Budget Control Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. I tell you, I would love for people to be able to come to Oklahoma City anytime they have the opportunity to do that.
But to be able to talk to the great folks in my district, I can tell you the one thing that comes up again and again is they are really frustrated and they are looking for things to really be able to change here in Washington. They see how broken our system is. They see the way that we interact. They are really legitimately frustrated, and I can tell you they have lost trust in what we're doing and how we're doing it.
We, quite frankly, as the Federal Government, are trying to do too many things, and we can't afford all of the things that we're doing.
So in some very simple way, this whole process has united the Nation to be able to look simply at $14.3 trillion in debt and to say, as a Nation, we have a problem. That is a good first step.
Now, the conversation that's been happening around Congress over the past several months now is now dealing with how do we resolve the problem and what is the core of the problem. Is the problem the debt ceiling vote? Is the problem tomorrow? Or is the problem $14 trillion in debt?
And I feel like sometimes we have been trying to either figure out how to get past tomorrow or how to get past solving this issue of $14.3 trillion in debt. That has created 7 months of debate and 7 months of conversation that I fear has made an unrealistic expectation of how much we can really do in one piece of legislation.
Quite frankly, no piece of legislation can solve $14.3 trillion in debt all in one moment. No piece of legislation can be a perfect solution. There is no perfect ideal piece of legislation that's going to solve it all. Are there major issues that I think that are in every piece of legislation? I'm sure there are in every one of them. But in this one, I would look at it and say it is not perfect, but it takes us down that first step to start getting out of this.
If there is a perception that we can solve it all in one piece, I think everyone has underestimated the size and the scope of what it really means to deal with this large of a debt and this large of a deficit. It is a single step on a very long journey.
Does it solve all of the problems? No. Does it cure cancer? No. Does it get us out of all of the wars? No. Does it locate Amelia Earhart's body? No. Does it find us the Ark of the Covenant? No.
It doesn't solve everything we would like to do with it, but it does begin to put a framework around the Federal Government for the next 10 years to set spending caps in place to say we're going to stop the growth of government. We've grown very quickly very fast. We've got to first stop that growth of government and put some boundaries around it. That's a good first step on that.
It puts a square focus on the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, which 80 percent of the American people say they want some version of the balanced budget amendment. Quite frankly, this creates a moment for Republicans and Democrats to be able to have an honest conversation about what should that text be for a balanced budget amendment? How can we work together? The Constitution is not owned by one party but is owned by the people of the United States of America, so that is both parties coming together to have a very frank conversation about if we're going to have a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, how do we get that done? What is the text of that? And how do we do what is best for our Nation?
But the key thing of this piece of legislation today is focused on not just getting us past tomorrow but starting us down a process, that single first step of starting us down a process that in the days ahead our children will not live in the shadow of this kind of debt, of this kind of deficit, and we as a Nation can get back to doing the things we love to do rather than worrying about what creditor we're going to pay and which one we're not.
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