[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8433-8434]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         RAISING THE DEBT LIMIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, it's important to be able to 
discuss with my colleagues just what we're doing in this House and what 
is considered important and urgent and what is the impact on what we're 
doing.
  As my friends, the Republicans on the other side of the aisle, are 
now spending time with the President, I hope they will have visions of 
President Ronald Reagan, because in 1983 Ronald Reagan begged and asked 
the Congress at that time to raise the debt

[[Page 8434]]

limit. This is not a 2011, 21st century phenomenon never to be heard of 
in the history of this country. Raising the debt limit, my friends, is 
not evil or sin. It is an actuality that requires us to be responsible 
adults.
  I want you to eye this picture and to continue to keep your eyes on 
it continuously as I explain to you what we are doing when we ask for 
the debt limit to be raised.
  Does anyone care about our men and women on the front lines? Do we 
care about their families? Do we care about veterans? Oh, we wave the 
flag, and many of us emotionally were drawn to commemorate and honor 
those who had fallen this past Monday. We interrelated with families, 
some of whom came up to me and asked me why veterans are discriminated 
against and can't get work or disabled veterans are chastised by their 
employer. And I made a commitment to them that we will work to have 
jobs and end the discrimination, and that the soldiers who are coming 
back to 10 percent unemployment--do you realize that, that there is a 
10 percent unemployment among Iraq and Afghanistan returning soldiers, 
soldiers who are in their twenties and thirties or maybe forties, 
soldiers who may be disabled, who may have come back from a 
catastrophic injury but they want to work and support their families? 
These very men and women, do you know what the debt limit not being 
lifted will do?
  And so, yes, this was put on the floor of the House to make a mockery 
and a joke, but I came here to be a serious legislator and I voted 
``yes'' because it was a serious statement on behalf of my constituents 
and the American people, and I could not, within 24 hours of being 
around military families, abandon them with the frivolity and the 
foolishness of putting something up on the floor just to put it in the 
eye of the President.
  Let me tell you why it partly was done as trickery. Listen to the 
words of a bond dealer: ``I didn't even know they had a vote tonight, 
to be honest with you,'' a senior government bond strategist at CRT 
Capital Group in Stamford, Connecticut said. ``The only real event that 
the market is focused on is the point at which they run out of money 
and have to shut down the government.''
  Well, let me tell you the reason why this was just a joke, since 
those of us who voted ``yes'' didn't take it as a joke. Because the 
Secretary of the Treasury has extended the time to August 2. But if we 
do not raise the debt limit, like Ronald Reagan asked and other 
Republican Presidents asked with no fanfare, let me tell you what will 
happen to our soldiers. It will be 20 percent unemployment.
  What will happen to Medicare? We won't be making it solvent. We'll 
just end it and implode it like the Ryan budget wants to do. We will 
eliminate Medicare for disabled persons and children and seniors in 
nursing homes.
  No, we won't have any veterans benefits, but our cities that now are 
grappling with disaster, that funding will dry up as well. And we are 
the rainy day umbrella for the American people.
  But you know what else? Summer jobs for our young people who are 
struggling to get themselves back in school in the fall. In the city of 
Houston, how--I don't know--unthinking can you be when you close down 
city pools, the meager opportunity for recreation that a child has in 
the inner city area or maybe a rural area.

                              {time}  1030

  Summer pools totally closed down. And parks. So what are they 
supposed to do besides having one person that can monitor the pool? You 
just have them running the streets. What sense does that make?
  Or the school districts in the State of Texas now losing $4 billion. 
HISD, the Houston Independent School District, one of the largest in 
the Nation, $200 million, or AISD, $30 million.
  It's time to wake up and understand that we must recognize the 
responsibility we have, Mr. Speaker. We can end the war in Afghanistan, 
bring them home from Iraq, and we can do our job and raise the debt 
ceiling. This is ridiculous, but I'm not going to be part of it.

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