Mick Mulvaney

Mr. Chairman, I am going to do something I don't ordinarily do on this floor, which is implore my colleagues across the aisle to please, please, please, support this amendment. Let's take away for at least one day the ``R'' or the ``D'' from behind the President's name. Let's take away the ``R'' or the ``D'' from behind our names and look at this for what it is: a President doing something he says he cannot do--make law--using the excuse that this body cannot act so that he can. That is not how the system works, and it is wrong.

I am here today to tell you that if in the future a Republican President does the same thing, I will be the first to be here with you to stand against that, to fight back.

But today I implore you to please support the amendment even if you are voting against the bill in order to send the message that law is not made in the White House. Law is not made because Congress fails to act. Law is made in this room when we do act, and every single time any President violates that, he violates all of this institution.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Chairman, I think it is noteworthy that once again--once again--and this is the fourth budget cycle that I have been through, the fourth Democratic budget offered here, that never balances. It never balances. How do you ever, ever pay back money that you have already borrowed if you never have a surplus and never get to balance? I have said it before and I will say it again: if you borrow money from me and intend to pay it back, that is debt. If you borrow money from me and never intend to pay it back, that is theft. That is what the Democrats are offering here today, Mr. Chairman. They are encouraging us to borrow more and borrow more and borrow more and never lay out any plan whatsoever for paying that money back to the children and grandchildren from whom we are borrowing.

The only plan that will be offered later today that does that is the Republican budget. I strongly encourage a ``no'' vote on the Democratic plan, a ``no'' vote on continued generational theft, and a ``yes'' vote on the Republican plan.