Extend the Debt Ceiling

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Speaker, on January 13, 2023, the Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, announced that the United States had hit its debt ceiling, which is a legal authorization that Congress has done on a recurring basis since the early 1900s that allows our Treasury to go out and sell bonds so we can pay the bills for our country, whether it is fentanyl issues, whether it is our military, or whether it is our education programs.

Normally, when the Secretary of the Treasury gives that type of announcement, responsible leadership in Congress takes up the task of extending the debt ceiling so that our government can continue to function. We are talking about paying the bills for existing budgets that have already been passed. That is what the debt ceiling empowers by Congress moving forward.

It has been 18 days since Ms. Yellen's warning to the country and to the world, and the leadership of the House has done absolutely nothing. We have passed a series of pointless resolutions that have no legal impact in terms of real lives of people in this country and a bunch of bills that we know are immediately dead on arrival in the Senate.

Again, as the clock ticks, the world wants to know: What is the Speaker's position? What does he want in terms of doing what every Speaker, Republican and Democrat, has done over and over again to protect the full faith and credit of our currency and the paper that the Treasury sells, again, as basically the gold standard in terms of financial markets across the world?

Mr. McCarthy has not told us.

What is at work here? If we look at the Republican Study Group, which consists of roughly 170 Members, they have been talking openly and publicly about the fact that they want to do entitlement reform, which is to go after Social Security and Medicare.

Madam Speaker, I would just say that this is a very off-target proposal and solution because, in fact, Social Security has no bearing in terms of the operating deficit of the Federal Government, which, again, the Speaker claims that he cares so much about.

Social Security is funded through a separate revenue stream, the payroll tax that comes out of working people's paychecks every single pay period that goes into a fund that, again, is separate and distinct from the operating budget of the Federal Government.

The proposals of the Republican Study Group, which are to raise the retirement age from 67 to 70 and to impose a degraded level of CPI cost-of-living adjustment, a changed CPI, would hit middle-class Americans hard, particularly younger ones because this is definitely proposed as sort of a two-tiered Social Security system.

There is a fundamental flaw in the whole approach that is being suggested and discussed by the Republican Study Group, which is the claim that the Medicare and Social Security systems are entitlements.

Entitlement is not a legal term. It is not a budget term. It is a political term. It is an attempt to try to mask the fact that Social Security, since Franklin Roosevelt signed it into law 80 years ago, is a social insurance program.

If you don't believe me, look at your paycheck. What your paycheck shows is that the withholding for Social Security is separate from your Federal taxes, which go into the operating budget of this country, and is designated as the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, FICA, for old-age insurance.

Again, it is an insurance program, and it provides coverage for people who are retired because they have hit retirement age, for young people who have lost a parent, or for people on disability.

If we were responsible about trying to deal with the fact that Social Security is going to be challenged in 2033--it is going to have a shortfall; it is not going to go bankrupt, which the press sometimes says--there is a solution to that, which is to lift the earnings cap. Today, basically anyone who earns income above $160,000 suddenly doesn't have to pay into the Social Security system.

As Warren Buffett, a billionaire, aptly pointed out, he is paying less into Social Security than his secretary. It is called the Buffett rule. The solution, which basically says everybody pays the same rate, or at least people whose income is above $400,000, would overnight push back the solvency for decades to ensure that young people, in particular, are going to have Social Security just like all the Americans in the preceding 80 years have had. That is really one of the pillars of middle-class economic security.

In the meantime, the clock is ticking. We know that we are really not just going to go at the debt ceiling, but we are going to hit full default by June 1.

This leadership has to do the right thing, just like we have done in past Presidencies and past Congresses: Extend the debt ceiling.

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