Increasing The Statutory Limit On The Public Debt

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank my colleague.

We're all entitled to our own opinions but not to our own facts, and it is a fact that the day President Obama put his hand on the Bible to be sworn in as President of the United States, he inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit, a record deficit in this country.

This is an opportunity for all of us to stop just talking about the deficit and debts and actually do something about it. For the first time since 2002, Congress will bring, as a matter of law, the commonsense proposition that the Federal Government should pay for what it buys. And the history of success on this is clear. When the Congress lived under the PAYGO rules in the 1990s, we did turn deficits into record surpluses. After PAYGO was abandoned, deficits skyrocketed, our national debt clearly doubled.

Much has been made by the other side of the aisle about the deficit in the first year of the Obama administration. The Congressional Budget Office analysis is pretty clear that the contributors to that were two wars, unpaid for; a record mandatory prescription drug bill, unpaid for; and, of course, two tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans, all on our national credit card, all running us deeper into the red.

This legislation says enough is enough, and it says that virtually any new policy that reduces revenue or increases mandatory spending will have to be offset elsewhere in the budget. That is just common sense to every American family. And it says that if for some reason we don't abide by that discipline, you're going to have an across-the-board enforcement mechanism that will sequester the funds.

It's time to do what every family has to do and pay as we go.

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