Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. Chairman, I don't know if you've been to Spain or not, but I have, just once. It's a beautiful country--nice people, great food, and at one time a large, vibrant, and growing economy, but not today. Today in Spain, over half of the people under 25 years old can't find work. The unemployment amongst all ages in Spain is about what we had during the Great Depression--not the Great Recession, the Great Depression of the thirties. And people on government medical care there can't get it. They can't get it when they want it because they've had to close a lot of their medical clinics in order to save money.

They had to do that because they waited too long to fix their fiscal problems. They waited until they had a debt crisis, and then they had to do what my friend from Maryland said: they had to impose an austerity program. They raised taxes and cut spending very quickly in a matter of just a year or so because that's what they had to do to continue being able to sell their debt.

That, Mr. Chairman, is exactly what we don't want to do. This is not speculation. This is not something we have to think about. It's there for us to see, and not just in Spain and Greece and Cyprus--in Japan, in a different form. It's there in other parts of the world. When you borrow so much money that people won't lend you any more, then you put in this austerity which causes these problems.

Unfortunately, that is what my friends on the other side of the aisle, their budgets will lead us to. More debts, more deficits, kind of a sugar high. They'll say: Oh, yeah, we're going to spend all this money; we'll create all these government jobs. For awhile we'll feel good, until the debt crisis comes, and then all that goes away.

What the Republican budget does is balance in 10 years, and not so that CPAs like me can achieve some symmetry that makes us feel good. It's because when you balance the budget, you set this balance up. It frees up the economy. People know that we're on that track to balance in 10 years. We won't have a debt crisis. People will know we won't have a debt crisis. The economy is freed up from the burden of too much debt, of knowing that there's a problem with no solution. There will now be a problem with a solution.

The economy will be freed up, both on the government side and on the private sector, and there will be more jobs and more jobs. That's what the Republican budget promises: an economy that grows and sustainable job creation, not a 1- or 2-year sugar high followed by a collapse. We've seen what not to do. We know the path not to take.

This Republican budget is the path we should take. I hope everyone will support it.

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