Debt Ceiling Negotiations
Mr. President, this weekend we will celebrate Independence Day and 235 years of this country's very proud history. This Nation was founded on the notion of liberty and justice for all. As we celebrate, we should remember that the pursuit…
Mr. President, this weekend we will celebrate Independence Day and 235 years of this country's very proud history. This Nation was founded on the notion of liberty and justice for all. As we celebrate, we should remember that the pursuit of liberty is not just a journey with a destination but, rather, a quest to which we must recommit ourselves every single day. As we commit fully and firmly to liberty and justice, we must commit just as fully and firmly to the idea that the liberty and justice should be truly for all.
It is often said that with liberty comes responsibility. We should take that responsibility seriously. I am confident we do. That is why the Senate will reconvene on Tuesday, the day after the Fourth. We will do that because we have work to do. We will be in session that week-- that is next week--with our first vote on July 5. We will determine what time that vote will be on July 5, likely in the afternoon because of the travel problems with the Fourth of July the previous day. There is still so much to do to put Americans back to work, cut our deficit, get our economy back to work. It is very important we do this. That moment is too important, the obstacles too steep, and the time too short to waste even a moment.
I hope my Republican colleagues will put politics aside and help Democrats fulfill Congress's responsibility to the American people. There are some Republicans in Congress who say the U.S. Government has less responsibility to pay its bills than struggling families
all across our great country. As a default crisis approaches, Republicans are saying we should simply stop cutting checks for the national equivalent of the home mortgage, the credit card, the car payment. Republicans say this crisis is about spending more or growing government. They are wrong. This crisis is about paying the bills for things we have already bought--for example, a decade of tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, our war of choice in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, those tax cuts for billionaires and millionaires and the wars unpaid for. What they are not saying is what the consequences would be of such an irresponsible decision to not pay our accrued bills--remember, the bills we already accumulated, have run up. If we did not pay our bills, it would plunge the United States not into a recession, not into the so-called double-dip recession, but into a full-blown depression. That is without a doubt. Without exception, the respected financial voices of our time have said the effects of a default crisis would be felt across the globe, not just here in the United States. I repeat, this would create a worldwide depression.
Many respected voices could not have spoken in clearer terms. From the private sector, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, a man by the name of Jamie Dimon, said default would be ``catastrophic.'' He went on to say raising the debt limit is our ``moral obligation.''
What does that mean? It means the world should ``know that the United States is good for its money. Period.'' That is what Jamie Dimon said, and I agree.
He is not the only one saying this. Business leaders have said it, economists have said it, banks have said it, and Republican advisers to Presidents Reagan and the first George Bush have said it. Perhaps more importantly, credit rating agencies have said it. Credit rating agencies Standard & Poor's and Moody's have said that if the United States misses even one payment, the Nation will immediately lose its high credit rating, interest rates would increase. Remember, for every 1-percent increase in the interest rates it would cost our country $1.3 trillion--not million, not billion, trillion.
That is one more reason why defaulting on our debt to make a point about fiscal responsibility makes so little sense. If we default, it will actually cost our Nation more to meet our financial obligations in the future, and that is a gross understatement.
Democrats believe we must create jobs and get our economy moving again. We must cut spending and live within our means. We all know that. We must eliminate tax loopholes for millionaires, billionaires, and oil companies. Republicans must not put the economy of this country and the world at risk for the sake of protecting special interests and the big donors. It is time we returned to the type of fiscal discipline Democrats brought to Washington in the 1990s, when Democrats in Congress and the White House balanced the budget and used the surplus-- to do what? To pay down the debt. We were being criticized for paying down the debt too fast. President Bush changed that very quickly.
But a default crisis would do nothing to get our fiscal house in order. Instead, default, in effect bankruptcy, would derail our fragile economic recovery and plunge this Nation and the world back into not just a recession but a full-blown depression. I said that earlier. It is the truth. It would also risk millions of Americans' jobs, tax refunds, Social Security checks, Medicare payments, and paychecks for our troops.
There was a nice report written the day before yesterday by Alice Rivlin and one of George Bush's Assistant Secretaries of the Treasury and they said the same thing but in much more detail. Frankly, reading that was very frightening. Those risks are simply not worth taking.
Today, middle-class families in America are struggling to survive economically. They are living paycheck to paycheck in many instances. Meanwhile, Republicans walked away from the negotiations. Why did they walk away from the negotiations that would have cut the deficit and averted a catastrophic default? They did it in order to protect tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. That is obvious. Republicans are willing to risk our economy to keep tax breaks for corporations and ship jobs overseas. Meanwhile, average Americans are struggling to find work here at home. Republicans are willing to risk our economy to protect tax breaks for owners of corporate jets and yachts and oil companies, while the average Americans are struggling to afford gas for their cars. Republicans are willing to risk our economy to protect tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and average Americans are struggling to meet their mortgage payments for their homes.
I have said it before. Republicans simply have the wrong priorities. They have made it their mission to stand and shout for the richest few. We Democrats consider it our responsibility to stand and shout for all Americans. That is what this debate is all about.