Math Issues

Floor Speech

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.

I am happy to join him, and I am happy to join him in what I think he is saying, which is what I am saying. I am saying yes to fulfilling the President's agenda and mandate to secure the border, yes to the President's agenda and mandate to strengthen our military, and yes to the President's agenda and mandate to reduce the cost-of-living and inflationary pressures that printing--creating out of whole cloth, out of nothing--money floating around in the economy making every single good, service, and purchase more expensive.

I say yes to fixing all that. As one of the people who, like Chip, is often maligned and people characterize us as part of the no caucus, we are here saying yes. Yes, we want to fix it.

We don't want to increase the debt limit, but we understand that we have to pay the Nation's bills. So, all we are saying is that as long as there is a plan to stop increasing the ever-increasing debt, then we can be on board, and we have a plan.

We have offered a plan, and we can be onboard with that to not let Chuck Schumer decide what the cost of increasing the debt ceiling is going to be and not force the American people to keep on paying for things that this government shouldn't be buying and can't afford, that taxpayers can't afford.

We want to do this. We are here to say yes and here to save our country, but we are not signing up for fake savings and spending: If you raise the debt ceiling, then we will make sure we grow our way out of it by projecting 3.5 or 4 percent growth for the next 10 years.

Let's quit fooling ourselves. That is not going to happen. We absolutely want to say yes to making sure that the American people continue to enjoy the tax cuts that we gave them, that we got, that we secured, and that we fought for during the first Trump administration. We want to continue that. We want to secure that.

We wish we could have done that then, but since that time, the Biden administration has increased spending by $6 trillion. Somehow, something has to give.

Mr. Speaker, look at the recent bond market sales. Interest rates are going up. My good friend from Texas already mentioned the fact that every time it goes up 100 basis points, it increases the cost of the debt that we have to pay for. We pay for it here by creating money that doesn't exist digitally. We can't even print it fast enough.

We get nothing for it. All we are paying for is interest on the debt. We don't get any new government programs, and we don't get any new and better military programs. We don't get anything for it. It is just debt and interest payments that we are paying for things that we bought in the past.

All that we are saying is, look, if you have a better plan than we do, God bless it. Let's see it, and let's see the real cuts.

Like I said, I am with Chip. We want to pay for the border and our military, and we want to use things like EV mandates to pay for that stuff.

As far as student loan giveaways that aren't constitutional, which the Biden administration is offering, we are saying, look, let's repurpose that money for things that we do need to pay for, like the border and the military.

Let's have some reasonable cuts. Let's increase the debt ceiling as necessary, but only as necessary. We are not even asking for dollar for dollar on the debt ceiling.

If you have something better and more reasonable, I am standing here, so let's see it.

The clock is ticking. The President is inaugurated in a couple of days here. We are supposed to be after this, and here we stand.

As far as I know, with all due respect to everybody in the Chamber, the only plan I have seen is the one we have offered.

We stand ready to save our country in any way that we can, but the clock is ticking, Mr. Speaker.

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Mr. PERRY. Right now, while we are talking about it, there are criminal aliens convicted of murder in their country, some more than one time, walking around our country. They are going to stay here until we can deport them, and we are not offering the money to the incoming administration to do that work.

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman from Texas. We don't have much time to do this. While we talk and talk, we have also been given a mandate for transformational change.

To my good friend from Texas, transformational change doesn't include doing the same thing we always do around here, which is cram a bunch of garbage into one big bill, put one thing in that somebody has to have, that we have to have it, which is border security, and say: Suck down all that garbage for the one thing that you need and force the American people to do it, too.

We don't have to accept bad choices for the one thing that we need. We can have all good choices.

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