Waiving Requirement of Clause 6(a) of Rule XIII with Respect to Consideration of Certian Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TEXT

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman.

What's going on here, Madam Speaker, is extraordinarily dangerous and it's completely unnecessary. We are using the full faith and credit of the United States, the reputation this country has had since its founding that we are a country who pays our bills, we are using that as political leverage to get our way on budget and tax issues. That's wrong. It's dangerous.

Ronald Reagan, no stranger to fierce tax and budget battles, would never allow the linkage to be made that would jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States. We're a bigger and better country than to threaten that we won't pay our bills. This is wrong. We should raise the debt ceiling cleanly because that is what Americans do. We pay our bills.

Second, the bill before us now is, as my friend from Kentucky said, making a bad bill worse. The process that Americans want is a balanced approach. Balance is revenues along with cuts. Democrats have to make concessions on cuts. We're prepared to do that. The President has led. But there have got to be revenues, particularly when we have got a Tax Code that is completely a mess.

What we've seen is that in the Biden discussions, Mr. Cantor walked out when there were revenues on the table. The Speaker walked out on the President when revenues were still on the table. And now this bill is attempting to impose a constitutional amendment and has no chance of passing; and it, in effect, is a white flag of surrender to a small group in the Republican caucus who won't pass the bill that was brought to us before.

We've got to work together. That means we've got to put everything on the table. We've got to maintain our credit rating by paying our bills, and we have to have a balanced approach to long-term fiscal stability that requires revenues as well as cuts.

BREAK IN TEXT

Source