Debt Limit

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, one of the cardinal rules of negotiation is never to negotiate when you have a gun pointed at your head. The rationale is self-evident. One of the parties--namely, the party which is staring down the barrel of the gun--is more than likely going to either get the short end of the deal or, worse, end up dead.

In the case of the debt limit negotiations currently underway between President Biden and Speaker McCarthy, the risk isn't just that one of the parties will be unhappy with an agreement. If the United States defaults on the federal debt for the first time in the nation's history, it will risk a devastating wound to financial markets at home and around the world, push our country into a recession, erase 7.8 million jobs, and wipe out as much as $10 trillion in household wealth.

The crisis, of course, is a manufactured one. The national debt has increased under every presidential administration since Herbert Hoover. According to the U.S. Department of Treasury, Congress has acted 78 separate times to permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit--49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents.

Republicans aren't interested in getting our fiscal house in order. They don't want to address entitlement programs, which are the big drivers of projected spending growth. They don't want to touch raising revenues or cuts to military spending.

Instead, Republicans are aiming their weapon at nondefense discretionary spending. They want to slash funding for our nation's schools, our national parks, our farmers, and our police officers. Nondefense discretionary spending only accounts for 15 percent of the $6.3 trillion the government is expected to spend this year.

Republicans even want to take money away from health care for our nation's veterans. Their Default on America Act would underfund programs that help our veterans exposed to bum pits by $20 billion.

America must pay its bills as it has always done. At a time when America is facing many challenges at home and abroad--from inflation to competition with China to the ongoing war in Ukraine--we must ensure that our word is trusted. In the end, we must do what is right and raise the debt ceiling without any conditions and especially without a gun pointed at our heads.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source