Challenges and Opportunities

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. STEWART. I would like to thank the gentlewoman, Representative Hartzler, for sharing the floor with myself and other colleagues tonight. It is an honor, especially on a topic that all of us know and recognize that is so very, very important.

Dean Acheson once said that ``Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties are more anxious to agree than to disagree.''

For the past 2 weeks, President Obama and Senator Harry Reid have made it very, very clear that they are much more anxious to disagree than they are to agree with Republicans--a situation that has very honestly prevented sincere negotiations. It is impossible to work out a deal when one party just sits on the sidelines and won't talk, like we have experienced over the last few weeks with the President. Now, we heard rumors this afternoon that the President has finally begun to negotiate with Republicans. I hope that that is true because our Founding Fathers established a system that was intended to be deliberative.

Whether you agree or disagree with the President, this much we know: he has been willing to push our Nation toward an economic crisis all for the sake of a political agenda. When this happens, every American loses. It doesn't have to be this way. It shouldn't be this way.

For 14 years, I was an Air Force pilot--which was, by the way, the coolest job in the world. I loved doing

that. At one point, I was selected to be a member of the START verification team--Strategic Arms Reduction Team. Of course, we were working with the Russians during this time. They would come to my base to verify that we had complied with elements of the START treaty.

During the 1990s, the Russians were not our friends. By the way, Mr. Speaker, I would cautiously add that today the Russians are not our friends either. These were in some cases tense and very carefully orchestrated events, but we did them. We extended a hand of trust and fellowship between two nations that had very little in common and had much to lose if they did not develop a working relationship.

Mr. Speaker, if we could do it then between the Russian and the U.S. militaries, surely we, with the Republicans and the President, could do the same thing now. The President is the leader of this Nation. He has a responsibility to lead. But part of leadership is being willing to sit down and in a sincere way be willing to listen to the other side. The President has failed in this responsibility and the Nation has paid a price.

Before being elected to Congress, I was the president and owner of a small company. Being part of a small business means developing relationships that are built upon trust. With the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare, the President has clearly broken the trust of the American people.

$634 million--$634 million--that is how much it cost to develop the ObamaCare Web site.

Facebook operated for 6 years on less money than that. Twitter was launched and operated for less than half the cost. Instagram, LinkedIn, Spotify all were designed, implemented, and operational at a fraction of the price of the ObamaCare Web page. And yet, in one of the most embarrassing moments in ObamaCare history, and I believe this will be a history that will be rife with embarrassing moments, news organizations had to search high and low throughout the country to find one person who could be verified that they had actually signed up on the ObamaCare Web page. And, of course, days later we had born the legend of Chad, something many people are very familiar with.

Harkening back to my military days, if I had been given a mission and had so utterly failed to accomplish that mission, I would have been held accountable. So I ask, Mr. Speaker, when will Kathleen Sebelius be held accountable for this disaster? After more than 3 years and after more than $630 million and a failure to launch such as this, why does she still have her job?

But let's remember this: at the end of the day, we are not talking about ObamaCare, and we are not really talking about a Web page or a sequester or a continuing resolution. What we are really talking about at the end of the day is our Nation's crushing national debt. Our national debt is now approaching $17 trillion. Now, President Obama congratulates himself on having reduced the debt by half; but listen, when you run up a debt after 1 year in office of $1.2 trillion or $1.3 trillion, when you have nearly 4 years in a row of a greater than a trillion-dollar annual deficit, and then you congratulate yourself because you cut it $6 or $7 billion, that is not something to celebrate.

Now is the time to work together towards a balanced budget and actually beginning to pay down that debt. Yes, this is a tough decision, but we were elected to make tough decisions. My plea to the Senate and to the President is: Please, come to the table. Let's start the conversation now about how we can put our fiscal house in order. Time is running out.

With that, once again, Mrs. Hartzler, thank you for yielding to me.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source