Default Prevention Act of 2013-- Motion to Proceed--
Floor Speech
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Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, may I inquire, under the previous order, how much time remains for the minority?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 8 1/2 minutes remaining for the Republicans.
Mr. RUBIO. I ask unanimous consent that 5 minutes be added to that total, for a total of 13 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, with all this focus on the fighting going on in Washington these days, I think we are losing focus on the biggest issue facing this country, and that is the pervasive and growing sense we are losing control of our country; that we are losing the American dream.
Why do people feel this way? Because millions of them have been out of a job for months, and maybe even years, and because millions more find themselves stuck with jobs that don't pay enough for them to live on or certainly for them to live as they used to.
When people hear news that the economy is recovering, that unemployment is down by .1 percent this week or this month, that the stock market is up and that the recession is over, it makes people angry. And rightfully so. Because the recession might be over on Wall Street, but it is not over for millions of people who are out of work or stuck with jobs that do not pay enough to live on.
What makes all this worse is that while their paychecks aren't growing, their bills are growing. Ask the young couples out there, the single parents, how much it is costing them every month or week to provide childcare for their kids. Ask the young Americans who are saddled with thousands of dollars in student loan debt.
How are people making it through these times? Well, I am reminded of a few years after we got married, when my wife and I hit a rough patch in our finances. What we did was we got rid of one of the cars and we moved in with her mom for 6 months. That is what many of us have had to do at some stage in our life, but it was usually temporary. Now people are doing that with the feeling it might not be temporary; that this might be the way it is for a while. And they ask themselves: Is this the new normal? Is this the way it is going to be from now on?
This is what millions of people across this country are feeling these days; that maybe the American dream--if you work hard, you can improve your life--isn't what it used to be; that maybe the American dream is actually even slipping away.
But why is this happening? Whose fault is this, is the normal reaction some people have. Well, there are a few reasons why this is happening. One is the economy has changed. The nature of our economy has changed. Globalization, for example, has sent thousands of middle-class jobs overseas. Information technology and advances have replaced many of our middle-class jobs with machines. Another reason why is that we simply have too many people who never get the education or the skills they need for the better paying jobs this new economy is creating. And we can't ignore, for example, the breakdown of our culture and our families and what that is doing. It is trapping people in a cycle of poverty and of dependence. These are all contributors to what we face today.
But one of the major reasons why this is happening, why so many people are trapped in dead-end jobs, why so many people have been unemployed for so long, is because our economy is not creating enough jobs to live off of. One of the reasons why that is happening is because our country is headed for a debt crisis. The real debt crisis is not the looming debt limit. The real debt crisis is that every year our government is spending more money than it takes in. And, by the way, one day we are not going to have to worry about raising the debt limit because no one will want to lend us money anyway.
Too often around here we talk about the national debt as if it is simply an accounting problem. The national debt is a lot more than that. How does the economy create good jobs? It creates good jobs in two ways: No. 1 is through innovation--when people invent a new product or service. The other is through investment--when people risk the money they have to start a new business or when a business reinvests its profits into the business to grow. The fact we are headed for a debt crisis and that we have no serious long-term plan in place to address it is discouraging innovation and that is discouraging investment.
Who wants to innovate in an economy that is headed for a debt crisis? Who wants to risk their money to start a new business in an economy that is headed for a catastrophic disruption? And who wants to reinvest their profits to grow their business in a country where the government is going bankrupt?
Having people trapped in low-wage jobs, having people unemployed for months or years at a time, having people unable to afford to get married or start a family doesn't have to be the new normal. It doesn't have to be this way forever. We can turn this around. But to do so we have to stop chasing all these temporary gimmicks that promise us some sort of momentary boost to our economy. We have to stop ignoring the problems headed full speed at us. We have to return to the basics--to the basics that made us such a prosperous nation.
Our national debt today stands at close to $17 trillion. In the last 5 1/2 years alone it has grown by over $6 trillion. So when you hear the President or the Democrats here in the Senate say they want us to pass what they call a clean debt limit increase, here is what they are really asking for: They are asking us to borrow another $1 trillion but not do anything meaningful to slow the growth of that debt.
Why would we continue to do this? When are we finally going to get serious around here about putting in place a serious long-term plan to bring this debt under control? In order to do that, the first thing we have to understand is what is causing this debt.
Look, we have a broken Tax Code. It is full of all sorts of special-interest loopholes. But the reason why we have this massive debt isn't because rich people aren't paying enough in taxes. Even if we taxed every millionaire every penny they made this year, it wouldn't make even a small dent in the debt. Yes there is some serious waste going on throughout our government. For example, we have to reverse the changes the Obama administration has made to these welfare programs that basically gut the work requirement and leave people dependent on government. We need to reform the way we give foreign aid. We must and should do all of these and even more. But even if we did all that, it is still not enough.
What is driving our debt is the way we spend money on two very important programs: Medicare and Social Security. They are spending more money than they take in, and that gap is growing rapidly every single year.
I warn you, anytime anyone talks about making changes to these programs, you get accused of trying to hurt the elderly. So speaking for myself personally, let me set the record straight. I come from a State with millions of people--millions of retirees--who depend on these programs, and one of them is my own mother. She worked hard for her entire life and paid into these programs so they would be there for her when she retired. I would never support any changes to these programs that would hurt my mother. But these programs are going bankrupt, and anyone who is in favor of doing nothing about them is in favor of bankrupting them.
The good news is this: The good news is we still have some time to save Medicare and Social Security, and we still have time to do these changes without making any changes to the benefits of seniors such as my mom. But to do so is going to require younger workers, like myself, to accept that when we retire, our Medicare and our Social Security is going to be different than our parents.
So instead of spending all of our time around here trying to figure out how to raise the debt limit, we need to spend more of our time trying to figure out what we can do to put in place a serious long-term plan to bring this debt under control so that our economy can start creating more of those good-paying, middle-class jobs, so that people can start building for themselves the better future they always dreamed of.
The American dream is under assault. That is the real crisis. When are we going to get serious about solving it? This dream of earning a better life is the universal hope of people everywhere. But we are reminded that for much of human history most people found themselves trapped by the circumstances of their birth. That meant no matter how hard they worked, no matter how talented they were, they were only going to go as far as their family went. They could only do whatever it was their parents did. One of the things that made America so special is that here that has been different. Here, through hard work and sacrifice, people from all walks of life, from every corner of the world, have had the real opportunity to earn for themselves a better life.
This is what we call the American dream. As Americans, that is our identity. It is what holds us together as a nation. It is what holds us together as a people, and it is what has made us exceptional.
I know people are discouraged about how tough times are. I know some people are very disappointed about how the last election turned out. I know many people are angry and, quite frankly, disgusted by the way this process is working or failing to work these days. But no matter how bad things may seem, we cannot give up on America and we cannot give up on the American dream. We have to do everything we can to make sure this country remains a place where anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything.
So despite how ugly Washington looks right now, I actually remain confident that, in the end, that is exactly what we are going to do. I have no doubt that, in the end, our children will grow up to be the most prosperous generation that ever lived. Despite all the challenges we face right now, when all is said and done, I believe with all my heart we will still go down in history as the generation that saved the American dream and left our children what our parents left for us--the single greatest Nation in the history of the world.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
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