let it be. That's what the President is asking us to 
do, pay the credit card and then walk away. I don't think very many 
parents would say okay to that. Or you could not pay the credit card. 
That's going to impact your credit. Or you could pay that credit card 
and then cut it up.
  Those are the choices before us.
  I would agree with the 2006 Senator Barack Obama when he said that 
the buck has to stop here. The buck does stop here, which is why House 
Republicans have put forward over $6 trillion worth of spending reform 
ideas. We actually don't need them to enact all $6

[[Page 7870]]

trillion of those. We could enact $2 trillion of those and avert a debt 
crisis. But the President and some of my friends on the other side of 
the aisle have said, no, no, no, that's irresponsible. Coming back to 
this quote, I would agree with the then-Senator Barack Obama that those 
bad choices are being shifted onto our children and our grandchildren, 
and the buck does have to stop here.
  Since 1964, Congress has voted to raise the debt limit, the debt 
ceiling, 74 times--74 times. I suggest to you that unless we require a 
cut-up of the credit card, unless we require structural spending 
reforms, 20 years from now--if our economy can subsist that long--our 
children are going to be asking why did no one do something about this? 
Because we are under crushing, crushing debt burdens. And it's going to 
impact jobs not just today. We're talking about our future and our 
children's ability to grow, prosper, and thrive. In an America where we 
had those opportunities, they are not going to have those same 
opportunities.
  I refuse to make it easier to allow our debt to get so crushing that 
economic recovery is permanently beyond our reach. It's time for a 
culture change in Washington, DC, and that starts with real spending 
cuts accompanying any debt limit negotiations.

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