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Promoting Physical Activity for Americans Act

Floor Speech

By: Ron Estes
By: Ron Estes
Date: Sept. 29, 2021
Location: Washington, DC

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Mr. ESTES. Madam Speaker, I rise today to oppose this disastrous attempt to suspend the debt ceiling.

For the past 9 months, the Democrat-led House has made spending trillions of dollars on Big Government socialist and Green New Deal programs their priority. They have done this while ignoring so many critical needs of our country, which has led to a crisis at our southern border, runaway inflation, rising crime, workforce shortages, and a disastrous retreat from Afghanistan.

For the most part, my colleagues on the left have simply ignored these crises, while Republicans have introduced commonsense legislation and pushed the administration to answer for these very real and concerning issues.

But today we are facing a crisis by their own creation that they cannot ignore: suspending the debt ceiling when we already have $28 trillion in debt. Some of my colleagues have even suggested that we should abandon the debt limit altogether, giving the Federal Government no safeguards to prevent ballooning debt and damaging the United States' credit rating.

Families, farmers, businesses, and even State and local governments have to live within their means and make responsible financial decisions to be successful, but the attitude in Washington continues to pass on massive debt to future generations in exchange for our current lifestyle.

But we aren't looking at this debt crisis in a vacuum. We could be voting on $5.5 trillion in more spending soon if Speaker Pelosi can pull together her caucus.

Suspending the debt ceiling while also proposing trillions in new spending is reckless. Every American, adult and child, already bears the burden of about $85,000 each. Raising the debt ceiling is about future spending. An unlimited debt ceiling until December of 2022 would result in a massive increase in spending by the Democrats.

The last debt ceiling increase covered all of the spending done during the Trump administration and for the first 7 months of the Biden administration. We can't just keep kicking the can down the road for future generations to figure out. We need to stop the reckless spending, taxing, and borrowing now. That is the best way to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.

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