Debt Limit
Floor Speech
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Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Perlmutter and Mr. Garamendi, for holding this.
As John Adams, our second President once famously said, Facts are stubborn things. This chart here, which is a chart which is using the Congressional Budget Office facts and figures in terms of what happened to this country since 2002, which as my friend indicated, was the last time we had a balanced budget in this country. This chart shows that we have accumulated about $7.5 trillion in debt. And $5 trillion of that was due to the policies of the last administration, starting with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, two wars which, again, lots of debate about whether it was in our national interest. In any case, what is not debatable is that we never paid a penny for either one of those conflicts.
The Bush tax cuts, $1.8 trillion; nondefense discretionary spending, $608 billion. TARP, the Wall Street bailout, which a lot of people forget occurred under the last administration; a Medicare drug benefit which was passed in 2005 and was never paid for. Not a nickle of that benefit was ever paid for with either offsetting revenue or other spending reductions.
And the 2008 stimulus bill which the Bush administration had presented. A lot of people don't remember the check that people got sent during that time. Again, none of those expenditures were paid for. Many of those expenditures, such as the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, are still recurring expenses, which are still accumulating bills and debts which this country is obligated for.
When the Obama administration took office in January of 2009, they faced an economy that was in free fall. There were 800,000 jobs lost in January of 2009. Obviously, a crisis that needed to be addressed in terms of counter-recessionary policies such as extending unemployment benefits and some stimulus, which is to get work out there in terms of road and bridge construction projects, sewer treatment facilities. I'm cutting a ribbon on Monday morning in my district for a plant which provided a lot of work for people. Again, nonrecurring expenses to deal with the emergency that we faced as a Nation.
When you look at, again, the comparative cost of the policies and the Bush administration and the Obama administration and you think about the fact that we have these bills and expenses which have been accumulated by our Nation since 2002, and yet we had a default debate here an hour and a half ago, where the Speaker, who, by the way, voted for every single one of those Bush policies from 2002 up until President Bush left office, stood on this floor, blamed the debt crisis that we face in our Nation just on one administration, which, again, CBO clearly documents was far less culpable in terms of what the numbers show.
Again, it just shows how really corrosive the partisan debate that's occurred under the 112th Congress since this new majority took office, completing omitting the fact that eight times during the Bush administration they voted to raise the debt ceiling to avoid default. Under Ronald Reagan, 18 times. We've had clean debt limit increases. Yet this administration, the Obama administration, for the first time in American history is being held to a different standard in terms of trying to deal with the debts and obligations of this country.
The rating agencies have spoken loud and clear in terms of the bill that was just voted on here an hour and a half ago. A short-term extension of 6 months is thumbs down from the rating agencies because they see that as just an invitation this coming December to go through the same political and economic instability that we saw this past week. And that's not what our economy needs today.
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Mr. COURTNEY. Sure. Tonight, I know and every one of us here knows there are a lot of older Americans who are watching this debate extremely closely who are worried about their Social Security checks at the beginning of next month, and they're worried about whether their Medicare is going to be there.
What I would just say--and I know all of us agree--is we all understand that it is our solemn duty to protect a program that just celebrated its 45th anniversary, Medicare, which has made a difference to every single one of us in terms of our parents and our grandparents. We understand that we are not going to allow this political bullying effort, using the tool of the default as a device, to butcher the Medicare program. That is a solemn pledge which I know every single one of us believes in, and we are going to fight until this episode is over in order to make sure that we protect the basic components of retirement security for seniors in America, which is Social Security and Medicare.
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