Let's Quit Running Up The Deficit
Floor Speech
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate my friend Ms. Kaptur's comments and appreciate her insights. It's always very valuable.
And she believes, as I do, that we're making a big mistake by running up the deficit like crazy. Well, some say, well, it was going on back under the Bush administration. Yes, it was, and it wasn't right then, and it's even worse now that it's being multiplied many times. Every week, we're running up more of a deficit. It's got to stop.
China continues to buy our debt. We just sent the Secretary of the Treasury over to China to encourage them to keep buying America. Buy our debt because we cannot control ourselves. Can you imagine a parent going into a bank and saying, I need a loan because I can't control my spending, but you see my little children over there, I've even got some grandchildren, I am going to pledge to you that some day--I can't pay it back, but some day they will? Well, there would be a move to take the children away from somebody that irresponsible.
And yet we sent our Secretary of State over to beg China to keep buying our debt because we couldn't control our spending. We send our Secretary of the Treasury over there to tell them to keep buying our debt because we can't control our spending.
We've done things in the last weeks, like $25 million we voted for in this Chamber to buy land in foreign countries for rare dogs and cats. China has some. We'll borrow that money from China to buy land from China, so that they can have rare dogs and cats, if they're not eaten by people that are starving. And we are paying for that with interest while we run up our debt even higher. It makes no sense at all.
You know, I went back and did some looking. I remember pretty good--having been a history major, I've loved to follow things as they occur because we're told those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it, which as a corollary to that, those who do learn from history will find new ways to screw up, but that's another story. Right now, we're not learning from history.
But you can look back at the Soviet Union, and we were reminded by that by bipartisan speeches just yesterday as Ronald Reagan's statue was unveiled. It's a great statue, a great tribute to a great President. But as he pushed the SDI, the missile defense system, and the Soviets tried to keep up, they were spending too much money. They were running up too much debt, and people were nervous about loaning the Soviet Union more debt.
Do you remember as Eastern Europe, the Baltic States started rebelling, what happened? Russia had seen that happen before. The Soviet Union would roll in with tanks. They could put it down. But for some reason, they didn't roll in with tanks and suppress it like they had in years past.
Well, it appears there's information indicating that they were needing us to loan them $100 billion, which 20 or so years ago was real money, $100 billion to keep them afloat. And we gave them word, We got your country, but if you roll in with tanks, we're not going to be able to loan you that money. We owned their future, so we could dictate what they could or couldn't do. Does it ring any bells?
If we keep selling our debt as we can't control it, we can't control the spending--we vote in here tonight to spend millions and millions of dollars to pay people for not working, while they're called employees, when they are millions and millions of Americans who are champing at the bit to go back to work and to get paid to actually work. And this is what we're passing?
You know, some believe here in this body that running up the debt is what's going to save the country, and I've been told, look, we don't think we're wrong, but if we were wrong, we can always come back and fix it. The Soviets couldn't because at some point when you no longer own your future, you don't have a future.
We owe the people we represent. We owe our own children better than that. Let's quit destroying this Nation's future. Let's quit running up the deficit. I yield back.
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