Budget Decides Among Priorities
Floor Speech
Budget Decides Among Priorities
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Mr. HENSARLING. I thank the gentleman for yielding. As I listened closely to my friends on the other side of the aisle, there's a couple of themes that continue to reoccur. One theme is: It's not our fault. This mess was inherited. We sympathize with President Obama. He inherited a mess.
Well, Madam Chairman, he did inherit a mess--but he inherited a mess from a Democratic-controlled Congress.
In 2007 the deficit stood at $161 billion. Now, this year, for 2009, it's going to be $1.8 trillion--a tenfold increase under the Democratic watch in just 2 years. They inherited their own mess.
In December of 2006, unemployment stood at 4.4 percent. Now, 8.1 percent. Up 84 percent. On January 3, 2007, the Dow stood at 12,400. Most recently, it is now down 40 percent. The economic calamity happened on their watch.
Now, Madam Chair, I don't blame them for everything, but I don't understand how they accept responsibility for nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Madam Chair, what is so ironic, and it would be laughable if it wasn't so sad, is we have had Democratic leaders come to the floor on previous budgets to decry the size of the national debt, to decry the size of the deficit.
When the deficit was less than $400 billion, and falling--still too great a number--the majority leader of the House, then minority leader, Mr. Hoyer, the gentleman from Maryland, said this was equivalent to fiscal child abuse. Fiscal child abuse. And now we have a deficit of four and five times that--and stone-cold silence from the other side.
Madam Chair, reckless doesn't do justice to this budget. This is a radical budget. Radical. Never in the history of America have so few voted so fast to put so many in debt. More debt will be run up on this Democratic budget--this radical budget--in 10 years than has been run up in the entire history of our Republic. A sea of red ink for generations to come.
Now, part of that generation to come is my 7-year-old daughter and my 5-year-old son. I know the people on the other side of the aisle, they love their children, they love their grandchildren. But it is clear they don't love my children; because if they did, this radical budget would not be coming to the floor to put this level of debt which will bankrupt our Nation and crush the next generation, it wouldn't be on the floor. It would not be on the floor.
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