Full Faith and Credit Act

Mr. President, currently, America's debt is barreling toward $30 trillion. This $30 trillion is hard to imagine. So think about it this way: That is more than $233,000 of debt for every American family.

On July 31, the suspension on the Federal debt limit expired, and now the Democrats in Congress, who continue to pursue a purely partisan, reckless tax-and-spending spree, are pushing this as a decision point with only two options: to vote to suspend the debt limit or increase it with no reforms to control excess Federal spending. They want us to write the government a blank check to spend more money that we don't have. The Republicans have been clear: We will not do it.

Now, my Democratic colleagues will say that the debt ceiling shouldn't be a partisan issue, and I completely agree,

but what we have seen from the Democrats this year has been purely partisan even by Washington's broken standards.

First, they passed a nearly $2 trillion so-called COVID bill that spent less than 10 percent of its funding on actually fighting COVID, without any Republican votes, and now they are pushing forward a $5.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree--again, without a single Republican vote. This insane Democratic spending means we are on the dangerous path of reaching $45 trillion in Federal debt by 2031. That is not my number. That is what the Democrats' own bill says. The Democrats' own projections have their reckless spending taking the U.S. debt to $45 trillion in the next 10 years.

There are major consequences to this financial irresponsibility. Like any borrower, the Federal Government pays interest on its debt. When you rack up nearly $30 trillion in debt, that means hundreds of billions of dollars in interest. Who pays for it? The taxpayers. Right now, even with interest rates at historic lows, the U.S. Government is already spending nearly $345 billion yearly on interest. Instead of funding important infrastructure, defense, or the environment, nearly $345 billion in hard-earned tax dollars is just paying interest which provides zero return for American families. Just imagine how much that will grow when the U.S. reaches $45 trillion in debt. And when interest rates return to normal levels, things will get even worse.

Let's look at this.

Right now, about 11 percent of what we are going to collect this year will go to pay the interest. There is no return for taxpayers on this interest. Let's look at what is going to happen by 2031, and this is the Democrats' budget: 23 percent of total Federal receipts will go toward paying the interest. Now, that is assuming that interest rates stay low. Why would we believe that interest rates are going to stay low? Let's just look. We are having unbelievable inflation right now. When inflation goes up, interest rates typically follow. Assuming we have low interest rates stay low, like the Democrats do, we could be spending over $1 trillion on just interest by 2031. Imagine, if interest rates return to historical averages, our payments will be astronomical. The Federal Government brings in less than $4 trillion in revenues. So we will be spending roughly a quarter of all tax revenue on interest that does nothing--nothing--for taxpayers.

How can Congress justify that?

It is clear: Democratic spending has caused this massive Democratic debt, and it is time for liberals in Washington to own the debt crisis they have created.

Republicans have been clear: We won't stand for it. We won't vote to bail out the Democrats' out-of-control spending. We won't cut radical liberals in Congress more blank checks to bury our country in more debt, to drive up America's interest expense, and to fuel an already raging inflation crisis, hurting families across my State and across this country.

Just last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Consumer Price Index was up 5.3 percent in 1 year--from August to August, 5.3 percent. Year-over-year comparisons show that inflation has gone up each month of Biden's Presidency. Government doesn't feel the Biden inflation, but everyday Americans do.

I am hearing from families all across my State--a father of three in Jacksonville, a mother of four in Wauchula--and small businesses in Miami. Another family in Kissimmee told us about how hard it is to keep food on the table because everything is getting so expensive. They are having trouble keeping their car because of the cost of maintenance and gas. Of course, without a car, they won't have a way to get to work and provide for their family.

It is heartbreaking to hear these stories. I can relate to this. I grew up in a poor family. My mom would take in ironing for extra money. She would give us exact change to go to the grocery store, and if the price of something went up, we just simply couldn't get it.

In the face of this hardship felt by so many families in Florida and across this great Nation, President Biden and Democrats here in Congress have zero interest in reducing the national debt and cutting their insane spending. Democrats have shown a heartless disregard for the struggles so many families in Florida and across America are dealing with right now.

It is time we bring accountability to Federal spending. Unlike our Democratic colleagues, Republicans have a solution-focused approach to fixing America's debt crisis. We know that the Federal Government can and must pursue practical measures to make it easy and relatively painless to cut spending. We can start that right now.

Earlier this year, I introduced the Federal Debt Emergency Control Act, which prevents Washington from mindlessly spending by requiring that two-thirds of the Senate vote to increase the debt before approving any bill with deficit spending, terminating any unobligated funding from the stimulus bills and sending it back to the Treasury General Fund for deficit reduction, and fast-tracking any bill reducing the debt by at least 5 percent over 10 years.

Today, I am joining my friend Senator Pat Toomey to reintroduce the Full Faith and Credit Act. This bill ensures that the U.S. Government does not default on its debt while also prioritizing certain payments to our seniors, military, and veterans.

It is commonsense policy like this that will move the United States forward and out of the massive debt crisis we are clearly already in. I welcome all fiscally responsible colleagues to join me to say: We don't accept the status quo. We won't watch in silence as Democrats try to spend us into oblivion. We can get spending under control.

While I was Governor of Florida, we paid down one-third of State debt by living within our means, all while cutting taxes. We can do it here. We have to start acting responsibly, and the time to do that is now.

Politicians in Washington want you to think this is so complicated. They want you to think that dysfunction is inevitable. That is a lie. It is a lie that a broken system and failed politicians up here have been telling you for decades, and it is time for that to end.

Getting America back on track is simple. It starts with passing commonsense reforms that rein in reckless spending, stop Congress from getting paid when it shuts down the government, and force Congress to stay in session until it passes a balanced budget. We keep our Nation on the right financial path by making sure Congress is constantly held accountable for its spending of taxpayer money. It is taxpayer money, every dollar of it.

It is time to stand up for those on fixed incomes and, of course, families whose income can't keep up with inflation. It is time to stand up for our grandkids, whose futures are being mortgaged by out-of- control Washington spending.

This isn't political. It is good government, and it is common sense. The longer we ignore the debt problem, the worse it will become not just for us but for future generations.

A debt crisis is here today. It will be American families who feel the effects of their government's lack of fiscal responsibility through inflation, higher costs, and rising taxes. That is not the America anyone wants. American families deserve better. Through smart legislation and responsible choices, we can be truly accountable to the American people and bring some stability back to the Federal Government's bank account.

Madam President, obviously, when you look at what needs to be done in the fall and, frankly, if you look at what needs to be done in the next few weeks, there are important items ahead of us.

One of them that my colleague from Florida just did a good job talking about is setting the debt limit for how much Federal Government debt should the country be able to tolerate.

One way to do this is to set a limit. Another way that some of my colleagues appear to really prefer is just to set a date and say we are going to postpone any limit until that date, and we will just see what happens. We will see how deep the debt gets between now and then. But we really don't want to talk about a limit, and when you look at what that limit is likely to be, you would understand why you wouldn't want to talk about that.

We have really seen this coming for some time. It shouldn't be a crisis, except, frankly, our friends on the other side seem intent on making it a crisis and seeing if they can include all of us suddenly in a spending discussion that we haven't been in up until now. How much debt can we have? How much can we afford? But what we have seen this year is, how much money can one side spend without involving the other side in any way?

We have never approached the debt limit in at least the last 25 years, that I am aware of, in a way that didn't involve talking about spending. In fact, I would argue that there is no real reason to have the debt limit if it doesn't force a discussion on spending. Other countries don't have it; we have it.

One reason I have always thought it actually served a purpose was it always generated a discussion on spending--not just a discussion on full faith and credit but how much money are we going to spend. In fact, when President Obama was President and the debt ceiling had to be extended, we had a discussion about what our spending caps were going to be. We had a decade, because of that, of spending caps. We didn't always stick with them, but to not stick with them, you had to change the law, so that forced another discussion. We have all heard for a decade about the caps deal, the spending caps deal. Well, that was a discussion that was had so there would be a bipartisan agreement on the debt limit.

In June of 2019, we saw the debt limit coming again, and by that time, Speaker Pelosi, who was the Speaker of the House in charge of a majority in the House, said she wouldn't cooperate in doing anything on the debt limit unless the administration agreed to spend more money.

So there you have a spending discussion, but you also have one body of the Congress where the leader of the entire majority is saying: We are not going to be part of the debt limit unless we have an agreement on spending, and we want to spend more. From that moment on, Secretary Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury, was up here over and over again, negotiating with the Speaker of the House on just how much more it was going to take for her to be part of the debt limit.

Now, here we are in almost October, 9 months through the year. Republicans really haven't been asked in any serious way up until now this year how to set parameters for government spending. We would like to spend less; the other side would like to spend more. But no Republicans--zero Republicans--have been involved in a plan to eliminate important parts of the 2017 tax bill that clearly were producing the kinds of economic results we had hoped for at the beginning of the pandemic.

No Republicans were part of the plan to spend right at $2 trillion in the March COVID relief bill even though we really saw our economy already coming back.

By the way--no surprise--when you spend $2 trillion, inflation is one of the things you are going to get when you put that much money into the economy on top of what we put in in 2020 in a bipartisan way to try to stabilize the economy.

Well, the economy was clearly stabilized by the first of last year, and no Republican, again, let me say, was part of how to spend that $2 trillion.

No Republican has been part of the discussion of how to spend what our friends on the other side say would be a $3.5 trillion, reckless tax-and-spending amount. Others estimate that 3.5 really would be 5 trillion. But, again, the point is not how big it would be; the point is, no Republican has been part of that.

If you look at what is actually in that legislation as it comes out of the House, some of the things are pretty amazing. There is $3 billion on a project called Tree Equity. Now, I don't think that is to make all the

trees the same size. I assume that is a project to be sure that everybody has their fair percentage of the trees, whatever that would mean and how you describe that.

There is $200 million for the Presidio, the park in Speaker Pelosi's district--$200 million.

They are talking about $8 billion in that bill for a new Civilian Climate Corps and $7 billion to buy electric vehicles for the Postal Service.

Their plan comes to us with $105 million for ``entrepreneurial training'' for people who are currently or have just been incarcerated.

There is even $5 million in that bill for electronic voting systems for union elections. I am not opposed to union elections and am not opposed to unions having them. It would seem to me that they have up until now figured out how to provide their own equipment for their own elections or rent it or lease it. It is certainly a new sort of government involvement in that activity.

Frankly, the list goes on and on. At $3 trillion, you are likely to have a lot of ideas. Seems to me that a lot of the ideas are, you come up with a number, which is what it takes to eliminate the 2017 tax cuts, and then start talking about, how many new things do we need to do to support that number?

Well, this shouldn't be an emergency. September is pretty late to reach out to the other side and not even now say ``Well, let's talk about our spending priorities,'' but say, ``Well, you need to help us with this because at some point, there is some money that had to be spent that was your responsibility too.''

I guess we could have said that to Speaker Pelosi in 2019 when she said: Not going to do it unless we get more spending. And we wouldn't have had an agreement in the Obama years if we hadn't set a cap on spending.

The truth is, this isn't Speaker Pelosi's money, and it is not Senator Schumer's money, and it is not my money. We are talking about the money that belongs to the American people. They need to have a say in this.

In a 50-50 Senate, one side deciding ``We are going to make all the decisions about spending money'' means that one side is likely to wind up making all the decisions about how to reach the debt limit.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Democrats in Washington are playing a high- stakes game with our Nation's finances. Congress just keeps passing bill after bill that adds trillions of dollars in spending to Washington's credit card.

First, there was the $1.9 trillion ``Bidenomics'' stimulus bill that fanned the flames of inflation and paid people not to work. Then there was the $1.2 trillion so-called infrastructure bill that was supposed to be entirely paid for, but wasn't. And now the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that paves the way for passing a wish list of progressive priorities, like the Green New Deal and other pricey partisan pet projects.

You might think the reckless spending spree would have come to a stop after reaching the Nation's debt limit in July. Wrong.

The Democrats are now plotting to suspend the debt limit in order to pass what would be the most expensive bill ever passed by Congress.

This reckless borrowing and spending is driving up the prices of everyday goods as well as our national debt and, if Democrats have their way, the taxes of hard-working Americans, too. With the Federal fiscal year ending in mere days, another trillion-dollar spending bill will probably be rushed through at the last minute to avoid a government shutdown because Congress put off doing its work on time yet again.

The Democrats have their hands full with multiple financial crises, all of their own making, and their solution to each of these is the same--to spend more money we don't have--which only confounds the underlying problems. More spending results in higher taxes, increased prices, and even more debt.

The scenario reminds me of this popular meme of a guy playing UNO, in which the whole aim of the game is to rid your hand of all of your cards. I love this game. I played it as a little girl at my grandma's house. I played UNO with all of my cousins.

OK. So, in the meme, he is seen holding a wildcard that presents him with a choice: Perform an action--in this version, to ``cut unnecessary spending''--or draw another 25 cards from the deck and, most certainly, lose the game.

In the next frame, the man, who represents the Democrats here, is holding a handful of cards because he would rather do anything but what the card actually suggests.

Unfortunately, the consequences of dealing with Washington's budget are much more dire than losing a game of UNO. Instead of drawing cards, the Democrats are selecting to borrow more to finance totally unnecessary and completely indefensible--and often bizarre-- expenditures rather than simply cutting waste out of the budget.

Just like you can't win UNO without getting rid of the cards in your hand, we will never get control of our debt until we discard the waste in Washington's bloated budget. It may sound a bit oversimplified, but it isn't. To demonstrate the point, I brought my own deck of cards with me today.

OK. So these are UNO cards, all right? Every one of these cards lists a current government expenditure and its cost to the taxpayers. Each represents a real choice Congress will make in the coming days. In each scenario, the Democrats are likely to choose taxing and borrowing to pay for the spending rather than to trim the unneeded expenditure. So let's pick a card, any card, and see if that is a good deal for the taxpayers.

So let's see. UNO card No. 1: ``Cut the pork or draw 25.''

After a decades-long moratorium on congressional earmarks, the House of Representatives has revived the corrupt practice of earmarking tax dollars for politicians' pet projects. More than 3,300 earmarks, consisting of $9.3 billion, have been proposed by Members of Congress just this year, which includes purchasing Santa gifts in Indiana and building fish markets in the Virgin Islands. We could save billions by pulling pork off the menu, but the Democrats are going to go with the drawing of 25 more cards instead.

OK, let's try another one. OK.

``End welfare for politicians or draw 25.''

Every year, millions of taxpayer dollars are diverted into a special account that exists solely to subsidize the campaigns of politicians running for President. The program has doled out more than $1.6 billion for parties and politicians to date, and there is currently $400 million sitting in the account. We could save the $400 million by pulling the plug on this welfare program for politicians, but, once again, the Democrats will choose to draw 25 more cards.

OK. The next card: ``Put the brakes on boondoggles or draw 25.''

Washington continues to bail out transit boondoggles across the country that are billions of dollars over budget and decades behind schedule, like, of course, folks, the San Francisco Bay Area subway extension to Silicon Valley, California's high-speed rail project, and Honolulu's elevated rail line. The Democrats are proposing $10 billion more to support the high-speed rail projects alone. We could save tens of billions of dollars by canceling these gravy trains that are taking taxpayers for a ride, but you can probably guess what the Democrats' play will ultimately be: to draw 25.

So, folks, let's lay the cards on the table. The Democrats' borrowing-based budgeting is a real house of cards because you simply can't borrow your way out of debt. The bills will eventually come due in the form of higher taxes and drastic cuts to government services, and it will be the taxpayers who get lost in the shuffle. Because the Democrats control both Chambers of Congress and the White House, it may seem that the deck is stacked against our taxpayers, but I have a card up my sleeve.

Folks, let's put it in reverse and go in a different direction. Instead of just throwing in the cards and going along with the Democrats' demand to borrow another penny, let's first go through the budget, line by line, and determine what is a priority and what isn't.

It is time to make Washington start living within a realistic budget, just like every other family in America is expected to do. That may be a wild idea to the big spenders in DC, but taxpayers know that is how to play your cards right. So, instead of picking up more debt, let's skip--let's skip--the spending that isn't needed until we are sure Washington isn't wasting a single dollar.

Madam President, I come to the floor to join my colleague from Indiana and to congratulate him on those remarks, which would be most certainly well received in Wyoming, and reflect the feeling of the people in my State in terms of the reckless tax-and- spending process in which the Democrats are engaged.

And I come today to the floor to oppose what the Democrats are trying to do in terms of adding money to the debt, additional spending, a bill that has been described in so many ways. I read it and, to me, it is reckless. It is extreme. It is scary to talk about the sort of things that the Democrats are trying to impose on the American people.

When we take a look at what happens with this national debt, the folks on Medicare and on Social Security are concerned they are going to get undermined--those wonderful programs that work for so many people--because of the growing debt.

How are we going to address it?

Well, the suspension of the debt ceiling expired a month and a half ago. Less than 2 weeks later, Democrats passed a blueprint for the largest spending bill in the history of the United States, over $3.5 trillion. People looked at it and saw how much it is, and they said: Democrats may say it is $3.5 trillion; it is a lot more than that. More than America spent in World War II to win the war? This is in addition to the $2 trillion already spent and added to the debt by this administration on a party-line vote earlier this year.

So America's debt is now over $28 trillion. We are on our way to $30 trillion. You divide that out by the number of men, women, and children in America, and it is approaching $100,000 per individual. It is going to have to be paid back ultimately to Wall Street, to Japan, to China, and to those that hold our debt.

And the problem, when you look at a debt that large, and say, ``How do you put that into perspective,'' is how much interest are we paying on the loan? People that borrow money for a car or a home know how much interest they are paying on the loan, and for the United States, it is approaching

$400 billion in interest on the loan a year. And this is at record low interest rates.

Well, where is that money coming from? You know, you get nothing in return for it. But Democrats seem to think we need to just keep spending money and borrowing money to pay for the reckless spending. They don't want voters to know about it. They don't want voters to know how much money. They are asking for an unlimited ability to spend until after the 2022 election.

That is what is coming over from the House. They say: Don't ask us. We are not going to tell you. We are just going to keep on spending like there is no tomorrow, all the way through a date after the 2022 election.

They want to cover all of this spending by suspending what is called the debt ceiling so they can borrow as much as they want.

Well, it is not going to happen. You can't have it both ways. If they try to spend trillions of dollars, they are going to be responsible for the consequences of that spending. Republicans are not going to give Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi a blank check, period. We are not going to give them a rubberstamp to their reckless spending. If Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling, they have the capacity to do it on their own, and they will need to do it on their own. Republicans are not going to participate.

The Democrats have been in charge of Washington now for 8 full months. They have complete control--the House, the Senate, the White House. During all that time, they haven't raised a finger to lift the debt ceiling. Instead, they had the Secretary of the Treasury send a letter. She said the Treasury will run out of money in October. It is now September 22. The clock is ticking.

Democrats chose not to raise the debt ceiling when they passed their $2 trillion addition to the debt earlier this year. They called it COVID relief, but actually 90 percent of the money actually went for medical care. They chose not to raise it as part of this over $3.5 trillion or $4 trillion spending bill that is being proposed as a result of Bernie Sanders' socialist budget.

And Democrats think that the American people can keep spending money in such a reckless way. They are playing chicken with our economy. They think they can fool the American people. It is not going to work. Republicans are not going to be held hostage by the Democrats, and the American people should not be either or be put on the hook.

If Democrats have enough votes to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars, then they have enough votes to raise the debt limit. This is Democrat debt. It is Biden-Schumer-Pelosi debt. Senate Republicans will not vote to burden future generations or to undermine Social Security and Medicare today with this kind of reckless spending.

We are not going to vote for the spending bill--not one of us--and not going to vote to raise the debt limit on Democrat terms. If they want to go it alone on spending, the Democrats can go it alone on raising the debt ceiling.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, with a Democratic President in the White House, Democrats controlling the House of Representatives, and Democrats controlling the Senate, those on the left have every arrow in the quiver they need to raise the debt limit. It is their sole responsibility. They own this. It is also their responsibility, having control of all the levers of government, to ensure that government does not shut down next Thursday at midnight.

As you have already heard from my colleagues here today, we Republicans are united in the fact that we will not assist in passing another reckless, Big Government, socialism package designed to reshape the Nation and make Americans more dependent on the government from the moment they are born to the moment they die.

FDR once warned of a government dependency when he said that ``continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.''

As elected officials, we are supposed to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. We are supposed to leave this country in better shape for our children and grandchildren. But the Democrats' tax-and-spending spree accomplishes neither of these things and, in fact, further promulgates the government dependency FDR cautioned future generations about.

What is shocking is that in just one generation the national debt has soared from $5 trillion to more than $28 trillion. Think about that for a second. In the first 225 years of our Nation's history, the national debt was approximately $5 trillion. In the last 20 years, we have increased it by nearly another $25 trillion, including accumulating more than $7 trillion in just the past 2 years.

Now, I said this before, but, folks, grab your wallets. Grab your wallets because the bill they want to pass for reconciliation is going to include massive spending that will put heavy debt on our country. It is going to raise your taxes. It is going to cause Medicare to run out in 2 years. And it is going to continue to drive up the cost of living.

The inflation we are seeing now is a double whammy. You have less money to spend, and the things you are able to buy cost more. It is hurting every hard-working American, but none more than our seniors and young families living paycheck to paycheck.

This looming government shutdown is just another crisis created by this administration. They created a crisis at our southern border, in Afghanistan, with a labor shortage, and now on the pocketbooks of Americans with a multitrillion-dollar socialist spending package.

While it is true America has seen a number of horrendous financial crises before, none have so quickly developed as the pending fiscal crisis President Biden created with the trillions of dollars' worth of reckless spending and reckless taxing in just the first 9 months of control.

And Democrats are now pointing fingers at Republicans, claiming that by refusing to go along with their out-of-control spending and joining them to increase the debt limit, that we are the ones who are being financially irresponsible.

Give me a break. If they were serious about getting our fiscal house in order, they wouldn't be trying to force through another partisan spending bill that is going to bankrupt our country and instead would be pursuing budget reforms and debt reduction proposals in exchange for increasing the debt.

This is not a serious political party, and America needs to recognize that we have a choice between free enterprise capitalism and a socialist economy. Trust me, I heard loud and clear this past weekend during my townhall meetings in the Kansas City area about what Kansans want, and it is not the socialism that has borne out trillions of dollars' worth of spending and taxing that has led to reckless inflation, hampered our economy, and killed our jobs.

Ultimately, if you want strong roads, bridges, high-speed internet, good schools, and a strong military, we need a stronger economy. That should be our focus right now, not continuing down this administration's socialist economic policies.

Pre-COVID, we had the greatest economy in my lifetime. That came about because we lowered people's taxes, we lowered regulations, and we lowered energy prices. We need smart, targeted investments, not radical spending that leaves the country at a disadvantage.

I yield the floor.