The Mysterious Debt Ceiling

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, we are going to talk tonight about this debt ceiling, this mysterious debt ceiling that we hear so much about. I am joined by two of my colleagues who have strong ideas about this, as well.

I want to just relate something to America, so you can hear this.

We had a meeting several weeks back talking about the debt ceiling. I don't think anybody had ever asked this question, and I started asking it at every meeting. I said: How much does the Biden administration want to raise the debt?

We stand at $34.1 trillion now. We spend $6.1 trillion a year, but we raise $4.9 trillion. Every month, we fall short by about $100 billion.

I said: How much do they want?

Well, when I first started asking the question, everybody says: I don't know. We don't know.

Now, it is $4 trillion. That is what I am hearing, $4 trillion. Tonight, we heard $3.5 trillion. In any event, it is $3.5 trillion to $4 trillion.

I asked the next question. I said: Look, I really want to know what happens if we don't lift the debt ceiling. I don't know. These guys might have been there.

The fellow was nonplussed. This former deputy at the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, an economist, stood there for probably 2 minutes. Nobody had ever asked him that question before. He says: Nothing. Nothing will happen.

I said: How can that be? I am hearing that it is collapse city. Tell me, how can that be?

He said: All the bills go to OMB. They get forwarded on to the Fed, and they all get paid as they come due. They just keep paying them.

I am here to tell you that the debt ceiling is mysterious. It is a black box. It is the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. And it is time for us to face the facts.

If they are going to try to leverage us, then we have to do something to make this more responsible, this spending more responsible, and get our budget back together.

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana. He mentioned unauthorized programs that we are continuing to fund. There are more than 1,200 Federal programs that are unauthorized right now. $500 billion. That is what we spend every year for those 1,200 unauthorized programs. Congress hasn't authorized them. They have expired. We haven't reauthorized, but we are still spending $500 billion a year. People wonder what is crazy about D.C. Well, let me give you one more datapoint.

That same meeting that we were talking about, the gentleman was getting ready to leave, this economist, and then we had a former head of OMB there with us. I asked them: Can you tell me how many agencies there are in the Federal Government?

The answer was ``no.''

I said: What?

He said: Nobody knows. That is hard to believe. I couldn't believe it. I did some more digging. Nobody can tell me. Nobody can tell me how many Federal agencies there are. We can tell you how much we are spending. We are spending over $100 billion every month more than we bring in.

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Mr. BIGGS. I thank the gentleman for his remarks.

May I inquire of the Speaker how much time I have remaining?

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, HFC put in a proposal just recently. I think this is really important. The idea is to shrink Washington and grow the country again. We proposed it in early March.

The first thing is we cancel the student loan forgiveness plan which totals $609 billion. We cut the wasteful, woke, weaponized spending programs and get the Nation back on track. We eliminate Green New Deal tax credits and subsidies.

I recently scored it at 350. I am told now it is $400 billion. Between those two items alone, Mr. Speaker, we are moving towards $1 trillion.

We cut the IRS expansion. We already passed that out of the House. That is $80 billion. We take into account the 500 targeted reductions that we have made. Maybe we don't do all of them. Maybe we just do half of them. Maybe we do 50, 70, $85 billion worth.

Then I will tell you something else, Mr. Speaker, that you have to do. You take back the COVID money that we sent out. There is about $80 billion of that that hasn't been spent. Bring that back.

All of that is in the first year, and I haven't even talked about reductions. That is the rescissions.

Then we start reducing, and we can make it targeted. We can do the discretionary.

Guess what?

We start getting to a place where we are not in the hole $100 billion per month.

How about doing that for a year?

How about doing that for a year?

I am told that a lot of these folks don't really want to do that, and I find that hard to believe.

So in fiscal year 2024 alone, if we add to what I just outlined, what we proposed, what we cosponsored, those 500 bills, we just want you to look at them for mercy's sake.

If we took all of them, then we would be a little over $100 billion in savings in fiscal year 2024 alone.

There are ways out of this, aren't there?

But it is going to take some courage and some discipline. Quite frankly, part of the reason that I wanted to do this tonight is I am hearing all the time that we don't know where you guys are.

I say: How can you not know where I am?

I have been so explicit, and I am transparent. Everybody knows where Biggs is because Biggs doesn't keep his mouth shut.

This is where we need to be. We need to be telling the truth. The American people need to understand clearly what is about to happen to them. What is about to happen to them is they are going to raise that debt ceiling. Somebody is going to raise the debt ceiling.

The idea that they are talking about now--just so people know--is anywhere from 1.5 to $4 trillion. That is what they are talking about.

They are going to trade it for 10 years with maybe $3.5 to $4 trillion in reductions in savings, net savings--not even net savings, I'm sorry to say that, gross savings.

So over here on that ledger, Mr. Speaker, you have to get $4 trillion over 10 years. But if you raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 to $4 trillion over that year, 18 to 24 months, now extend that out for the rest of that 10-year cycle.

We are not raising the national debt by $24 trillion. We are raising it by $19 trillion.

So we are still hitting 50-plus trillion dollars because we didn't have the courage to make the reductions and the hard choices this year.

My favorite thing to hear around here is that we are going to have a 10-year plan to balance the budget. Mr. Speaker, I could go back and show you from 15 years ago. They still relive that first year over and over again because it is like deja vu.

So this year they are telling everybody: We are going to do a 10-year plan. It is going to be great. We think we can get balanced in 10 years. We are going to have to make some tough decisions.

But next year they will come back and say: We have got a 10-year plan. You have to make some tough decisions.

Two years they will come back and say: We have a 10-year plan.

Do it now. Do it now.

People tell me: You are conflating the budget with the debt ceiling.

Do you know why, Mr. Speaker?

Because I can tell you that if we don't do it now in the debt ceiling, when that budget comes around, you are going to have an omnibus bill. You are going to have an omnibus bill. That is what is going to happen. That may not work, so you get a CR.

Part of the package that HFC put out is that if you end up with a mandatory CR, then you start reducing funding on that. So you never have a government shutdown, which is in some ways too bad, quite frankly.

Then we have also proposed adding the REINS Act. The REINS Act says that before a bureaucratic agency can impose rules on anything that will impact more than--it is $100 million--I think that is way too high. It should be like $10 million, but they are telling me it is $100 million--then we have to bring it back to Congress.

I think that is a great place to start.

Do you know why, Mr. Speaker?

We have delegated our authority to bureaucracy. So we have the bureaucracy out there, and they are making rules. That is the same thing as legislating. They are enforcing the rules. That is the executive branch power. They are adjudicating whether you have committed a violation of the rules and fining you.

In some cases most of the 40,000 crimes that are Federal in nature were created under the rulemaking process.

Mr. Speaker, I am just telling you: Our government is out of control, and our spending is out of control.

Guess what, Mr. Speaker?

If we went back to 2019 levels--which is what we have proposed--if you go back to 2019 levels which nobody would say: Oh, we had too little government in 2019. If you go back to those levels, Mr. Speaker, guess what?

You can pay it because we were spending about $5 trillion, and now we are bringing in about $5 trillion. So let's go back to the 2019 levels, for Pete's sake, and then let's do the rescissions to boot, and let's stop the seemingly endless cycle of a national debt increase.

If we do that, then we stop the imminent bankruptcy of this country, we stop the devaluation of our currency around the world, and we stop the inflationary pressures. Then once we do things like reduce some more taxes, reduce some more regulations, and get some better energy production, then we will, again, be the world's economic leader.

I am just here to tell you, Mr. Speaker, we have got a plan. We presented our plan. I don't think anybody should ever say that Mr. Good, Mr. Rosendale, Mr. Biggs, and the half dozen others or so, that they don't know where we are. I have never voted to raise the debt ceiling. I don't think that is what I was sent here to do, and I am finding it awfully hard to believe that there is any justification for raising it $2 to $4 trillion.

I encourage everyone to understand that we can put an end to this cycle of self-immolation.

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