Date: 2006-02-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I thank so much my good friend from Ohio. I am particularly struck by your commeits and your laying out of the real significance of the problem we are facing here. I have only been here a year now. I am a new Member. and I came from 12 previous years in the Florida legislature. The whole concept. I Vnean. I certainly understand what the debt limit is and the debt ceiling. and I have watched the Presidents brother. Governor Bush. do the exact same thing in Florida and asked repeatedly for our debt limit to. be extended. So there is clearly a pattern running through this family. But what is so foreign to me as a State legislator. and I know we have many former State legislators in this Chamber. is the whole concept of debt and operating in the red to begIn with. Most States cannot deficit spend. Most States have to adopt a budget that balandes. You do not borrow against next year. You spend what you have. just Feb/uary. 8. 2006 like the -concept of pAYGO that the Democrats in the. Congress have supported for years and continue to support. and then for some reason we cannot get the Republican leadership here to go back to that concept. It is mindboggling. How does a party and a group of people who supposedly pride themselves on their fiscal responsibility not support the concept of paying as you go? I do not understand. I mean. those two concepts are opposites. Fiscal responsibility.. yet five in-. creases in the debt limit in the debt ceiling. It is really tough for me to understand. . We are borrowing away our childrens future. and it is a concept that I have not been able to get my mind around. We want to make sure that we reduce the deficit. but the President talks about it in his State of the Union address. You constantly hear Republican Members of Congress profess that they have an interestin cutting the deficit in half or eliminating the deficit. Yet. the budget that the President submitted does no such thing. In fact. over the next 10 years it ensures that the deficit continues to stay significantly high. does not even come close to cutting it in half. and. actually. he presented us a budget on Monday that includes no assumption that we would spend no money on the war in Iraq after next year. I mean. to me. I analogize -the reality of the budget the President gave us on Monday to one that my first graders might sit down and write because they have about the same similarity in terms of likelihood of success here in this Chamber. the same similarity that my first graders would write to the ability to actually meet the needs of the people in the country. E0 2215 You know what it really boils down to? It boils down to hypocrisy. because the same people who accuse Democrats of being tax and spend liberals. you know. and I am loathe to repeat that misnomer because it is so insulting. but if we are tax and spend liberals. they are borrow and spend. They are borrow and spend. Because if we say that we do not think tax and spend is a good idea. which I think universally Republicans and Democrats would say taxing and spending as a way to solve our problems is not a set of solutions for the- future of this country. how is borrowing and spending any different? I mean. you are mortgaging our childrens future. and that. you know. I think if we had some semblance of bipartisan here that some people profess to be supportive of. I would love to sit down around a table. Maybe Mr. BOEHNER. the new majority leader. will be different. I am certainly hopeful. - But I would love to sit down around a table with a bipartisan group of Members and find a way to pay as we go. I will yield.