Establishing the Commission on Freedom of Information Act Processing Delays-Continued

Floor Speech

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Madam President, I feel compelled to come to the floor this evening to refute some of the arguments that have been made by some of my colleagues, points that are important for the American people to understand, points that, if not clarified, could lead to a misunderstanding, lead to resentment which is misplaced.

One of the points I have heard made this evening by one of my colleagues is that the debt limit issue has never been held hostage quite like it has now. I am not quite sure what was meant by this, but I do want to clarify this point.

If someone had held this hostage before on any of the dozens and dozens of times the debt limit has been raised over the course of many years, maybe it would have been a good thing. Maybe it would be a good thing for us not to be dealing with right now a national debt that has almost reached $15 trillion.

Maybe we should consider the fact that those who are being held hostage are those who will one day have to repay this debt, considering that some of those people are not yet here because they have yet to be born, and in some instances, their parents have yet to meet. We have to ask the question whether they are being held hostage themselves--held hostage to a government that always demands more money so it can exercise more power over us. And as it acquires more power, exercises more of that over us--thus restricting our liberty--it demands more money. As it acquires more money, it exercises more power, and the process perpetuates itself. This is how we get to the point where we are almost $15 trillion in debt. This is how we get to the point where the American people are being held hostage. So if this process has not been held up in the past, then shame on those who could have held it up but did not.

It is incumbent upon us who serve here and now to represent those who are sometimes underrepresented to represent those most vulnerable members of society who are not yet old enough to vote or not yet born. This is a multigenerational problem. It is a multigenerational obligation we are taking upon our entire country in connection with this debate.

So if my colleague who made this point just about half an hour ago meant that we should never have vigorous, aggressive debate and discussion over whether it is a good idea to take on $2.5 trillion in new debt in one fell swoop, perhaps we should revisit that assumption; perhaps we ought to second-guess ourselves just a little bit more than we have in recent decades lest we hold hostage an entire generation.

Another point that was made by that same colleague is that Republicans have put forward plans to challenge, to undermine, to bring about immediate cuts to Social Security and Medicare. This simply is not true. Quite to the contrary. The Cut, Cap, and Balance Act--of which I was the lead sponsor in the Senate before it was introduced in the House by my friend Jason Chaffetz, where it was later passed--Cut, Cap, and Balance Act actually protected Social Security and Medicare. It bolstered, it strengthened those programs. So it is utterly false and, I believe, disingenuous for anyone to argue that proposal--or any other that I am aware of, for that matter--would bring about cuts to Social Security and Medicare. This is not the point of this legislation. Quite to the contrary. The point of this legislation is to protect what we need to do through the U.S. Government.

Whether you are someone who would describe himself as a conservative and perhaps most concerned about national defense or whether you are perhaps more liberal and you are most concerned about protecting our entitlement programs, you ought to agree with the principles underlying the cut, cap, and balance approach, with the fact that we need a balanced budget amendment, because if we do not put these measures in place now, if we do not agree now that we need to restrict our borrowing authority, every one of those programs will be jeopardized as we reach the mathematical, the economic borrowing capacity of the U.S. Government.

The more we borrow, the more we run into the risk that those who lend us money, those who buy our U.S. Treasurys, will one day be unwilling to lend us more money, at least not without additional interest payments. We could very quickly go from spending about $250 billion a year in interest, as we now are, to spending something much closer to $1 trillion a year in interest based on just a few interest rate points. As that goes up, our ability to fund everything goes down.

In closing, it is important to point out that what is being requested here is the largest debt limit increase in American history--about $2.5 trillion. Unprecedented. The idea here is to give the U.S. Congress enough borrowing power to take us almost 2 years down the road. Two years, by the way, is roughly the amount of time that has elapsed since the Democrats in the Senate even introduced a budget.

One has to ask, why extend the debt limit for such a long period of time? The President gave us the answer the other day. He wants to insulate himself from the political process. He wants to make it not a political issue. Political issues are themselves things the voters are concerned about--as well they should be--because voters pay taxes, voters are affected by decisions we make. We need to have voters connected, not disconnected from this process.

We need to act now, but we need to act responsibly. The only way to do that is to raise the debt limit only after we pass the balanced budget amendment.

Thank you, Madam President.

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