Recognizing National Debt As Threat to National Security

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona for his leadership on this matter, and I appreciate his leadership very much on H. Res. 149, a resolution recognizing the national debt as a threat to our national security.

In February 2000, the total national debt, including intragovernmental holdings, was $5.7 trillion. Federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product was 17.5 percent. Today, the total national debt now exceeds $22 trillion.

The last balanced budget was signed into law in 1997, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that Federal spending as a percentage of GDP is projected to be 20.8 percent this year. In February 2018, Congress passed a budget agreement that busted the previously established spending caps by almost $300 billion over 2 years.

All those numbers don't mean anything to the American people tuning in to C-SPAN right now. They are giant numbers. They are really difficult for people to understand and comprehend. But we are talking about the future of our Nation and what we are leaving to our children.

We are leaving them with an economy that is anchored by $22 trillion in debt that is going to turn to $25, $30 and $40 trillion because, this year alone, we are going to have a trillion-dollar deficit, with no end in sight.

We are making it to where our children can't comprehend what freedom is like in this country and what opportunity is like in this country because they are going to have an economy that is weighted down by this body's and the Senate's irresponsibility.

Nobody in America balances their budgets at home like this. I assure my friend from Arizona, our States don't balance their budgets like this. Nobody looks at the total number for income you have, then blows it by 25 or 30 percent, and then goes to the bank and wonders why they might not give you a loan or help you finance a car.

My concern is that we are allowing this to happen on the backs of our men and women in uniform. We are saying that, as a need to defend the United States of America and to spend money--which our men and women in uniform deserve to have the resources necessary as we ask them to go around the globe--we are using that as an excuse to continue to bust caps and to bust the limits that we put in place to hold us in check.

Of that $300 billion that I was talking about the last 2 years, about 40 percent of that is nondefense discretionary that rode on the back of what we are trying to do to help our men and women in uniform have the tools they need.

There used to be an adage of guns and butter. We don't have a choice anymore about choosing between guns and butter. Have we cut butter at all while we go and increase money for the guns for our men and women in uniform? Have we even held it in check? No.

We have plussed it up and continued to bust the caps, all while we know mandatory spending--spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security--all go up.

The question I would ask is: When are we going to stop? Is it going to take placing a debt clock over the chair of the Speaker? Do we need to have something to remind us, sitting here in the body, what we are going to be leaving to our children? Because it is our responsibility, what we leave behind to our kids.

It is irresponsible when we look at every bill, every one of these little bills that comes across our desk.

People say, well, why did you vote ``no,'' Mr. Roy? Well, it was just another $500,000. It was just another $5 million.

That is not how you spend at home. It is time that this body gets serious about spending restraint. It is time that this body recognize-- as I am very happy that my friend from Arizona has, and I am proud to join him in saying that this is an impact on our national security and a threat to our national security.

When we know right now that the interest on our debt is pretty soon going to eclipse the amount of spending we are spending at the Department of Defense, that is a threat to our national security. We can't sustain it.

When we say now that we are going to spend more money for the tools that our men and women need, how are we going to afford to spend on those tools in 2030 or 2040 when we are spending more, literally, on interest than we are on what they need?

I am proud to join my friend to make the case here that this is a threat to our national security. I call on my colleagues to join us, to join this resolution. I call on them to have the same level of resolve to limit spending and to make sure that we pass down the greatest country to our kids that the world has ever known.

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