[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12015]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  STOP PLAYING GAMES WITH THE DEFICIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, there is an air of unreality here on 
Capitol Hill. There are some people with no experience in government, 
little knowledge, and less regard about the outcomes who are 
pontificating, lecturing, and threatening. The disconnect between the 
rhetoric, the reality between governance and an ideological agenda is 
in large part why we are in the conundrum we are in today with the debt 
ceiling, something that has routinely been increased year after year 
for decades.
  It was on full display in the Republican-controlled House yesterday 
as we debated the Interior appropriation bill. Now remember, last week 
Republicans took to the floor with a so-called ``cut, cap, and 
balance'' proposal, which is their answer going forward with the 
economy. It would impose an 18 percent of GDP limit on the amount of 
spending that the Federal Government could employ in any one year. Now 
remember, that is not what we have done for years. Ronald Reagan never 
proposed a budget that was even as low as 21 percent of gross domestic 
product. So it's a dramatic reduction, more than 14 percent less than 
anything Ronald Reagan ever proposed.
  Well, yesterday in the debate my colleague from Kansas offered an 
amendment, an amendment that I personally found destructive and 
unbalanced that would have done terrible things, singling out for 
elimination the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment 
for the Humanities, zeroing out important resources for construction 
for fish and wildlife, construction and acquisition of land. It would 
be a 30 percent reduction in water infrastructure. Overall, it would 
have been an 11 percent reduction. But at least it was honest.
  This is where in fact some of my Republican colleagues want to go. In 
fact, it is less than what they would have imposed with their proposal 
the week before. As I argued against the amendment on the floor, I 
predicted that it would fail overwhelmingly, that many Republicans 
would vote against it because even though they are willing to make 
reckless proposals disconnected from reality if the only consequences 
are polls and politics, when it really comes down to basics, even they 
don't want to impose it.
  Remember what happened on the floor of the House when we were 
debating Republican and Democratic alternatives to the budget? The 
Republican Study Group offered up their proposal that went even further 
than my friend, Paul Ryan's. And when it was passing, we watched 
Republicans start to twist arms to get people to vote against it 
because, again, it was something they thought was great politics and 
theater; but if it came closer to reality, they understood that it 
would hurt them if the American public understood the real agenda.
  Well, we are now at a very serious stage dealing with the debt 
ceiling. Actions matter. Too many are still acting like they're on the 
campaign trail or at a Tea Party rally or on a Fox TV shout-fest. There 
have already been negative consequences from the reckless action of 
holding the debt ceiling hostage--American businesses are paying more; 
there are threats that we're going to be paying more for interest in 
the international bond market.
  It's past time to stop this dangerous posturing. There is enough 
irresponsibility displayed already, we should avoid putting the 
rhetoric, in effect, into a budget.
  Now is the time to stop playing games on the budget deficit. We've 
seen this movie before. The last time the Republicans took control in 
1995 there was a debate on imposing a balanced budget amendment. It 
failed by one vote in the Senate, and it failed with the single 
Republican ``no'' vote, Mark Hatfield from Oregon. Senator Hatfield, in 
a profile in courage, stood up and made clear that he was all in favor 
of balancing the budget, but not with a gimmick long into the future. 
He was chair of the Appropriations Committee. He invited his colleagues 
to make the action by reducing the budget, not playing games with 
gimmicks. That's what we should do today.

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