Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2021

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, $2 trillion in revenues, $6 trillion in spending. This is madness. This is how countries commit fiscal suicide: force the economy to shut down, and then hand out government checks.

The problem, of course, is that the government does not finance the economy. It is the economy that finances the government.

And when you wantonly destroy millions of jobs by forcing small businesses to shutter, by canceling construction and energy production across the country, when you flood the labor market with millions of illegal immigrants at a time when millions of Americans are out of work, you shut down the economy, and you shut down the tax revenues that the economy produces and that the government spends.

And so we borrow instead. Now, this budget requires $4 trillion in borrowing. Now, where will it borrow this $4 trillion from? The future earnings of your family, of course.

Let's add this up. There are 129 million households in the United States. $4 trillion comes to $31,000 added to the debt of every household in America, at the average.

Now, this isn't theoretical. That is real money that will be repaid by every family through its future taxes, tax-driven price increases, lower wages, and inflation. That is the future for our families that the Democrats set in motion today while they promise to help us through these tough times with this sorry excuse for a budget resolution.

Mr. Speaker, it is not just our future that is being robbed. That money must be repaid in the future, but it must be borrowed in the present from the same capital market that would otherwise be available to loan to consumers seeking to make consumer purchases that drive two- thirds of our economic growth, or businesses seeking to recover, or to home buyers seeking to buy homes. That money will not be there for them because the government has borrowed it instead.

Now, remember, the government cannot put a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of that very same economy. If I take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul, it is true, Paul has an extra dollar to spend. That is what the Democrats are calling stimulus. But it is equally true that Peter now has one less dollar to spend in that same economy, which is why these stimulus schemes never work in the present and always diminish our future.

Mr. Speaker, our country is in desperate condition because of government-mandated lockdowns that have failed to slow the coronavirus while they have laid waste to our economy and the livelihoods of millions upon millions of Americans.

There is only one relief measure that will rescue our Nation from this dystopian nightmare: End the lockdowns.

History is screaming this warning at us. Countries that bankrupt themselves and destroy their economies simply aren't around very long. Let that not be the epitaph of the United States of America.

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