Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, this vote stands as a defining moment in this crisis. Every rating agency has warned that an increase in the debt limit without a credible plan to balance the budget will do great damage to our Nation's credit. And worse, fiscal experts warn that without such a plan we risk a sovereign debt crisis within the next 2 years.

This measure gives the President everything he has asked for--the $2.4 trillion debt increase to pay for the bills that he and the Congress have recklessly racked up. But it also calls for a constitutionally enforceable workout plan to place our Nation back on the course to fiscal solvency, the centerpiece of which is a balanced budget amendment that has been proposed in one form or another since the birth of our Constitution and that 49 States have adopted.

Now, the gentleman from Maryland reminds us that only a few of those 49 States have both a balanced budget requirement and a two-thirds vote for tax increases. My home State of California happens to be one of them. California's deficits, as bad as they are, have been proportionally roughly half the size of those that the Federal Government has run up in the same period.

These budget protections work--maybe not perfectly, but they do work. And I might add that when California also had a real spending limit, as this measure calls for, California enjoyed an era of balanced budgets, prudent reserves, no tax increases, and steady economic growth.

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