Date: 2012-01-18
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

I thank my colleague. Mr. LEVIN. You know. day after day. month after month. we hear Members of CongressRepublicans and Democrats alikecome to the floor of this House and say weve got to do more on jobs. weve got to make sure that we get this fragile economy moving again. Unfortunately. while we say those things in this body. we havent yet taken up the Presidents jobs initiative that he presented to this Congress last September. Weve taken little bits and pieces here and there. Weve had 2 months now in the payroll tax cutthats good news. I hope we can get the rest of itbut the rest of it has been absolutely ignored. But at least people said they wanted to focus on job creation and getting the economy moving again. And whats incredible about today is we have our Republican colleagues advocating a course of action which. if we took them seriously. would wreak absolute havoc on the economy. It would destroy jobs throughout the economy. Thats not just me saying it. thats Republican economists. independent economists. Democratic economists. If the United States. for the first time in its history. refused to pay its debts. if the United States. for the first time in its history. refused to make good on the full faith and credit of the United States. the economy would fall to pieces. millions of people would lose their jobs. You know. if we want to be taken seriously we have to be serious about the consequences of our actions. And if we take the course of action being presented. wed have a fiasco on our hands. Look. the American people I think understand full well whats going on here. but I do think its important to make clear what the debt ceiling does. You raise the debt ceiling in order to cover obligations already made. If we dont lift the debt ceiling. its as if we woke up one morning and said. you know. were not going to pay our mortgage. or if you went out and purchased goods and services with a credit card and said. hey. you know what. were not going to pay our credit card today. Well. you know what happens? You lose your house if you do that. The credit card company comes after you for that. If the United States of America was to renege on the full faith and credit of its obligations. it would be a disaster in the international economy. and yet that is apparently the course of action being advocated by our Republican colleagues today. Now. what makes this really political theater is everybody knows that more responsible Members of Congress and certainly the President of the United States are not going to let that happen. They are not going to allow that reckless outcome to happen. And thats why. in so many ways. this is unfortunately just political theater. and its one of the things. frankly. that contributes to the American peoples low view of the Congress. this kind of political game playing. Another thing that contributes to that is Members of Congress refusal to take responsibility for their own actions. Last year. we had the Republican budget on the floor of the House. There are major differences in the priorities between the Republican budgets and the Democratic budgets. But the reality is the Republican budget that was overwhelmingly voted for by our Republican colleagues would require us to lift the debt ceiling of the United States. the very debt ceiling that our Republican colleagues are now telling us they dont want to increase. It would require us. It would have added $7 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. How is it that people can come down and vote for a budget that says were going to ask the United States to take on these additional obligations and then vote for a motion. a resolution. that refuses to take responsibility for those very actions? And I think thats why the American people are understandably losing much of the confidence certainly in this House of Representatives. Obviously. we have big challenges with respect to the deficit. Lets get together and solve them. But as my colleague from Maryland said. in order to do that. we have to come to the table in the spirit of compromise. And we have before the country a number of approaches. Weve had a number of bipartisan commissions. We have SimpsonBowles. RivlinDomenici. They have established a framework for resolving the deficit issue. All of their frameworks say. yes. we have to make some tough decisions on making cuts. but we also have to deal with the revenue side of the equation. And the major obstaclelets just be clearto dealing with the revenue side of the equation is we have a lot of folks who have taken the position that you cant close one corporate tax loophole for the purpose of deficit reduction.