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Mr. ARRINGTON. Madam Speaker, it is not our duty to raise the debt limit; it is our duty to not spend so recklessly and so egregiously and irresponsibly that we bankrupt this country, and we rob our children of their freedoms and the opportunities that we have all been blessed with as Americans. That is our duty.
I won't give Republicans a pass on this, Madam Speaker. This place is broken. We play by a different set of rules--if we are honest--than the American people. The pay-fors just for the infrastructure bill are total jokes. It is a gimmick. It is Enron accounting scams. People in our country who operate that way would be thrown in prison. So we are all accountable.
But I have never seen this kind of spending spree to accelerate the curse that we are putting on the heads of our children. James Madison said: `` . . . a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other.''
Trillions of dollars have been spent. We were promised bipartisanship and restoration of unity in this place. We are jamming more bipartisan spending bills starting with COVID, which was a bailout of union pensions and which was a bailout of blue States and Democrat-run cities. Very little went to COVID. That is deception.
We are accelerating what Admiral Mullin said was the greatest threat to the United States. He said that the greatest threat to our national security was our national debt. So we promised the cradle-to-grave cash, entitlements, and more handouts without any regard to responsibility and without any requirement for work, and we are going to bankrupt the next generation. We are going to steal from them what we have enjoyed.
This is not a profile in courage.
Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reconsider all of this spending that is bankrupting the country, and I urge them to vote ``no'' on the reconciliation bill.
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