Require Presidential Leadership and No Deficit Act

Floor Speech

Mr. DELANEY. In my judgment, Mr. Simpson and Mr. Bowles are American heroes because they were given a job by the President of the United States. It was a very difficult job, and the assignment required significant vision. Their job was to work in a bipartisan way with experts and come up with a proposal that was in the best interest of the common good of American citizens.

That's exactly what they did. The fact that it was rejected by our government, in my judgment, is a tragedy. If you contrast what they did to what we're considering here today with H.R. 444, it puts into context exactly the problems we have with this Congress. Because what Mr. Simpson and Mr. Bowles did is they came up with a specific proposal that had additional revenues and had important cuts to put the country on a better fiscal trajectory.

We're not here debating what proposal we should put in place to put this country on a better fiscal trajectory. That would be a worthy discussion. Nor are we talking about the things we need to do as a country to make our country more competitive, to create jobs. We're not talking about immigration reform. We're not talking about a national energy policy. We're not talking about investing in our infrastructure. What we're talking about is a gimmick that has nothing to do with the substance of the fiscal debate that we need to have in this country.

This proposal, this bill is a gimmick for career politicians in their game of chess. It has nothing to do with the substance of what the American people need us to do as a Congress. We need to adopt the framework that was put forth by the Simpson-Bowles Commission, where people actually did their job, and we need to use that as a framing document to deal with our fiscal trajectory. We then need to get on with the business of making this country more competitive so we can create jobs that have a good standard of living. To do that, we need to change important policies in this country around immigration, energy, infrastructure, and education. That's what the business of this Congress should be.

Source