The Debt Ceiling
Floor Speech
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I follow my colleague who mentioned our need to prevent default. The need we have--the reason we are here and why there will be a vote in the House and the Senate tonight--has to do with the need of our Nation to prevent default, and also, of course, the need to cut spending. Our problem is that we spend too much. Americans all around the country are calling in to Members of the House and Senate and saying: Hey, let's get things under control and let's cut the spending.
My friends on the other side of the aisle, I am happy to see with the proposals being brought forth, are beginning to understand what my constituents in Wyoming have known from the very beginning: Americans are not taxed too little, Washington spends too much. But the President seems to be more concerned about the next election than about the next generation of Americans.
I was astonished last week when the President was addressing the Nation and he talked about what his bottom line was in this whole debate. He said:
The only bottom line I have is that we have to extend this debt ceiling through the next election, into 2013.
This was the President of the United States saying this:
The only bottom line I have is that we have to extend this debt ceiling through the next election, into 2013.
Since 1962, the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times. On average, the debt ceiling is usually for about 8 months. But now the folks on the other side, and the President, are calling for the largest debt ceiling increase in history and it is designed to last a lot longer than 8 months--almost for a year and a half, as the President wants it to go into 2013; and specifically, as he said, through the next election.
The President's Treasury Secretary has essentially said the same thing. He said:
We have to lift this threat of default from the economy for, you know, for the next 18 months. We have to take that threat off the table through the election.
Well, if the President and the Treasury Secretary get their way, they will be able to ignore the single biggest threat to our national security until after the next election. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said: The greatest threat to our national security is the debt.
The President could have gotten what he wanted last week--which is an increase in the debt ceiling beyond the election--when the House passed its cut, cap, and balance legislation. I was one of the original cosponsors of that in the Senate. I was in favor of it, supported it, and continue to support that. Instead, the President issued a veto threat. He told Democrats in the Senate to kill it. After all, they are still the majority party.
The Senate Democrats, I believe tonight, will have the power to save our country's finances once again. They can do that by passing the Boehner plan--pass it through this body and send it to the President's desk for him to sign. Instead, the majority leader has said no Democrat--not one--will support this plan. It has what the President wants. It raises the debt ceiling. It lets us, as a nation, avoid default. But it doesn't take us beyond the election.
It is interesting. It would seem support by the Democrats for this plan would clearly signal their desire to continue working to rein in Washington's wasteful spending, to get our fiscal house in order. But that doesn't seem to be the signal the President wants to send. The Boehner plan is the only plan currently on the table that can get through the House of Representatives and protect us from default.
Republicans have put forward plan after plan. Democrats and the White House have done nothing but criticize from the sidelines. The White House Press Secretary has even said:
Leadership is not proposing a plan for the sake of having it voted up or down and likely voted down.
That is what he said. He said the Democrats have even sent a letter asking for a long-term debt increase. But how can we have a long-term debt increase if they have no plan to get there? The White House Secretary claimed recently the President's plan is well-known. He said:
There is no plan that has been offered, certainly in the last several months, about which more detail is known.
I say: Where are the details? I want to know how I could get this well-known plan and share it with my constituents back home in Wyoming. How did the CBO score this plan that, according to the President's Press Secretary, is a plan about which so much detail is known? Where is it? What is the CBO score? Where is the text of it? How can we read it and bring it here and discuss or debate it?
These things don't exist--neither a CBO score nor a text--because the White House has continually refused to release a plan, even with pleas coming from Congress and from the media. I can understand why the President might be reluctant, since the time he last brought a budget to this body it was defeated 97 to 0. Not one Democrat voted in support of what the President had proposed--not one. No one supported the President's budget plan.
There is a Reid plan being proposed. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Reid plan cuts about $2.2 trillion from our budget over the next 10 years. But if you dig a little deeper, you find these so-called cuts are accounting gimmicks. The House Budget Committee looked at the Reid plan and their assessment was not very flattering. Let me quote from that assessment:
Reid's plan relies on the inaccurate assumption that surge-level spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is scheduled to continue over the next decade.
No one in America, and I would hope no one in the White House, believes that surge level spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is scheduled to continue over the next decade. But the plan endorsed by the President relies on such an inaccurate assumption. Why is he trying to mislead the American people? The Democrats are claiming to save money by cutting spending that was never, ever going to be spent in the first place. This is the strongest possible proof the White House is not realistically dealing with the situation and is not, in my opinion, serious about realistically and reliably cutting the debt.
In fact, even if you assume the Reid plan would work, it wouldn't cut spending fast enough to keep up with the spending the President is doing. The President wants to borrow at least $2.4 trillion to get him through the election--to get him into 2013. But the last draft of the floor plan we are going to be asked to discuss cuts $2.2 trillion over 10 years while raising the debt ceiling by $2.7 trillion. It would take over a decade to pay back what this President wants to borrow over the next year and a half. So we would still be borrowing at a much higher rate than we are cutting. That is not responsible leadership. Responsible leadership would be to recognize the solution to our country's financial woes, and that solution is to avoid default, while consistently cutting spending and balancing our books the way that families do. That solution would require us to keep working until we get it right. That is the theory at the heart of Speaker Boehner's plan.
The President talks about wanting a balanced approach. That means different things to different people. When the President is talking about wanting more taxes, I think what Americans want is actually a balanced budget. Speaker Boehner will bring us one step closer to that balance by forcing a vote on the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I look forward to voting for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
We live under a constitution in the State of Wyoming, and from the very beginning we have balanced our budget. As a result, we have excess money and scholarships available to all students to study at our universities and community colleges, because year after year we live within our means.
The President talked a bit about public opinion being important in this debate. Yet he is opposed to a balanced budget constitutional amendment. In a recent Sachs/Mason-Dixon poll, 65 percent of Americans say they support a balanced budget constitutional amendment. So where is the respect for that public opinion? The Boehner plan works because its authors have listened to the American people.
The White House refuses to seriously confront the problems facing our Nation, and Democrats are trying to shut down the only plan that can pass the House and save us from default. I am alarmed at their denial about how to solve these problems. The President must not veto America into default. It is time we pass a real plan that cuts spending and avoids default. We don't need to wait until midnight on August 1 or August 2. We can do it, and we should do it today.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
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