Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chairman, this Nation is on a collision course with a sovereign debt crisis, the magnitude of which we have never experienced. This is not some moonless night on the Atlantic. We are spending full speed ahead toward that iceberg of debt in the full light of day, and we can all see that plainly.

The House budget turns the ship just barely enough to avoid hitting that same hazard which has already wrecked Greece. The RSC budget turns us promptly and safely. It builds on the House Budget Committee's work, but within the budget passed by the House last year as adjusted by the sequester.

I've heard the descriptions--it's draconian, it's radical, it's extreme. It returns us to the spending levels before the Obama-Pelosi spending binge began in 2008. That might sound extreme to my friends across the aisle, but I assure them many families have been working within flat or even diminished family budgets since then and they have every right to expect that their government, over the next 5 years, does what they have already been doing over the past 5--work hard, waste not, and live within your means. If we were to do so, this Nation could see a balanced budget again within 5 years and redeem its rightful place as the respected financial leader of the world.

We know the challenge. We see the American Dream at risk. And we know that we have but a fleeting moment in history to avoid the hardest times our Nation has ever known.

We still have a chance to place our retirement systems on a sound financial footing, arrest the debilitating spiral of debt that threatens the very survival of our Nation, and return our economy to the prosperity it has known when it has enjoyed what Jefferson called a ``wise and frugal government.''

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