[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12495-12502]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               DEBT LIMIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much. This evening I am going to be 
joined by several of my colleagues. And as they come to the microphone, 
let me just lay down some of the facts.
  Not more than an hour ago this Chamber voted on Speaker Boehner's 
proposal to deal with the debt limit. Very interesting comments that he 
made prior to the speech--and while I can't quote them precisely--he 
did say that his whole strategy started way back in January when he 
told the President that he was going to use the debt limit as a way of 
getting his way.
  Well, we saw what his way is, and that's what was voted on today 
without any support at all from the Democrats and a lot of Republicans 
saying that it was not the right way to go.
  So what did he propose? We have two very, very basic paths that are 
facing the American public today. One of those paths is a path that we 
voted on, which is a path to basically unravel most of the things that 
America holds dear.
  In order to carry out the caps and the $2.5 trillion in reductions 
that are in that legislation, we would have to decimate Medicare. There 
is no way it could possibly continue to provide the services to our 
seniors and similarly Medicaid, of which 70 percent of that money goes 
to seniors who are in nursing homes. And so those two critical parts of 
the foundation of the American society--that is providing health

[[Page 12496]]

care to our seniors and the aged, blind, and disabled--are going to get 
unraveled as a result of the legislation that passed.
  Similarly, there is no way to meet those spending reductions without 
going after Social Security. The other path is one that we have 
suggested on the Democratic side, and we are going to spend some time 
talking about these two today, and that is the path that maintains 
these pillars of the society of America that basically express the 
values of our country, that our country is one that cares deeply about 
our citizens, whether they are aged, seniors who may need medical care 
and who need an income, Social Security and Medicare, or whether they 
are young children that need an education and those in between that 
need jobs.
  That's the path that the Democrats have offered in the budget that we 
put forth on this floor that we voted on, that was our recommendation 
on how to move forward. It failed without any Republican support, but 
it was a path that basically spoke to the values of this Nation that we 
have held dear for these many, many years.
  I would like to turn now to my colleagues here. I would like to start 
with my colleague from Oregon, Peter DeFazio.
  Peter, I know that you have some remarks that you would like to share 
with us this evening.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Thanks, John. Thanks for helping organize this response 
to the Republicans.
  We do have one real and prevailing crisis in America. It's been with 
us now since 2008, and that's a jobs crisis. There are probably 20 
million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed in this country 
when you get to the real numbers.
  Now, credible economists say if we could find a way to put those 
people or most of those people back to work and get unemployment down 
from 9.6 nationally to, say, 4.5 or 5 percent, that would solve a 
quarter, a quarter of this deficit and debt crisis. That would be $2.5 
trillion over 10 years.
  Now, the Republicans here have proposed $2.7 trillion of cuts over 10 
years. So if we could put people back to work, we would have about the 
same savings.
  Then, you know, if we got people back to work and healed the economy 
a bit, all we have to do, and I talked about this earlier this week, is 
nothing. Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Go back to the bad old days of 
Bill Clinton, 3.8 percent unemployment, paying down debt, the rich 
paying a fair share. Those were the bad old days, according to the 
Republicans, because those job creators were paying some taxes.
  Oh, my God, billionaires required to pay taxes at the rate equal to 
or higher than their secretaries and the janitors. Can you imagine 
that? Oh, what disaster. So, now, they are not only cutting programs 
and ignoring the jobs crisis, they are making the jobs crisis worse.
  Last week, they ended the Federal Aviation Administration 
construction program for safety and security. They stopped collecting 
the tax. The Republicans stopped collecting the tax. It's a user paid-
for system on airline tickets. That's $30 million a day. Most airlines 
have taken it as a windfall. So the Republicans' mantra that if we 
lower taxes on corporations they will pass it through to the 
consumers--no, sorry suckers. They keep the money and you pay the same.
  But then the other mantra is, well, if we get rid of taxes, we will 
create jobs. That's how you create jobs, by cutting programs and 
cutting taxes.
  Interesting. We have cut taxes on the airline industry by $30 million 
a day, $210 million a week. That's well over--you know, that's a lot of 
money on a year's basis, over a billion dollars. And guess what? We 
have lost 94,000 jobs; 4,000 jobs of people in the FAA who oversee the 
safety and security construction program to make sure taxpayers get a 
fair value for their dollar and 90,000 private-sector construction jobs 
across America.
  And guess what? The American public doesn't know it yet, but this 
could well lead to either, you know, opening the door to terrorist 
attack because we don't do some of the security programs, or causing a 
runway incursion because we don't finish the runway incursion program 
before the bad weather in the winter, or I don't get my instrument 
landing system in Coos Bay, North Bend, before the winter and a plane 
goes awry, we could have people die because of that. But to them this 
is all good--we are giving people back their money, or we are giving 
the corporations the money, and don't worry.
  We need to focus on jobs. There is nothing that they have been doing 
here for the last 6 months, 8 months, 7 months, however long they have 
been in power--it seems like 10 years--that has created a single job. 
In fact, they have cost us jobs. They are costing us jobs at an ever 
accelerating rate, and now they want to cut one other, just one other 
point. They want to cut all investment in transportation by 35 percent. 
That's an immediate loss of 600,000 private-sector jobs.
  It means we won't deal with the 150,000 bridges of the national 
highway system that need rebuilding. We won't deal with the half of the 
payment on the national highway system that needs redoing. We won't 
deal with the $70 billion backlog for new equipment for our transit 
systems, transit systems that are so decrepit in places like the 
Nation's Capital that people are being killed. We won't deal with any 
of that.

                              {time}  1900

  We won't put millions of people to work building new transit vehicles 
or new buses or bridges with steel and all those things with Buy 
America.
  The Republicans say, well, we'll just give the corporations the money 
and the rich people the money and they'll trickle down on the rest of 
us. Well, we've been pretty well trickled down upon for way too long. 
It's time for new priorities. And I would reject the Republican agenda.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. DeFazio, thank you very much. You clearly pointed 
out the dichotomy between the Democratic proposal, which is one of 
building and creating and putting together a society and an economy 
that actually works, and the Republicans seem to be just dismantling 
time after time.
  I would like now to turn to Congresswoman Betty Sutton, our colleague 
from the State of Ohio, who has seen the effect of the cuts and what 
they mean in her district.
  So, Ms. Sutton, if you would care to share with us your thoughts.
  Ms. SUTTON. I thank the gentleman for his leadership. You have been a 
stalwart; and, boy, do we need leadership at this point.
  Here we are, it's been 29 weeks, more than 200 days since the 
Republicans took over the majority of the House, and not only have they 
not done anything to create jobs or help working families. Here we are 
today looking at what they have done.
  What have they done? After walking away from the table five times in 
negotiations to restore our Nation's fiscal health, House Republicans 
have passed a bill today to kick the can down the road so we can 
continue to have this debate over again in a matter of months. But make 
no mistake, this is a political dodge. Republicans could not agree on a 
long-term solution within their own ranks, so they just decided to take 
a vote on a bill that kicks the can down the road that they know there 
is not support for, and it's a part of this pattern.
  What have they been doing in this over 200 days? They have an agenda 
that aims to end Medicare, that guts Medicaid, that has threatened 
Social Security, and at the same time they have even targeted energy-
efficient light bulbs. They have used time in this body to do all of 
these things, while at the same time fighting to preserve tax breaks 
for the wealthy, for Big Oil, and for companies that ship jobs overseas 
when at this time we know that we have a jobs deficit in this country.
  There is nothing more important that we can do than to, of course, 
make sure that America pays its bills, but the most important priority 
facing our Nation is to get America back to work because we can't solve 
that long-term deficit problem without people having jobs. And, 
frankly, the American Dream doesn't live if we don't have opportunities 
for families out there to go

[[Page 12497]]

to work and take care of those that they love, to send their kids to 
college. That's another thing that the Republican agenda has targeted, 
to put college out of reach again of so many middle class families.
  Well, I'm glad to be here with the gentleman from California and my 
other colleagues to make sure that we explain to the American people 
that there are people who get it, people who know that the number one 
priority is to put people back to work, to focus on building our 
infrastructure, to strengthening U.S. manufacturing, because we know 
that we have to be a country that makes things, that makes things made 
out of American iron and steel and manufactured goods; that every time 
you have a manufacturing job, that there is a ripple effect of four 
more jobs, or if it's in the auto industry, it's 10 more jobs. We know 
that if we are not a country that manufactures things, then we are at 
the mercy of those who do. It is incumbent upon us to stand up to make 
sure that we focus the agenda.
  We've got to stop this political theater, deal with getting the debt 
ceiling issue dealt with for the long term, not for 6 months, not for 6 
months and be right back at this again, leaving the American people to 
wonder, seniors to wonder whether they're going to get what they need 
in their Social Security checks, veterans to wonder whether they're 
going to get what they need. We really, really know that the priority 
has to be on jobs, and we implore our Republican colleagues to join us.
  Two hundred days is too long; 200 days is more than the American 
people and the American families that I am so honored to serve can 
take. We must focus on getting people back to work.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. It is about jobs. There are very few economists--
except maybe some that supported the proposal that the Republicans put 
together today--but nearly every economist in this Nation said the only 
way we will ever get this Nation back to a balanced budget is with full 
employment, putting people to work. And that is the Make it in America 
agenda.
  Let me now turn to Mr. Perlmutter from the great State of Colorado, 
who has some concepts and ideas he would like to share with us this 
evening.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I thank my friend from California and Ms. Sutton from 
Ohio.
  And as they've said, the best way to pay the debt that this Nation 
has incurred is for people to work. All of a sudden you've got revenue 
coming in, and you don't have to pay unemployment, you don't have to 
pay a lot of Medicaid, you don't have to pay COBRA and all these other 
things. You have revenue coming in and less expense going out.
  One of the things about this Nation is that it has always provided to 
those people who really are prepared to work, who are prepared to play 
by the rules, who take responsibility for their lives and the lives of 
their family members, a chance to get ahead. That's what America has 
meant to millions and millions and millions of people throughout our 
history.
  And one of the reasons this country was able to provide that kind of 
a setting for all of us is because 235 years ago or so, this Nation 
went through a war. And after that war, the States banded together and 
said, you know what, we as a country will pay the debts of our 
Revolutionary War. And this young Nation paid its debts and became a 
strong Nation overnight because it paid its bills. And so for 235 years 
now we've been paying our bills. You bet. And that's why we have had 
the strongest credit, the full faith and credit of the United States of 
America for two centuries.
  My friends on the Republican side of the aisle, for the last 3 months 
or more, have been putting that credit at risk. And I'd like to say 
there was a real reason for them to do that, but there is no reason. 
When you have incurred a bill, you pay that bill. You don't say, you 
know what, we're not going to pay the bill unless some things happen in 
the future. You pay the bill, and you deal with the future separately.
  But not in this Congress, not with this Republican leadership. They 
tie it all together and say if we don't get our way, we're not going to 
pay our bills. Well, baloney, that isn't how it works. And so what 
we've got to do is come together. The President has proposed a balanced 
approach to getting this country's fiscal house in order.
  Now, let's not forget how we got here. Ten years ago, we had a 
surplus; revenues exceeded expenses. So in these last 10 years we had 
two big tax cuts--that's a couple trillion dollars under George Bush. 
We had a couple big wars, which instead of everybody being patriotic 
and really assisting the country, we would borrow and do it on a credit 
card--that's a couple trillion dollars. And then we had a crash on Wall 
Street--another $2 trillion or $3 trillion. That's where the debt came 
from.
  Now, I can lay the blame at the feet of the Republican leadership and 
administration, but we are where we are and we've got to deal with it. 
And it's got to be done in a balanced way, both the revenue side of the 
ledger and the expense side of the ledger. If our goal is to pay down 
the debt, you need more revenue and you need less expense. And it's 
both sides. And you can't just say we're going to cut, cut, cut. We're 
going to take it out of Medicare, we're going to privatize Social 
Security. We're going to eliminate early childhood education. You've 
got to deal with the expenses, and we know that; but you've got to have 
revenue.
  In this instance, the Republicans say, you know what, we're not going 
to have additional taxes for millionaires and billionaires and some 
corporations with loopholes, no, that's off limits. But we are going to 
go after Medicare, we are going to go after Social Security, we are 
going to go after early childhood education. That's just not right, and 
this country knows it.

                              {time}  1910

  Every American knows that, so we have to get busy, ladies and 
gentlemen, because we have work to do. If we are going to restore the 
American Dream, we have a lot of work to do. And that is what Democrats 
are going to do. We have a lot of work to do, and it is time to get 
busy.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Perlmutter, you are so very correct. The American 
Dream, you laid it out there so well--job, family, home, ability to 
take care, kids off to school, good health care--the American Dream. 
When you get old, you've got Medicare, you have Social Security. That's 
really the foundation.
  However, what happened on this floor not more than an hour and a half 
ago will destroy that dream. Now, we have work to do; indeed, we do. 
And now I would like to turn to my friend and colleague on the floor, 
sometimes we call it the East Coast/West Coast show, my friend from New 
York, Mr. Paul Tonko.
  Mr. TONKO. Representative Garamendi, it is a pleasure to join with 
you, speaking for your base in California, joining with our colleagues 
from Colorado and Texas and Connecticut and Ohio and Virginia, myself 
from New York, across this country, we are speaking for the American 
public. The great populous of this Nation are asking: Where are the 
solutions? Where is the responsiveness to a job situation, a jobs 
deficit, a jobs crisis?
  The solution here, well, last night we saw it. We saw the drama 
unfold, not here on the House floor, but behind closed doors. We moved 
into recess. The Republican leadership of the House said we are going 
to move to recess. We were fully anticipating a vote last night in 
short order, but we waited for hours and hours. They didn't have the 
votes. So what happened? Today they moved for a measure that moved 
further from the center, took us to the extreme edge in order to get 
just by a vote to amass sufficient support for a very extreme solution 
that really kicks the can down the road, as the gentlewoman from Ohio 
(Ms. Sutton) indicated. It means that we don't have this long-term 
solution that builds confidence in the economy but, rather, a political 
response, a political solution that bought enough votes, that puts into 
play measures that we know will not find support as negotiations need 
to come to conclusion in just a matter of hours.

[[Page 12498]]

  And so this has been a disingenuous approach to a very serious issue. 
But what they are doing is destroying jobs, because as you kill the 
confidence within our economy by threatening this economy with credit 
ratings that could be reduced, that call for greater interest payments, 
from car loans to mortgages to student loans to savings to pension 
plans, we're putting the people of this country, every household, 
regardless of income strata, economic strata, at risk. But an assault 
certainly on the middle class of this country.
  And is that the right thing to do when we have this looming dark 
cloud of a jobs crisis, and how do we solve that? We do it by investing 
in programs that create jobs and undo the programs that are outmoded, 
don't create jobs. And we make certain that there is an investment made 
in innovation, in clean energy, in manufacturing, making things here in 
America, taking ideas, moving them along, embracing the pioneer spirit 
of the people of this great land. That's not being done.
  What they do is move to destroy some 700,000 jobs. They kill the 
confidence factor for the economy. They move forward with harmful 
measures that destroy our economic growth and end Medicare, because 
with their proposal, we see it clearly, they would end Medicare and 
transition Social Security into a privatized format.
  These are the things that our phones have been ringing off the hook 
about. We have heard, through the President's encouragement, from 
several constituents, routinely through this debate of several weeks 
and months now but enhanced over the last couple of days, and people 
are very clear, couldn't be clearer: Why do we become a lesser priority 
than Big Oil and millionaires and billionaires? People are asking that 
question, and they have every right to.
  This is an assault on the values of the middle class of this country. 
It is a neglectful response to the jobs crisis of this country, and it 
has moved us further away from the deficit situation with the debt 
ceiling discussion by moving it to the extreme, because the extreme of 
their party, in order to get their support, said over the last several 
hours, the last half day: You want my support, move extreme. Don't move 
to the moderate zone. Don't build a consensus. And so now the 
consequences of their action puts this economy at risk and does nothing 
but reduce jobs rather than promote the investments that will create 
jobs.
  Representative Garamendi, it's aggravating. It is ignoring what the 
public's wishes are, and it's not responding to the challenges of the 
moment. This is a tipping point moment for the Nation. This is a chance 
to reengineer the economy after a long and deep and painful recession, 
and they are risking that by perhaps pushing us back into a recession, 
if not a full-blown depression.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. What took place here on the floor, Mr. Tonko, over the 
last couple of hours was really a charade. It was theater. It had no 
sense of reality. There is no way that piece of legislation is going to 
move forward. You said it so very well: It became more and more radical 
with each iteration over time.
  It seems as though there is a small group within the Republican 
Caucus that really doesn't want government at all. Almost an anarchist 
attitude about government is bad, get rid of it in every way.
  And then there is group in that same caucus that actually published a 
piece of paper, it came from the leadership, and one of the things that 
they said that they wanted to do was to bring down the President. Well, 
we have an election coming up, to be sure. But to use the full faith 
and credit of the United States, that is the honor and really the 
dignity, to say nothing of the financial strength of this Nation, to 
bring down the President seems to be unconscionable.
  Mr. TONKO. Our goal here should be to build up a Nation rather than 
to bring down a President, and it is shameful to even have that 
acknowledged.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Earlier this afternoon before we started this 1-hour, 
one of our colleagues on the Republican side brought up a nice little 
picture of a woman balancing her budget, presumably at home, and a 
checkbook. She said that 40-some States have a balanced budget 
amendment, and they balance their budget.
  Earlier this afternoon, I was talking to my friend from the great 
State of Virginia, and he said: Let me share with you how one State 
balances their budget.
  I yield to Bobby Scott.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I would like to bring that up because the 
legislation that we considered earlier today had a provision that 
required a constitutional amendment that is mislabeled. It is called 
the Balanced Budget Amendment.
  Well, if you look at the provisions of the bill, not just the title, 
the provisions, you will see that it requires a three-fifths vote to 
pass a budget that is not in balance. Every budget that we have 
considered for the last 9 years and every budget that we will consider 
for the foreseeable future will be unbalanced in the first year. So all 
you've done is increase the threshold for any budget to be balanced.
  The Republican Study Committee budget, which is probably the most 
conservative budget in terms of spending on the table, other budgets 
would probably cut the deficit just as much, but all of those severe 
deficit reduction bills would require a three-fifths vote.
  Now remember, when the Clinton budget passed, it passed by the 
thinnest of margins. We balanced the budget and were on course to 
paying off the national debt, created a record number of jobs. The Dow 
Jones Industrial Average almost quadrupled. Fifty Democrats lost their 
seats when they voted for that bill. When you vote for deficit 
reduction, a lot of people will be casting career-ending votes. 
Increasing the threshold to three-fifths will just make it harder or 
even more impossible to pass.
  What you can get three-fifths for, once you need three-fifths, any 
kind of budget can pass. You can have more tax cuts, and we got three-
fifths votes from the $800 billion tax cut back in December. But a 
three-fifths vote, you can pass new tax cuts and new spending. You can 
make the deficit worse under the balanced budget amendment and probably 
will.
  Also consider that it had the provision of two-thirds vote to 
increase taxes. That will obviously make it more difficult to balance 
the budget. Two-thirds vote to spend more than 18 percent of GDP, a 
number we haven't seen since Medicare was enacted. That means you're 
going to have pressure on Medicare and Social Security.
  Interestingly, if you put all of these things together, you'll notice 
that you can cut Medicare benefits or Social Security benefits with a 
simple majority. But to save those programs with new taxes, a two-
thirds vote in the House and a two-thirds vote in the Senate. And then 
to add insult to injury, it requires a three-fifths vote to increase 
the debt ceiling.

                              {time}  1920

  As if the drama that we've been through in the last few days and last 
few weeks isn't enough of a spectacle, they wanted to make that kind of 
thing routine, where we'd have to go through this every year. We've had 
to increase the debt ceiling on average once a year for the last 50 
years. They want to go through this spectacle with a supermajority so 
that we can have these kinds of problems all along.
  Now, we heard during consideration of the balanced budget amendment 
when we were in committee about Arizona's balanced budget amendment and 
how well it works. And we kept hearing this over and over again. So I 
thought, I wonder how they do that? So I Googled it.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Excuse me. You said that Arizona has a balanced budget 
amendment in their Constitution and somehow they balance their budget.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. And I couldn't figure out how they have done 
it over the past few years. I figured there must be something in there. 
So we Googled it, thanks to Google. And we found out. The first thing I 
found

[[Page 12499]]

out is, with 6.3 million people, they got $6.4 billion of stimulus 
money that the Federal Government borrowed and then sent to them. A 
thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child--$4,000 for every 
family. That helped them balance the budget.
  But that wasn't enough. You know what else they did? They sold their 
State capitol and supreme court building. Did you hear what I said? 
They sold the State capitol building for $735 million and sold the 
supreme court building for $300 million and leased it back. That extra 
billion dollars in the budget was necessary for them to balance their 
budget.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Excuse me for a second, if I might interrupt. One of 
the proposals coming from some of the Republicans was to sell America's 
assets. Do you suppose they intended to sell the U.S. Capitol?
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Well, the Arizona State capitol was sold and 
leased back. So there's no telling what they might want to do. But the 
really regrettable part of this is the process that we're in. Because 
we just passed a bill that provides for trillions of dollars in 
unspecified cuts. They slapped the thing together behind closed doors. 
The final version was developed this morning after the bill had been 
debated. There was only 1 minute left in the debate, and they changed 
the bill. They added in the balanced budget amendment and some other 
kinds of changes and sprung it on the House.
  We finished the debate this afternoon. Vote it up or down, no 
amendments. We took all that time doing it on a bill that 53 Senators 
have signed a letter saying that they're going to oppose it as soon as 
it gets over there.
  Now, I said unspecified amendments because they don't cut anything in 
their bill. There are no cuts. There are caps. So we don't know what 
the cuts will be because they're just spending caps. We will find out 
next month what they have in mind because that's when we'll try to 
appropriate under the caps, and then we'll figure out what actually has 
to be cut.
  But we'd have an idea of what they might cut because earlier this 
year they had a bill of about $66 billion. Annualized, that would be 
about a hundred billion for the full year. In 10-year costs, that would 
be about a trillion. So if you want to know what a trillion-dollar 10-
year cut would look like, we can see it.
  Look at what they cut. They cut safety net programs like community 
action agencies, legal aid, energy assistance for low-income seniors, 
community health centers, WIC nutrition. All cut. They had investments 
in our future, education. All kinds of education programs, including 
Head Start and Pell Grants. Cut. Job training programs in the middle of 
an economic downturn. Cut. NASA and other scientific research, energy 
research. Cut. High-speed rail, investments in our future. 
Immunizations and AmeriCorp. Cut.
  Then routine functions of government that you would hope would not 
have to get cut, like air traffic controllers. They're working so hard, 
they're falling asleep on the jobs. Cops and firefighters. Cut. FBI 
agents. We spent the last couple of days in the Judiciary Committee 
talking about trying to chase down cases involving child pornography, 
and we don't have enough FBI agents to chase them down. And what do 
they do? Cut FBI agents.
  Clean Water grants, poison control, aid to small shipyards. We have a 
lot of shipyards in my district. National parks. OSHA--Occupational 
Safety and Health Administration--personnel cut. FEMA. With all the 
problems we've got all over the country now, floods and everything, 
FEMA is cut. They talk about border security. Border protection and 
border security. Cut. Food inspection.
  That's just a small sample of what they had in that. Then in the next 
bill they're cutting Medicare. All of those cut. And that's just the 
first trillion.
  I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I was going to say to my friend, over the course of 
the last 10 years we know where the debt really came from. It wasn't in 
early childhood education. It wasn't in national parks. It was in two 
tax cuts--a couple trillion dollars or more. It was in two wars--at 
least a couple trillion dollars. And it was in a crash on Wall Street 
when people were laid off and had to have some kind of assistance.
  Obviously, you said Arizona needed assistance--$6.4 billion and they 
still sold their capitol.
  I would yield to my friend from Connecticut because he has the chart 
that describes this.
  Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Perlmutter and Mr. Garamendi, for 
holding this.
  As John Adams, our second President once famously said, Facts are 
stubborn things. This chart here, which is a chart which is using the 
Congressional Budget Office facts and figures in terms of what happened 
to this country since 2002, which as my friend indicated, was the last 
time we had a balanced budget in this country. This chart shows that we 
have accumulated about $7.5 trillion in debt. And $5 trillion of that 
was due to the policies of the last administration, starting with the 
Iraq and Afghanistan wars, two wars which, again, lots of debate about 
whether it was in our national interest. In any case, what is not 
debatable is that we never paid a penny for either one of those 
conflicts.
  The Bush tax cuts, $1.8 trillion; nondefense discretionary spending, 
$608 billion. TARP, the Wall Street bailout, which a lot of people 
forget occurred under the last administration; a Medicare drug benefit 
which was passed in 2005 and was never paid for. Not a nickle of that 
benefit was ever paid for with either offsetting revenue or other 
spending reductions.
  And the 2008 stimulus bill which the Bush administration had 
presented. A lot of people don't remember the check that people got 
sent during that time. Again, none of those expenditures were paid for. 
Many of those expenditures, such as the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq and 
Afghanistan wars, are still recurring expenses, which are still 
accumulating bills and debts which this country is obligated for.
  When the Obama administration took office in January of 2009, they 
faced an economy that was in free fall. There were 800,000 jobs lost in 
January of 2009. Obviously, a crisis that needed to be addressed in 
terms of counter-recessionary policies such as extending unemployment 
benefits and some stimulus, which is to get work out there in terms of 
road and bridge construction projects, sewer treatment facilities. I'm 
cutting a ribbon on Monday morning in my district for a plant which 
provided a lot of work for people. Again, nonrecurring expenses to deal 
with the emergency that we faced as a Nation.
  When you look at, again, the comparative cost of the policies and the 
Bush administration and the Obama administration and you think about 
the fact that we have these bills and expenses which have been 
accumulated by our Nation since 2002, and yet we had a default debate 
here an hour and a half ago, where the Speaker, who, by the way, voted 
for every single one of those Bush policies from 2002 up until 
President Bush left office, stood on this floor, blamed the debt crisis 
that we face in our Nation just on one administration, which, again, 
CBO clearly documents was far less culpable in terms of what the 
numbers show.
  Again, it just shows how really corrosive the partisan debate that's 
occurred under the 112th Congress since this new majority took office, 
completing omitting the fact that eight times during the Bush 
administration they voted to raise the debt ceiling to avoid default. 
Under Ronald Reagan, 18 times. We've had clean debt limit increases. 
Yet this administration, the Obama administration, for the first time 
in American history is being held to a different standard in terms of 
trying to deal with the debts and obligations of this country.
  The rating agencies have spoken loud and clear in terms of the bill 
that was just voted on here an hour and a half ago. A short-term 
extension of 6 months is thumbs down from the rating agencies because 
they see that as just an invitation this coming December to go through 
the same political

[[Page 12500]]

and economic instability that we saw this past week. And that's not 
what our economy needs today.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. It's in that context that the actions of this 
Congress have to be taken into consideration because last December we 
passed an $800 billion, 2-year tax cut--not new tax cuts--extending the 
ones that were there.

                              {time}  1930

  Had we let them expire, which I think would have been better 
judgment, we would not be in the situation we're in. We passed $400 
billion a year tax cuts. We now have a general consensus that we need, 
in the next 10 years, $4 trillion worth of savings, deficit reduction, 
about $400 billion a year, exactly the same as what we did in tax cuts 
last year. All of these cuts we're talking about are necessary to 
partially offset the fact that we extended the tax cuts last year. And 
the process was all up or down. You had to vote it all up or down, one 
vote, without any choices. We didn't need to extend all of the tax 
cuts. Maybe if we extended some but not all, we could have avoided cuts 
in Head Start, in food inspectors, firefighters and those kinds of 
things. We didn't make the choice step by step. It was, we have to 
extend the tax cuts, and in order to preserve those tax cuts, we're 
making the cuts in Medicare and Social Security and Pell Grants and 
Head Start, clean water grants, poison control, and on and on. It's in 
that context that these cuts are so regrettable.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. If I might, my good colleague from Virginia, on the 
floor today it was perfectly clear that the Republicans are refusing to 
even consider any increases in taxes or the elimination of tax breaks, 
on oil, on corporations that send jobs overseas, it's no. On the high 
end, the hedge fund managers that have a billion dollars of income, no, 
they're going to keep those tax breaks.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. On that point, if we do nothing and let them 
expire--we're not talking about new tax cuts--if we just let them 
expire, we have enough deficit reduction on the table to match Simpson-
Bowles.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. There you have it.
  Our colleague from Ohio, if you could comment. We're going to do this 
kind of moving along more rapidly. We've got several different 
comments. Our colleague from Texas is back.
  Please, if you would, and then I'll turn to our colleague from Texas.
  Ms. SUTTON. I just want to say one more time, because I know that the 
people that I represent in northeast Ohio, they don't want government 
on their backs but they do want government on their side, and how do we 
show that we're on their side? We focus on the issue that matters to 
them the most, and all they want is a chance. They want a chance at 
that American Dream.
  How do we do that? We do that by focusing on jobs, and we do that by 
focusing on this agenda to Make It in America. What does that mean? It 
means policies that make sense regarding trade, that instead of 
fighting to protect companies as the Republicans are through this whole 
default debacle, instead of protecting those companies that ship jobs 
overseas, we want to level the playing field, to allow our 
manufacturers and our workers to fairly compete because we know that 
they are the best in the world and given a chance, a fair chance, they 
will not only compete, they will out-compete anybody in the world. We 
need tax policies that make sense. We need to focus on not only 
manufacturing but building our infrastructure. The world is working on 
building their infrastructure, and here we are, we heard the cuts that 
are going on aimed at our infrastructure.
  It is time, it is past time, that we turn to the hard work of putting 
America back to work, because while we have a jobs deficit, we don't 
have a deficit of work that needs to be done. Let us get away from this 
risk of default, let us settle the matter, allow America to pay its 
bills, because if we don't, we're going to lose even more jobs. 
Economists tell us we're going to lose 700,000 more jobs if America 
defaults. We don't want to go in that direction. We want to go in the 
direction that allows our workers, our companies and our country to 
make it--Make It in America.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. And there's the voice from the central part of the 
heart of America from the great State of Ohio.
  We know that America can make it. This is still the greatest 
manufacturing center in the world, and part of our job agenda on the 
Democratic side is what we call Make It in America.
  The gentlewoman from Ohio very quickly pointed out several elements 
in that. I put this up while she was talking so we could think about 
it.
  Trade policy. We can't give away our jobs on trade policy.
  Taxes. We talked about the tax issues, corporations getting tax 
breaks for going offshore.
  Energy. We need energy security. We can't afford to continue to pay 
all of our hard-earned dollars to the petro-dictators of the world and 
the most dangerous places of the world. We need a domestic energy 
policy, a green energy policy, a clean energy policy, with the tens of 
thousands, hundreds of thousands of jobs there.
  Labor policies. We talked about educating our kids. Bobby Scott from 
Virginia talked about the cuts that are in the Republican budget when 
we need to educate, re-educate and prepare our labor force.
  Education. In this budget that they just put forward are tremendous 
cuts to the Pell Grants that allow kids to go to school.
  Research. Again, Bobby, you talked about the research cuts, and the 
infrastructure we've talked about several times. This is all part of 
our agenda. This is how we're going to build America, how the American 
Dream can become a reality once again by making the critical 
investments on the public side, bringing the private side along.
  I know that Texas likes to say everything is great in Texas, but I 
have talked to our colleague, Sheila Jackson Lee, many times we've 
talked to her on the floor, and it's not all perfect.
  Could you share with us the view from Texas?
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. The gentleman from California is very kind 
for leading this effort, and I'm delighted to be here. We've really got 
a regional, national perspective here: the gentlemen from Colorado, 
from Connecticut, the gentlelady from Ohio, and, of course, the 
gentleman from New York, and the gentleman from Virginia, and Texas.
  Texas is a big State. I heard a colleague on this side of the aisle 
say that Texas has got all kinds of articles to talk about how great a 
State it is. It's a great State, but when you don't spend money on 
people, you wind up like Texas, being 43rd in education, or you wind up 
having the State with the largest number of individuals without health 
insurance, and so I have joined my colleagues today because I truly 
believe, standing on this side of the Chamber, that there is an 
opportunity for bipartisanship. But yet we have individuals who have 
been influenced by signs that say No Surrender. No Surrender. Those 
words were more appropriate for our Founding Fathers as they stood 
against oppression. No Surrender. But these words are not appropriate 
against the American people, that we won't surrender, no matter what 
happens to the American people, we in this Congress are so influenced 
by voices that truly do not have the concept of invest and grow, and 
they don't have the concept of Make It in America. What a wonderful 
statement about the greatness of America. Not No Surrender but Make It 
in America, because America is not broke, and the voices of negativism 
that would propose legislation that would have us cut without 
investment, cut without revenue, means that we surrender on the 
American people.
  I wanted to mention that we haven't said what is happening to local 
government. Here is a major headline that says States Feel Pain Over 
Debt Impasse. We all come from the people, outside of the Beltway, and 
what is happening to the States is that the markets are being troubled. 
I had a

[[Page 12501]]

press conference and a meeting with my city comptroller whose 
investments are in Treasury notes. It's not just what we do here on the 
floor of the House. Our cities will have a troubled economic 
infrastructure if the Treasury notes that they have invested in all of 
a sudden drop with severe, if you will, losses.
  And so I wanted to say that this is more than just us, it is more 
than one person in a leaky boat, it is many of us in a leaky boat. Just 
in the last 48 hours, to the gentleman, the Dow went down 200 points. 
In the last 12 hours coming in today, the Asian markets and our markets 
have seen a dramatic drop, and as you well know, we were here until 11 
o'clock at night trying to wait until the conference, in essence, got 
itself together.
  So let me just say that the debt ceiling from my perspective should 
be a clean one, but we should go forward with innovation, investment, 
and balanced cutting. We should preserve our Medicare, Medicaid and 
Social Security.
  Finally let me say this. If the States are being troubled now and 
people are being influenced by the language or the words No Surrender, 
can you imagine what happens when 6 months from now the bill that 
passed with no Democrats, we would come back again to the American 
people, tell them to be fearful about Medicaid, Medicare, Social 
Security, tell our students they might not have Pell Grants for the 
second semester, tell people in the midst of buying a house their 
interest rates will skyrocket, because we'll be back again trying to 
debate the debt ceiling, and if various draconian measures are not 
passed such as balanced budget amendments by three-fifths, two-thirds, 
we will have another default.

                              {time}  1940

  We need to be focusing on what is good about America. Make it in 
America. Invest, innovate and grow, and have mutually balanced 
sacrifice. That's what will make us great.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Ms. Jackson Lee, thank you so much.
  We have about 10 minutes left here, and I'd like to do lightning 
rounds.
  My colleagues, you've been so eloquent and have really brought these 
issues to bear, but why don't we all do a wrap--we'll do about a 
minute--and we'll just pass it around.
  Let's start with the great State of New York. So we'll go to the east 
coast first.
  Mr. Tonko.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Garamendi.
  Let me just say that the challenge for America to pay her bills, many 
of those bills that were accrued before this administration, is not a 
Republican challenge; it's not a Democratic challenge. It's an American 
challenge. The default crisis that is challenging our economy, 
threatening our economy is not a Republican crisis; it's not a 
Democratic crisis. It's an American crisis. The jobs crisis is not a 
Republican crisis or a Democratic crisis. It's an American crisis.
  You get the message. We need to come together, not pull farther 
apart.
  I represent what I'd like to call the original Tech Valley. The Erie 
Canal/Barge Canal were hosted in the 21st Congressional District. It 
provided for a westward movement. It embraced the pioneer spirit of 
America. Mill towns became the epicenters of invention and innovation. 
That same pioneer spirit is in our DNA at the very present day, today. 
If we invest as we know we should, we will grow jobs; we'll respond to 
the jobs crisis; we'll create revenues and they'll grow; we'll cut 
spending required when unemployment rises; and we will solve many 
crises.
  I have seen the region I represent grow per capita, in per capita 
measurement, to be the number one green-powered job growth region in 
the country. That happened because of Federal investment and State 
investment. Let's just make it in America and do sound policy that is 
bringing us together and not dividing us as the leadership of this 
House has done with their approach.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Tonko.
  Let's move to the great State of Virginia, down in the tidewater 
country.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Thank you very much, and I appreciate your 
doing this.
  As our friend from New York has said, we need to be focused on jobs. 
The other side of the aisle is quick to say that you cannot raise taxes 
in the middle of an economic downturn, and then the next thing they say 
is we need to cut spending. Spending cuts have a much larger impact on 
employment because, when you have an agency and when you cut the 
budget, people get fired immediately. There is a more immediate effect 
than tax cuts, which you don't pay until later on. It has a larger 
effect. So, when we start talking about the jobs, these cuts will have 
an adverse effect on jobs. We need to focus on jobs first.
  We wouldn't be going through this kind of attack on our economy, on 
Medicare, on the education programs if it had not been for the threat 
to shut down the economy. This threat is unprecedented. We need to pay 
our obligations. We cannot default. It's actually manufactured, because 
never in American history has there been any serious effort to fail to 
pay our obligations as we've been going through in just these past few 
days.
  We need to increase the debt ceiling in the same way we've done it 
every year, sometimes twice a year--on average about once a year, 
sometimes twice a year--over the last 50 years. Just increase the debt 
ceiling. We should not be jeopardizing. We should not be having all 
this uncertainty in the markets with what's going on here today. As 
that saying goes, ``Just do it.''
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Indeed, we do. If we're going to have the American 
Dream continue to be a reality, we've got lot of work to do. We've got 
to put the American people back to work, and we're going to have to 
deal with the deficit, and it will take us a while to do it.
  Mr. Courtney, you very well and eloquently pointed out how we got 
into the deficit. Please, your final thoughts.
  Mr. COURTNEY. Sure. Tonight, I know and every one of us here knows 
there are a lot of older Americans who are watching this debate 
extremely closely who are worried about their Social Security checks at 
the beginning of next month, and they're worried about whether their 
Medicare is going to be there.
  What I would just say--and I know all of us agree--is we all 
understand that it is our solemn duty to protect a program that just 
celebrated its 45th anniversary, Medicare, which has made a difference 
to every single one of us in terms of our parents and our grandparents. 
We understand that we are not going to allow this political bullying 
effort, using the tool of the default as a device, to butcher the 
Medicare program. That is a solemn pledge which I know every single one 
of us believes in, and we are going to fight until this episode is over 
in order to make sure that we protect the basic components of 
retirement security for seniors in America, which is Social Security 
and Medicare.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. How about the view from Colorado?
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I thank my friend from California.
  I would say the view from Colorado is, there's a lot of pushing and 
pulling back here, and I would call upon my moderate friends in the 
Republican Party, if there are any anymore, to stop this tomfoolery.
  No longer can we put the full faith and credit of the United States 
at risk. I mean, we do have a duty to preserve and protect our 
Constitution, and the full faith and credit of this country is referred 
to at least three times in the article about the Congress in the ``full 
faith and credit'' section of the Constitution and then in the 14th 
Amendment. We pay our debts. We pay our bills. So I'd just say that the 
President has proposed a solid, long-term fiscal plan. It took us 10 
years to get into this financial mess from the time we had a surplus 
under Bill Clinton, and it will take us several years to right 
ourselves, but we can do it. This is America.
  Then as we're doing that, we really do have to focus on making sure 
that people who play by the rules, who are

[[Page 12502]]

responsible and hardworking, have a shot at getting advanced in this 
world. The best way to do that is through a good job and through making 
things in America.
  For Democrats, really our formula is to innovate, educate, rebuild 
this economy, and rebuild our infrastructure. That will make this 
country strong, and it will make Colorado strong. We love our clean 
energy industry. That's a good place to start.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. And from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. I thank the gentleman.
  First of all, thank you for allowing us to really talk about how 
great America is--I agree with you--and we are not broke. Chairman 
Bernanke said fast, undefined cuts will hamper the economy, and he is 
nonpartisan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
  So what do we need to do?
  We need to look at our history. Twenty million jobs were created 
under the Democratic Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton--and then 
this President, with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that we 
supported, 3 million jobs. We know how to do this.
  What I would say to my friends is that we have the responsibility to 
be not ``any'' party, but Democrats are here to be for the American 
people, and this weekend, Democrats will be the ones standing in the 
gap for the American people. I am proud of that.
  My last point is, there is no shame in taking care of the vulnerable. 
The last thing we want to do as we leave this place in these next 
couple of days with the debt ceiling in place, as it should be, is to 
leave behind us seniors who may be thrown out of nursing homes because 
we didn't do what was right. So I say we can do it, and we can do the 
debt ceiling in the way that creates jobs and protects the American 
people.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you.
  I'll do a wrap here, and we'll be finished for this evening.
  Unfortunately, the work has not yet been completed. We do need to 
lift the debt ceiling. We can, and it will be done one way or the 
other. The President has the ultimate authority under the 14th 
Amendment of the Constitution to simply order the Treasury to pay the 
bills.
  All that has gone on here today will devastate the United States. It 
will devastate it. We've talked about that part of this is the 
requirement that no more debt ceilings will be lifted until there is a 
constitutional amendment that requires a two-thirds, or a 60 percent, 
vote to do anything. That is guaranteed gridlock. The only thing that 
could take place on a majority vote would be cuts. Think about that, 
America. In order to raise taxes, in order to end the tax breaks given 
to the oil companies or the rich barons on Wall Street, it takes a two-
thirds vote. But to cut Medicare?--a majority vote. We're not going to 
let that happen.
  There is one place that the Democratic Party is going to stand, and 
that is: Keep your hands off Social Security and Medicare. No way. 
Nohow. I don't care about all of this talk that goes on here. The 
bottom line is: That is a fundamental building block foundation of this 
Nation. It brought every senior out of poverty.

                              {time}  1950

  There's not a family in America that doesn't depend upon Social 
Security and Medicare for their parents. Now, if you want that cut, you 
stay there with what the Republicans are talking about because there's 
no way that you could possibly carry out what they're proposing unless 
you go after Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid.
  We will not let it happen. This is where we stand. It's not a line in 
the sand. It is etched into the very heart of the Democratic Party.
  With that, I thank my colleagues for joining me this evening, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________