Living Within Our Means

Floor Speech

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, words are very powerful and words are important. I hear the words from our President and realize that he understands the importance of words, also. In the past, he has talked about debt, borrowing, and spending, but now he talks about obligations, because he understands that ``debt,'' to the American public, is a four-letter word. He doesn't want to be tagged with the fact that he is asking for more debt, so now it is ``obligations.'' That is a word that has cleaned up the concept that we are simply borrowing against our future.

But even the word ``borrowing'' needs to be looked at, because that assumes that we have the credit to borrow with; and the truth is no nation can lend us the kind of deficits that we are running right now, so we are actually printing the money.

But even the word ``printing'' has been changed in Washington. Now it is ``quantitative easing.'' It just sounds so much better. ``Printing'' sounds so crass to the American public who might be worried about what is happening to their savings accounts while Washington is printing money.

The word ``negotiation'' is a word that the President is familiar with. He did it 2 years ago when we reached this exact same point. Both sides came to the table and negotiated, and we wound up with a budget that was not as extremely overdrawn as we had faced before. That is the power of negotiation.

But now the word ``negotiation'' is taken out of the President's vocabulary, and he declares that he is being held hostage. Oh, really? This thing he calls being held hostage is actually the American way. It is what our Founding Fathers wanted. They came here and set up a system with a President and two Houses of Congress and two different parties; and those parties would sometimes have all the power, and sometimes they would share the power.

This President says he is being held hostage by the system. That means he doesn't believe in the balance of powers that the electorate cast in the last election. He declares over and over that the election is done--I was elected. The same people that elected him chose to put Republicans in power in the House of Representatives. I think they did that because they were afraid of this debt, deficit, borrowing, and spending.

We are told that we should have a clean CR. There is nothing clean about sacrificing the future of our children and grandchildren. That is what the President wants: a CR where he can spend what he wants to spend without negotiations on anything. We actually, in the House, submitted four different plans before this shutdown occurred. Those plans were just summarily rejected by the Senate, waved off, not really even considered; and yet we find our friends declaring this to be the Republican shutdown, not that both Houses failed to come to an agreement and the White House failed to sit down and negotiate. They just weren't going to be held hostage. So now, then, we need a clean CR, according to some, and we need to stop this Republican shutdown.

Words are very powerful. No longer do we talk about spending in Washington. We talk about investing. We are investing the American public's money. We are investing it in things like studies of the sexual habits of the fruit fly in Tijuana or wherever. ``Debt'' is, indeed, a four-letter word.

We are finally led to believe that default will occur immediately, that we somehow won't pay our obligations, that the American people need to understand that they are still paying their taxes every day and those taxes come to Washington. That is about $2.5 trillion a year. If we do not extend the debt ceiling any higher, then what Washington is going to have to do is it is going to have to prioritize. It is going to decide which of its expenses to pay.

The Constitution demands that we pay our obligations. It says we can't default on those. Washington would have to do the same thing every American family does: it will have to prioritize its expenses if we do not extend the debt ceiling so chaos will not reign. We simply have to live within our means. That is what every American family has to do.

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