Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, most Americans have a credit score. We don't know much about it until we start to borrow money. Then you find out what your score is, and that will determine whether you are going to get a loan and, if you get one, how much interest you will pay for it.

Several years ago, I got a phone call from a bill collection agency to my home in Springfield, saying: Durbin, we finally caught up with you; I don't know how you thought you could get away from us, but the charges that you have run up here at Home Depot in Denver, CO, haven't been paid for months. I said I had never been to the Home Depot in Denver, CO.

Well, I was a victim of identity theft. Somebody got enough information about me to apply for an account there and run up some charges. They said: Prove it. So I sent them some information and they came back and said: We are satisfied you weren't the person who ran up the charges, and you better check with your credit agencies to see what your credit score is now because everybody has been reporting this default on payment on the Home Depot in Denver, CO. I checked and, sure enough, my credit scores, which I never pay any attention to because I don't borrow a lot of money, were terrible. I went through about 3 months of reconstructing what happened and clearing my record, and at the end they said everything is fine. It can be done.

Why do I bring up this example? The credit score of the United States is now in question. On August 2, the Secretary of the Treasury tells us that if we don't extend the debt ceiling of the United States, we are going to be in a terrible financial situation.

What is the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling is America's mortgage--the amount of money we borrow as a government, as a nation, to sustain ourselves. We borrow a lot of money--40 cents for every $1 we spend, whether it is on a missile or a food stamp. The creditors--our creditors around the world--of course, get paid interest for loaning us money to cover our debt. The level of interest they are paid reflects their confidence that we will ultimately make payments and be good for the debt.

Right now, you can pick up the newspaper and read what is going on in Greece. The Popoulias government barely survived this week because they have had to initiate austerity measures, cutbacks in spending that aren't politically popular. If they didn't, they were going to watch the Greek credit rating fall further and the cost of borrowing money go up even higher.

So when the time comes on August 2, our deadline on our basic debt ceiling, our creditors around the world will look and see what happens. What happens, without fail, in the history of the United States, is we do the right thing and extend the debt ceiling. They say: Fine, so the full faith and credit of the United States can be relied on confidently. They can say they made another payment as they said they would, and we can go forward with our business.

Now there is a hue and cry, primarily from the other party, that we should not pay any attention to this debt ceiling. We should ignore it. Many of them have made arguments which, frankly, are stunning.

Just to give you a couple of examples, a colleague from the State of Pennsylvania, Senator Pat Toomey, said today that ``failure to raise the debt limit upon the deadline submitted by the Treasury Secretary does not equate to a default on our debt at all.''

I will remind him what Ronald Reagan said:

The full consequences of a default--or even the serious prospect of default--by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. ..... The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result.

Senator DeMint of South Carolina, a Republican, said:

Republicans must do everything they can to block an increase in the debt limit.

Here is what the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said:

Failing to raise the debt ceiling in a timely way will be self-defeating if the objective is to chart a course for the better fiscal situation for our Nation.

Congressman Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Republican Budget Committee, said that holders of U.S. Government debt would be willing to miss payments ``for a day or two or three or four.''

Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, said this:

Even a very short-term or limited default would have catastrophic economic consequences that would last for decades.

Mr. President, I am not sure you follow the stock market, but if you did, today you know it is off. It is off because news about employment is not encouraging. Too many Americans are out of work. So there is a question mark about this economy and where it is headed. We are doing our best to turn it around, and I think we have done some good, but we need to do more. We can talk more about that.

If we, for some reason, do not extend the debt limit of the United States, the credit rating of the United States would go down in the eyes of people who loan us money. What would happen next? As predictable as I stand here, interest rates would go up. People loaning money to the United States would say: If they are not going to extend the debt ceiling when they are supposed to, then we want to cover our bets and have a higher interest rate. What happens when the interest rate paid by the United States of America on its debt goes up? All interest rates go up. Interest rates would go up on people buying homes and cars and on businesses that want to expand or buy more inventory.

Can you think of a worse thing at this moment in our economic history? Where the Federal Reserve has announced this week that they are going to try to keep interest rates down so we can get out of this recession, Congress, if it fails to meet its responsibility on the debt ceiling, would end up raising interest rates--exactly the opposite of what the Federal Reserve says we need to get the economy back on its feet and get America back to work.

This is the introduction to a point I wish to make that has a lot to do with a speech made on the floor today. Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, came to the floor this morning to explain he has decided the Republicans will walk away from the budget negotiations with Vice President Biden. Congressman Cantor, a leader in the House of Representatives, and today Senator Kyl, one of our leaders in the Senate, have said that after weeks of sitting in the room with the Vice President trying to work out some kind of agreement on the budget deficit, they were walking out, and they did. The two Republican leaders in the room walked away from it.

Senator McConnell said this this morning in explaining it:

We're not in the majority. We can't sign anything into law. That's the President's job. That's his job. He has acted as if it is not his problem. This is his problem to solve.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the House majority leader announced soon after that he will no longer participate in the bipartisan negotiations.

Congressman Cantor said:

It is up to the President to come in and talk to the Speaker. We've reached the end of this phase.

How does this break down? How does the Republican walkout on budget negotiations and the extension of the debt ceiling come together? We can't extend the debt ceiling without the support of the House Republican majority and without the support of Republicans in the Senate. They have said they will not vote for it unless we have an agreement on the budget.

Well, the clock is ticking. At this point, we know August 2 is looming, and we know if we fail to extend the debt ceiling, it will be the worst thing we can do for the American economy at this moment in time. If there were ever a time when both political parties ought to stop making some of these speeches and come together and work it out, this is it. What it means is that both sides--our side, the Democrats, and their side, the Republicans--have to come together and put everything on the table. It means that some of the things we hold dearest, such as Medicare and Social Security and entitlement programs, we need to talk about their future in honest terms. It means that the Republican side has to come forward and accept the reality that we will need some new revenue to deal with our budget deficit situation. That is the reality.

I only know this a little better than some because I spent the last year and a half working on it--on the President's deficit commission and with a group of four or five other Senators from both parties trying to come up with some kind of agreement. That is where we are today.

This breakdown of the discussions on the Biden budget negotiations, because of the walkout of Congressman Cantor and Senator Kyl, is not promising. Next week, the Senate will be back in session, the House will not. It is one of their recess weeks. The following week, after the Fourth of July, we are out of session, and the House is back in. So for 2 weeks now, we are not going to have both Houses in Washington. That will make it more difficult to reach an agreement, but we have to do it.

As bad as things are with this economy, if we send a signal that we are unable to responsibly lead on a bipartisan basis, I am afraid we are going to have very negative consequences. I implore the Republican leaders to reconsider their position. Walking away from their congressional responsibility to negotiate for a good budget agreement and to extend the debt ceiling is the height of economic irresponsibility. It would create a disaster that would touch innocent people across the United States and around the world. What we need to do--and it is so hard in this town--is to try to put this partisanship aside. At one point early in the session, the Republican leader said the most important thing we can achieve during the course of this session--I will quote him:

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.

That was a quote Senator McConnell made several months ago. We are all partisan to some extent, but that isn't the most important thing Senator McConnell or Senator Durbin can achieve. The most important thing to do is to deal with our debt responsibly and get the economy moving forward in a bipartisan way. Running up filibusters on bill after bill on the floor of the Senate may give somebody a quick temporary victory, but it doesn't solve the problems we face. We need to work together to create jobs and pass legislation, get a budget agreement together, and extend the debt ceiling.

I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to reconsider this walkout from the budget negotiation. We need to work in good faith to solve the problems of this country. After all, that is why we were elected.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source