I wish to say to the Senator from Oklahoma that standing and going through the list of things that offer opportunities for saving is very important. I have a list as well. For example, on my list, we know of well over $1 trillion of money owed to the United States of America by people who have not paid it. If we even got a portion of that over a 10-year period--that is over a 10-year period--we could do that. I look forward to working with the Senator on that. But tonight we are not facing a 3-week timeframe as my colleague perhaps suggested, we are just facing down a 5-day timeframe and we are facing a manmade crisis and, by that, I have to say a Republican-made crisis on raising the debt ceiling. We have never in the history of this country faced a situation such as this. Why do I say this? Because the debt ceiling has been raised 89 times--89 times--and I can tell you because I voted for it a number of times and voted no four times. Yes, on occasion you vote no on it and send a message, but you don't bring it down. I have never seen anything like this. We are going down a dangerous path. When I say we have raised the debt ceiling 89 times, that is in the Record--55 times under Republican Presidents, 34 times under Democratic Presidents. The debt limit was raised the most times during Ronald Reagan's Presidency. During his 8 years, the debt limit was increased by 200 percent.…
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More from Barbara Boxer
I think we have to pay attention to David Axelrod. He is really brilliant when it comes to winning campaigns.
This is a sad moment, we always had two parties, one was to the right of center, one was to the left of center, and we never had a party, so extreme and so willing to become the party of grievance and anger and division.
There was a violent attack on our Capitol on January 6. We know what we saw. We knew it then. All these Republicans and right-wing commentators knew it then. And they decided to step back and not tell the truth. And the truth is coming out.
We have to have the people who were Republicans before really just drop that label and either become Democrats, if they can’t get themselves to do that, to become nonpartisan, independent voters.





