[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 7041-7042]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              DEBT CEILING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Connolly) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CONNOLLY. Madam Speaker, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget 
Office's latest forecast says this year's Federal deficit will shrink 
by 41 percent compared to last year's. That point bears repeating. The 
deficit is shrinking--and dramatically--thanks to the bipartisan 
actions taken by this Congress earlier this year. The CBO now projects 
a deficit of $642 billion, which is $200 billion less than projected 
just 3 months ago, the lowest level since 2008. Just 4 years ago, the 
deficit was over 10 percent of our GDP. This year, it's projected to 
fall below 5 percent--half of what it was just 4 years ago.
  Now, I understand that this news may not fit neatly within the 
narrative of our friends on the other side of the aisle, who, just as 
they did in the summer of 2011 unfortunately, tried just last week to 
manufacture yet another debt crisis where none exists.
  I would note that it was only a few months ago that we worked 
together in a bipartisan fashion to suspend the debt limit. On the 
heels of our New Year's Day compromise on the tax portions of the 
fiscal cliff, my Republican colleagues recognized the dangers of yet 
another debt showdown on the markets and on the possibility of 
downgrading U.S. creditworthiness; but rather than build on that rare 
moment of bipartisan comity and work with Democrats on a balanced plan 
to put our Nation back on the path of fiscal responsibility, House 
Republicans doubled down. They pushed ahead with their ``cut spending 
at any cost'' agenda. They pushed through a continuing resolution that 
baked in the harmful cuts of sequestration, which is a self-inflicted 
wound on our economy.
  Ironically, House Republicans just last week pushed through on a 
party-

[[Page 7042]]

line vote a bill that claims to protect the full faith and credit of 
the United States when, in reality, it would only place it more at risk 
by suggesting we won't be good for our debt. Furthermore, many of my 
Republican colleagues have relied on this debt crisis research done by 
two economists, Messrs. Reinhart and Rogoff, who have suggested that 
high levels of public debt always lead to lower rates of economic 
growth. That research has been the foundation of Republican austerity 
proposals in America, including the last three versions of the Ryan 
budget, which decimate public investments in our communities and the 
economy in the name of deficit reduction. It turns out the researchers 
aggregated the data incorrectly. They couldn't even read the Excel 
sheets properly, and that dramatically shifted the findings to show 
growth for high debt countries was more than 2 percent higher than they 
said it was, and it turns out there is no magical threshold of 90 
percent that always leads to, in fact, economic contraction. In fact, 
it's quite the opposite.
  Raising the debt limit is not a license to spend more money. It 
simply ensures that America will be good for its current debts and 
obligations. We've been good for that since Alexander Hamilton 
established the U.S. Treasury in George Washington's first Cabinet. The 
bipartisan agreement to suspend the debt ceiling expires this weekend, 
but with this latest forecast, the CBO now says that that limit 
probably won't be reached until October or November of this year. Most 
news reports suggest this will reduce the political pressure to achieve 
a bipartisan deal on further reducing the deficit in a balanced way. 
I'd argue the urgency still remains and that this window of time 
presents us with a perfect opportunity for bipartisan negotiations to 
resume without the specter of that sort of debt ceiling limit over our 
heads immediately.
  I am dismayed that my Republican friends continue to shun their own 
party's heritage for making strategic investments in infrastructure and 
innovation in favor of a blind adherence to slashing government 
spending with no acknowledgment for the consequences. I've consistently 
said that Federal spending must be reduced, but I've also said that it 
must be done in tandem with maintaining strategic Federal investments 
in things that create jobs, like R&D, infrastructure, innovation. I 
would suggest that my Republican friends look no further than the GDP 
growth from the last two quarters, showing it's not the Federal debt 
but their meat-ax approach to cutting those Federal investments that, 
in fact, has created what drag there is on the U.S. economy.
  The last time Republicans played games with the debt ceiling we 
registered the lowest monthly job growth in 3 years; the stock market 
tumbled; and the S&P, for the first time ever, downgraded U.S. debt. 
The latest jobs numbers show we've been adding 208,000 jobs a month on 
average since November, prompting a surge in confidence reflected by 
the market's climb to record levels.
  I implore my friends on the other side of the aisle to use this time 
to work with us on a balanced approach to deficit reduction and 
economic growth.

                          ____________________