Fictitious Debt Ceiling

Floor Speech

Mr. HIMES. Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my Republican colleague from North Carolina for that very powerful statement, and I am very glad that Congresswoman Woolsey was in the Chamber to hear that, Congresswoman Woolsey who has worked so hard to remind us of the terrible consequences of war.

I often sit here as we debate and seize from time to time at the statements of Republican colleagues, but that was profoundly moving, and I thank the gentleman from North Carolina.

I stand today, Madam Speaker, to talk on another issue that should unite our parties, and that is the fundamental question about whether or not the United States honors its commitments.

Today is July 12, exactly 3 weeks before August 2. August 2 is the date at which this government can no longer honor its commitments, at which time it will be forced to choose between paying those soldiers that we heard so movingly described and sending out Social Security checks, running a court system, paying Social Security and Medicare. Do we honor our commitments in the United States of America? I would think that both parties would say ``yes'' to that question. The Treasury Secretary, CEOs of American corporations and economist after economist have told us, Do not play around with the debt ceiling.

What is this debt ceiling, by the way, that is putting into peril the question of whether we honor our commitments? The debt ceiling is a pernicious fiction. It is a fiction that was put in place by this body decades ago to try to convince the American people that we could control our debts. And since then, it has never done that. It has been raised dozens of times as this body took the spending decisions and the tax cut decisions that required borrowing.

Under the Bush administration, the debt ceiling was raised seven times. Dozens and dozens of times, the debt ceiling has been raised. It is a fiction. It is a particularly pernicious set of smoke and mirrors that this institution uses to make people feel better while the debt rises, as it did under President Reagan, as it did under the first President Bush, as it did not under President Clinton, and as it did under President George W. Bush and President Obama.

So now the question is, do we honor the commitments made historically in this Chamber? We raise the debt ceiling not to spend more new money, to start new programs or to cut new taxes, but because we honor the commitments that were made in this Chamber to cut taxes in '01 and '03, to go to war twice in the last decade and to add an expensive new drug benefit in Medicare.

Look, these are all things that people supported and opposed, but we committed to do them as a body. And you cannot make those decisions, you cannot vote to lower taxes or to increase spending and then turn around and say, I'm not going to pay for that. That is the worst sort of hypocrisy.

I'm glad that my friend from Louisiana (Mr. Landry) talked about credit cards, but he got it a little bit wrong. The debt ceiling is sort of like a credit card, but what we're talking about right now, because we are talking about paying for past decisions and commitments, would be as if I went to the electronics store and I bought myself a big screen TV, I bought myself a new microwave, and I bought myself a new home security system, and then I get home and a month later I get the credit card bill and I say, uh, I don't know if I'm going to pay this credit card bill. I took the decisions. I made the commitments. And now the time has come to honor those commitments.

Do we act as stewards of one of the best assets that this country has, our full faith and credit, the belief that the United States honors its commitments? This is a critical asset, particularly now at a time of great economic uncertainty. Do we act as stewards of that full faith and credit? Or do we use the debt ceiling as a gun to the head to say that unless you do X, Y and Z, unless you cut 2 trillion or 3 trillion, we won't raise the debt ceiling, which is what we are hearing from the Republican side today? Do you use it? Do you hold it hostage, the full faith and credit of the United States? That is what we are seeing today.

Look, there is no question we need to address the deficit. We need to address the long-term sustainability of Medicare and Social Security in an equitable way. We should do that. And this President has basically put everything on the table, including making some of my colleagues on the Democratic side very uncomfortable with Social Security and Medicare. But he has put them on the table because there can be no sacred cows, unless you're John Boehner, or a Republican, and not everything is on the table because we won't put the immense amount of spending we do through the Tax Code for advantages for oil companies, for advantages for big agriculture and for all sorts of tax breaks for corporations and others. We won't even talk about that.

My friends, this comes down to the question of do we honor our commitments? The answer to that question must be yes.

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