On the recordJanuary 23, 2013
I yield 1 minute to another member of our committee, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott). (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, here we are with another Republican straw man out here--a bill set up to fail. The Senate has not yet adopted its rules. We don't know where the filibuster is going to be used or anything, and you're saying they have to do something by a fixed date. Now, we've had fixed dates in here as long as I've been here, and we never make them; but what we are creating is continuous chaos globally in the economic world, and what you're doing by this is simply saying, hey, let's have another big kerfuffle. We'll be out here in May, 4 months from now, making exactly the same speeches. We'll all bring out the same pieces of paper and read from them and give the same speeches, and we will continue to retard the ability of the American economy to move forward. We cannot send the message worldwide that the United States has lost the ability to make decisions, to pay its debts. If that's the message you want the world to get, that's what this is about today. I'm voting against this. Bring back one that lifts the debt limit and that gets it out of the way so we can get down to the cost-cutting that needs to happen.
