Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2013
Floor Speech
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Mr. JORDAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I just want to respond to two arguments my friend from Maryland has made in his remarks and, frankly, made the last 2 days in this debate.
First, he says we need a balanced approach. Everyone understands when Democrats talk about a balanced approach, what they mean is raising taxes now and, oh, we promise--and you can count on this promise because it's coming from politicians--we promise we will cut spending later.
I would like to point out: If it's so important to raise taxes on the American people and on certain businesses, why in the world didn't the Democrats do this just 24 months ago when they controlled all of government? In fact, they had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate just 24 months ago. If it was so critical, why didn't you do it then? So this balanced approach is not going to fly.
The other argument they make is somehow our proposal that Mr. Garrett and his team put together, which I strongly support, that somehow it's going to hurt economic growth. Someone's got to explain to me how getting to balance in 5 years and then beginning to pay off a $16 trillion debt, a debt that is now bigger than our entire economy, bigger than our entire GDP, someone's got to explain to me how that will hurt economic growth. I actually think it will probably prevent a downgrade, unlike last summer. If we'd have adopted this budget last summer, my guess is we wouldn't have gotten a downgrade from S&P.
So I just want to commend the gentleman from New Jersey and his team for his hard work and make this final point.
One of the things that makes our country special is this simple phenomena: parents make sacrifices for their kids so that when they grow up they have life better than they did. They, in turn, do it for their children. And each generation in this country has done it for the next--until today.
Today, for the first time in American history, we have a political class who's living for the moment, spending for the moment, and sending the bill to the next generation. It is wrong; it is unfair; it is immoral. The only budget that's going to get us to balance in a reasonable period of time, in a commonsense period of time that the American people understand, is the budget that Mr. Garrett and his team have put together.
So I strongly support it and urge my colleagues to vote ``yes.''
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