Debt Ceiling Crisis

Floor Speech

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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, the Speaker has sent Congress home with default looming. Only Congress can raise the debt ceiling; and if we don't, we fail.

However, the Republicans are trying to get their radical cuts, holding our economy hostage. These are cuts they can't get on the merits, like eliminating farm disaster relief, cuts to veterans' benefits, laying off firefighters and air traffic controllers, interrupting cancer research, stopping payments to nursing homes.

Instead, they threaten default, which could cause a worldwide economic recession, cuts to regular Americans, millions of jobs lost.

We would lose our preeminent spot in the world economy. China and Russia would win.

Forty percent of all U.S. accumulated debt since 1789 happened during the Trump years.

Yes, we can get our fiscal house in order, but not the way these radicals have proposed. We need to do our job and end this self-imposed threat of chaos.

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