Increasing Statutory Limit on the Public Debt
Floor Speech
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank my colleague for yielding.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a political stunt. I just heard my friend from Texas on the Republican side say Republicans wanted to tear up the credit card. It was just a few weeks ago when the Republican budget passed this House. All but four Republicans voted for it. Let me show you what that did to our credit card.
Here it is. We are at about $14 trillion in debt. The budget all but four Republicans voted for takes us up toward $23 trillion, $24 trillion in debt. An $8 trillion increase in the national debt by passing the Republican budget, so that clearly this isn't about tearing up the credit card.
What is this about? This is about threatening to default on the full faith and credit of the United States unless we put into place the Republican budget, including their plan to end the Medicare guarantee and to slash Medicare benefits. That's what this is all about. They've said, Whoa, we're going to hold this whole thing up until we get our way.
Let me tell you what their way would do to seniors. And we've seen it before on the floor of the House. What it means is that seniors will be paying thousands and thousands of dollars more for Medicare or getting their benefits slashed beginning in 2012. And it gets worse and worse and worse, so that by the year 2030 you're talking about seniors having to pay $12,000 more for their Medicare because the support they're getting is going down, while the costs in the private market, which the Republican plan forces them to go into, go up and up and up. So while the costs they face go up and up and up, the help they get under Medicare goes down, down, down, and they're left holding the bill.
What's been interesting in the last couple weeks in connection with this debt ceiling debate is to hear these Republican proposals that say, Hey, don't worry about it. You know what? We'll pay China. We'll pay our overseas foreign creditors on our bonds. We'll take care of them. But guess what? We don't have to pay our full faith and credit on our obligations to America's seniors. We don't have to pay Medicare. We don't have to pay Social Security. Pay off the bond holders. Take care of them. But let's follow through on this plan to decimate Medicare. And at the end of the day, that's what this is all about.
Because we all understand that we've got to get the deficit under control. We're having negotiations with the Vice President to come up with a responsible,
balanced plan. But you're trying to force the Republican plan, which Newt Gingrich just the other day acknowledges was a radical right-wing piece of social engineering, until of course he was bludgeoned by the right wing to withdraw his statement. He was calling the shots as they were. He was saying, You know what? This isn't such a good idea.
And what's really outrageous about this charade is you are now threatening the entire U.S. economy in order to get your way on a radical right-wing Medicare plan that's bad for America's seniors.
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