Southern Border
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I came to the floor to talk about the border one more time, but I was intrigued by the rhetorical questions my friend from Illinois has asked the Speaker.
I have got a question for President Biden: When you say that you are not going to negotiate on the debt ceiling, does that mean that the Federal Government is going to continue to rack up more and more debt on top of the $30 trillion that we already owe, particularly during inflationary times when interest rates on that debt basically are eating up more and more of our discretionary budget?
To me, if the answer is yes, I am going to refuse to negotiate as we continue to rack up more and more debt, about two-thirds of which is on autopilot, as the Presiding Officer knows--it is mandatory spending. That is a supremely irresponsible position to take.
President Biden, when he was in the Senate, was known as a dealmaker, and as I said yesterday, during 2011, he negotiated with Senator McConnell the Budget Control Act, which was probably the most recent response, sort of a mixed bag as it was, to try to control Federal spending. It was a noble effort, although it did not succeed.
So I know our friends on the Democratic side would like to sort of add to Mr. McCarthy's challenges. We have got 6 months, perhaps, between now and the time the extraordinary measures the Treasury Department is going to be using to make sure we don't actually breach that debt limit, but I would suggest that the time would be better used, rather than sort of to add gasoline to the fire, to actually try to solve the problem. And the problem--the debt limit--is real. It needs to be addressed by two people: Speaker McCarthy and the President of the United States. Because anything the Senate were to pass with 60 votes, which would be required, would certainly be dead on arrival in the House of Representatives.
And so as a practical matter, while we are going to be very interested and engaged in the debate and discussion, that is where the decision is going to have to be made sometime between now and the time extraordinary measures are exhausted, perhaps as early as June.
But in the meantime, for the President of the United States, who represents not just Democrats, who represents all Americans--all 330 million-plus of us--to say: I am not negotiating, even though he has got a track record as a Senator and as a Vice President of negotiating hard things like this, to me, is an irresponsible answer, and I hope he will reconsider.
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