[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12280-12282]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ECONOMIC STABILITY

  Mr. REID. Madam President, today the House of Representatives will 
vote on Speaker Boehner's short-term plan to raise the debt ceiling. As 
soon as the House completes its vote tonight, or this afternoon, the 
Senate will move to take up the message they send to us. It will be 
defeated. They know that, and the American people now should understand 
that clearly.
  No Democrat will vote for a short-term bandaid approach that will put 
our economy at risk and put the Nation back in the untenable situation 
we are in today in just a few short months from now. Economists have 
said a short-term arrangement holds many of the same risks as a 
technical default. Democrats are not willing to put our economy on the 
line for something such as that. It is something we cannot do for the 
good of the country. Our economy and the financial markets desperately 
need stability. Speaker Boehner's bill does not provide either. It does 
not provide stability, and it certainly doesn't help our economy in any 
way.
  I believe it is time for the tea party Republicans to stop resisting 
compromise. They must join Democrats and Republicans of good will to 
put the economy ahead of politics.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I wish to underscore what the leader 
has said.
  The bottom line is very simple. Speaker Boehner is busy twisting arms 
right now to try to get his bill passed through the House, but it is a 
futile gesture because that bill is not going to pass the Senate. We 
have made that clear in the letter that 53 of us signed yesterday, and 
nothing has changed. The idea that we will take Boehner's bill and pass 
it or take Boehner's bill and tweak it and pass it is not what is going 
to happen. So we would urge Speaker Boehner and all of our Republican 
colleagues to sit down and negotiate.
  Throwing a hot potato over to us that will not pass just delays 
things a day, and we are simply 4 days away from one of the worst 
financial catastrophes that could face this country; namely, for the 
first time in our 230-year history, a refusal to pay the debt. That 
means the time for these kinds of political games and political 
posturing is over.
  Speaker Boehner is having a rough time getting the votes over there, 
but my guess is he will. But it will not make a darned bit of 
difference. It will not make a darned bit of difference because it is 
not going to pass this house, the Senate. It will not pass because a 
short-term extension risks the same things that no extension risks: a 
downgrade, a lack of confidence in the markets, and gridlock. We have 
seen gridlock up to now; 3, 4, 5, 6 months from now the same gridlock 
will occur. We cannot play with this kind of risky fire.
  So our plea to the Speaker is stop continuing to throw pieces of red 
meat after red meat after red meat, piece after piece after piece of 
red meat to that rightwing lion in your caucus. Start taming the lion. 
That is what you have to do because otherwise that lion will devour you 
and devour the economy of our country.
  The kind of narrow ideological approach that we have seen in the 
House will not get us anywhere. The shame of it all is that not every 
Member of the House, and I don't believe the Speaker, has that 
ideology, the sort of my-way-or-no-way ideology, the no-compromise 
ideology, and it is time to break free. It is time to do what is good 
for the country.
  A short-term solution will not work. The leader has just made clear 
that as

[[Page 12281]]

soon as the House passes its bill, it will be defeated in the Senate. 
Let's not waste 5, 6, 7, 8 more hours. Let's start negotiating 
something that will save this country from potential financial 
catastrophe now.
  Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. SCHUMER. I would be happy to yield to my friend from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from New York for his very lucid 
remarks and for his great leadership in trying to get through this 
mess.
  I say to my friend, a lot of people in the country are looking and 
thinking that this is some kind of food fight; that somehow everybody 
is to blame for this here in Washington.
  I ask my friend, the Senator from New York, isn't it true that there 
are some 50 members of the Republican caucus in the House who have said 
forthrightly that they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling under 
any circumstance? One of those, of course, being Representative 
Bachmann, who is seeking the Presidential nomination on their ticket, 
said she would not vote to raise it under any circumstance.
  Does the Senator know of any one Democrat, either in the House or the 
Senate, who has said they would not vote to raise the debt ceiling 
under any circumstance? I ask the Senator, is there one? I have not 
been able to find one.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I thank my colleague from Iowa for the question. I 
concur in his findings. I haven't found one either.
  Democrats know we have different views on this side of the aisle, and 
many of us would write deficit-reduction bills differently than some 
others of us would. But we realize that to let the debt ceiling lapse 
would be a disaster to not raise it. So I have not heard of a single 
Democrat who has said the debt ceiling ought to lapse, and I have heard 
scores of Republicans, elected, official Republicans and thousands of 
others and groups in that rightwing firmament pushing their members to 
let this debt ceiling lapse.
  My guess is--and God forbid it happens; and we are doing everything 
we can to prevent it from happening--they will retract that language or 
they will find ways to explain what they meant because their analysis 
that it doesn't matter or it will not do much harm is, unfortunately, 
dead wrong.
  Mr. HARKIN. If the Senator will yield for another question. Again, 
there is a lot of misunderstanding--and I sympathize with this--among 
the general populous that somehow raising the debt ceiling means that 
somehow we can go and borrow more money in the future and go further in 
debt.
  Isn't it true that raising the debt ceiling just simply means that we 
are going to pay for what so many of us, Republicans and Democrats, 
have voted in the past to appropriate money for? I ask my friend, it is 
like using your credit card to go out and buy something, but now you 
say, I don't want to pay the bill? I think that kind of puts it in 
terms that the average American can understand. If you have used your 
credit card, and you have run up a debt, you have to pay the bills; 
otherwise, your credit is going to go down, and you are going to lose 
your credit card, and you are not going to be able to do anything else.
  Isn't that sort of what we are confronting? In the past, Democrats 
and Republicans--we all share the blame, perhaps, for having deficits. 
We can go into the causes of that. I don't mean to do that here. But 
the fact is, the United States of America has an obligation to pay its 
bills. The Republicans say, no, they don't want to pay the bills. 
Doesn't that sort of strike the average American as saying: Wait a 
minute. No, we have to honor our debts. We have always honored our 
debts in this country since the Revolutionary War. Is that not the 
fact?
  Mr. SCHUMER. That is absolutely the fact. My colleague from Iowa is 
exactly correct.
  The bottom line is, yes. What we are talking about with the debt 
ceiling is debts we have already incurred. No American family has the 
luxury, once they sign up for a mortgage, to tell the bank: Well, I am 
not going to pay you unless you do A, B, and C. No American family has 
the luxury of telling the credit card company: Hey, unless you buy me a 
year's supply of groceries, I am not going to pay my credit card debt.
  Once you incur the debt, you have an obligation to pay. That is one 
of the foundations of American life. It has been that foundation since 
Alexander Hamilton argued with Thomas Jefferson, and it has served our 
country well.
  The awful example that it would set if America, this great land, this 
Federal Government said: Well, I am not going to pay the debt, I am not 
going to pay the debt unless A, B, C, D is done--what kind of example 
does that send to American families, to American young people? It is 
the opposite, frankly, of the conservative philosophy--part of which I 
agree with in this regard--that you pay your bills, that you pay your 
debts. If you don't, there is a consequence.
  So it is just amazing. This is the first time, I believe--check the 
history books--in American history where a large group in either House 
of this Congress has made it a campaign not to pay the debt unless they 
get their way on certain other issues, whatever they be. If every one 
of us did that, this country would be paralyzed. We wouldn't be able to 
do a thing. It is leading down a road that nobody should want to 
travel.
  Mr. HARKIN. I would like to ask one more question and then I would 
yield.
  Isn't it true that we--I would say the Senator from New York has been 
a leader in this and so many others here. We want to, first of all, pay 
our bills, but then we want to get our deficit under control and reduce 
our debt. To that end, on the Democratic side, I would say we have 
tried to propose a balanced approach, I ask my friend from New York, 
who has been a leader in this area of both cutting spending and also 
raising revenue so that we are kind of all in this together.
  We are asking everyone. We are not willing just to cut the deficit on 
the backs of the poor or people who are out of work, the elderly on 
Medicare. We are saying everybody has to take a little bit. But we are 
also going to ask some sacrifice from those who have much in our 
society; that we want to raise some revenue from those who have 
benefited in the last 10, 15 years so much and have gotten so much 
wealth in our society. We are asking for them also to share in this.
  We have proposed that, have we not, I ask the Senator? And has it not 
been true that the Republican side has been unwilling to ask the 
richest people in our country to help us reduce the deficit? They will 
not agree to any revenues. I ask my friend from New York, is that not 
the case?
  Mr. SCHUMER. Again, my colleague from Iowa is on the money.
  There needs to be balance. The President has stressed this. I think 
everyone on our side has stressed this. We do have a serious deficit 
problem and a serious debt problem. We have to deal with it. I think 
there is agreement in this Chamber, and I will give some credit to 
those on the other side of the aisle who made this their signature 
issue in influencing policy. But if we are going to have to do that and 
do belt tightening, shouldn't it be across the board?
  Here is the fact of the matter: If you are a middle-class person, it 
is hard to pay for college. It is hard to pay for prescription drugs. 
It is hard to take that paycheck and make sure it deals with all the 
needs you and your spouse and your children have. Over the years, we 
have established ways that the government helps with student loans or 
with prescription drug programs or other kinds of help. It so happens 
that the wealthy among us, God bless them, don't need a student loan. 
They have plenty of money to pay for their children's college. They 
don't need a prescription drug plan. Even with the high expense of 
these prescription drugs, they can afford it. God bless them.
  The way the wealthy benefit from the Tax Code, because they have a 
lot of money, is there are tax expenditures, tax breaks they get. They 
think they are important. I understand that. But they are no more 
important than helping young people go to college or helping our 
elderly, average folks pay

[[Page 12282]]

for their prescription drugs. If you are going to be across the board 
and you are going to say no revenues, you are going to have an 
unbalanced and unfair approach.
  Let me say this: Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have 
tried to scare people. This has not happened just this year but for 
many years. They say: Democrats want to raise your taxes. That is not 
the case if you are an average middle-class American. In fact, the 
President has made it a watch word, and we have religiously concurred 
and followed, that no one who makes below $250,000 a year should get 
any tax increase. That is 97 percent of all Americans.
  So when we say we want revenues, we are talking about two things: We 
are talking about tax breaks, tax loopholes for the very wealthy, 
whether they be individuals or corporations, and we are talking about 
tax breaks for the wealthiest among us who, under the previous 
administration, got much greater breaks than anybody else. That is all 
we are talking about.
  So I would ask my colleagues, I would ask the American people to 
understand that. Don't be scared when somebody gets up and says they 
want to raise taxes, that it means your taxes. It doesn't unless, God 
bless you, you have a whole lot of money or you are a corporation with 
a very nice little break that may not be as necessary as, say, helping 
middle-class students go to college or helping the elderly get 
lifesaving prescription drugs. So there has to be balance.
  Now, I know my good colleague from Iowa, who has spent his lifetime 
creating government programs that help people, it pains him when he 
hears there has to be spending cuts in those programs. But I have never 
heard him say: If there are any spending cuts, I am not going to vote 
for deficit reduction. But the mirror image on this side says: I will 
not vote for any bill if it even has one plug nickel of revenues. That 
is not fair. That is not right. That is not balanced. It is totally 
against what just about every American believes, including a majority 
of Republicans. So that is why we are making this fight.
  I will say one other thing in reference to my colleague's question. 
It is unfair when the commentators and the people say: Well, on the one 
hand, the Democrats aren't compromising and, on the other hand, the 
Republicans aren't compromising. I understand that we should always not 
just look at our own position and try to understand somebody else's 
position. That is the way it works around here; otherwise, we would 
have a dictator, a benevolent dictator. We do not. But when we are 
willing to give on spending cuts, serious spending cuts we do not like, 
and the other side says they are not willing to give a nickel on 
revenues, it is not each side is failing to give. It is not that each 
side is compromising a value. It is not that each side has walked about 
the same distance to come up with a compromise. In this case--it is not 
true every time--my Republican friends have been unwilling to 
compromise one jot and we have been willing to do things very painful 
to us.
  I say to my friends who comment and write about this: Be fair. Let 
the public know who is willing to move away from their hard-line 
position for the sake of compromise, for the sake of raising the debt 
ceiling, for the sake of getting our large debt and deficit down, and 
who has refused to budge. I think the answer is pretty obvious.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blumenthal). The Senator from Colorado.

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