[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15487-15488]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        LIVING WITHIN OUR MEANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 
Mexico (Mr. Pearce) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, words are very powerful and words are 
important. I hear the words from our President and realize that he 
understands the importance of words, also. In the past, he has talked 
about debt, borrowing, and spending, but now he talks about 
obligations, because he understands that ``debt,'' to the American 
public, is a four-letter word. He doesn't want to be tagged with the 
fact that he is asking for more debt, so now it is ``obligations.'' 
That is a word that has cleaned up the concept that we are simply 
borrowing against our future.
  But even the word ``borrowing'' needs to be looked at, because that 
assumes that we have the credit to borrow with; and the truth is no 
nation can lend us the kind of deficits that we are running right now, 
so we are actually printing the money.
  But even the word ``printing'' has been changed in Washington. Now it 
is ``quantitative easing.'' It just sounds so much better. ``Printing'' 
sounds so crass to the American public who might be worried about what 
is happening to their savings accounts while Washington is printing 
money.
  The word ``negotiation'' is a word that the President is familiar 
with. He did it 2 years ago when we reached this exact same point. Both 
sides came to the table and negotiated, and we wound up with a budget 
that was not as extremely overdrawn as we had faced before. That is the 
power of negotiation.
  But now the word ``negotiation'' is taken out of the President's 
vocabulary, and he declares that he is being held hostage. Oh, really? 
This thing he calls being held hostage is actually the American way. It 
is what our Founding Fathers wanted. They came here and set up a system 
with a President and two Houses of Congress and two different parties; 
and those parties would sometimes have all the power, and sometimes 
they would share the power.
  This President says he is being held hostage by the system. That 
means he doesn't believe in the balance of powers that the electorate 
cast in the last election. He declares over and over that the election 
is done--I was elected. The same people that elected him chose to put 
Republicans in power in the House of Representatives. I think they did 
that because they were afraid of this debt, deficit, borrowing, and 
spending.
  We are told that we should have a clean CR. There is nothing clean 
about sacrificing the future of our children and grandchildren. That is 
what the President wants: a CR where he can spend what he wants to 
spend without negotiations on anything. We actually, in the House, 
submitted four different plans before this shutdown occurred. Those 
plans were just summarily rejected by the Senate, waved off, not really 
even considered; and yet we find our friends declaring this to be the 
Republican shutdown, not that both Houses failed to come to an 
agreement and the White House failed to sit down and negotiate. They 
just weren't going to be held hostage. So now, then, we need a clean 
CR, according to some, and we need to stop this Republican shutdown.
  Words are very powerful. No longer do we talk about spending in 
Washington. We talk about investing. We are investing the American 
public's money. We are investing it in things like studies of the 
sexual habits of the fruit fly in Tijuana or wherever. ``Debt'' is, 
indeed, a four-letter word.
  We are finally led to believe that default will occur immediately, 
that we somehow won't pay our obligations, that the American people 
need to understand that they are still paying their taxes every day and 
those taxes come to Washington. That is about $2.5 trillion a year. If 
we do not extend the debt ceiling any higher, then what Washington is 
going to have to do is it is going to have to prioritize. It is going 
to decide which of its expenses to pay.
  The Constitution demands that we pay our obligations. It says we 
can't default on those. Washington would have to do the same thing 
every American family does: it will have to prioritize its expenses if 
we do not extend the debt ceiling so chaos will not reign. We simply 
have to live within our means. That is what every American family has 
to do.

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