We Are Trillion in Debt

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I will take the time to talk about the biggest threat to our Nation, our ability to thrive as a nation and an economy.

It is not really being addressed, even with the Herculean efforts of the DOGE and everybody else talking about what cuts we are going to make to the budget, which is around $7 trillion right now. We need to have a realistic conversation.

We are $35 trillion in debt. We bring in less than $5 trillion per year to pay those debts and to pay for the entire budget. If we didn't have a budget, if we spent nothing on the United States, if we spent nothing for the military, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or anything in our budget, it would take us over 7 years to pay off our debt. That doesn't count the trillion dollars of interest we are paying right now per year.

Let's have a realistic conversation. This problem is bipartisan. The real divergence of the debt-to-GDP ratio started about 2004, so about 20 years ago. It happened when we had a Republican President, and it has continued regardless of who was in control of the Presidency--or the House or the Senate, for that matter.

If we talk about the future, 75 percent of the budget is nondiscretionary. Some people call it mandatory, but we are Congress. There is nothing mandatory about spending. If we don't address these issues, we are in trouble as a nation. If we are out of balance and our debt-to-GDP ratio becomes too extreme, our currency will fail, and we will no longer hold the position we have in the world as an economic powerhouse.

If you think that I am threatening Social Security, not at all. As a matter of fact, it is just the opposite. I want to secure it because, quite frankly, if we don't do something about Social Security, it will be insolvent in less than 10 years. It will take an automatic 21 percent cut without a vote.

We have no control over that, or we can, as Congress, say no we won't just print a whole bunch more money and saddle our children and grandchildren with that burden in the future and increase our debt ratio, again threatening our currency.

If you think I am here to threaten Medicare, you are greatly mistaken. If we do nothing, within about a decade, it will be cut automatically by 11 percent, or we will have to make the emergency standard to print more money and, again, saddle our future generations with debt they cannot pay, debt that will saddle our economy, saddle our ability to function as a government, debt that will disrupt everything we know in America to be good: our abilities, our opportunities, all the things that make us thrive as a nation.

As Coolidge famously said: The business of America is business. Business cannot thrive if we don't have American currency as the standard of the world.

Therefore, I want us to have those serious conversations. I want us not to have those automatic cuts. I want to make sure that we do what we can to cut as much of the deficit spending as possible.

Remember, a 30 percent deficit per year cannot be conquered just by one budget, but we have about 2 years to take this opportunity because, quite frankly, so many times I keep hearing my peers in this Congress talk about the things we need to give away. That comes at a cost, a cost to all Americans, and it doesn't matter if you are Republican or Democrat.

We have to have real reform in not just our discretionary budget, which is only 25 percent of what we discuss, but we have to have an entire budgetary process that is bipartisan so we can have a solution for all Americans going forward.

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