Victor Fazio: “I think the gentlewoman makes an excellent point, and I think we all understand this from our own personal experience.…”

“I think the gentlewoman makes an excellent point, and I think we all understand this from our own personal experience. If we go out to borrow money to furnish our living room and we default on our debt to the finance company or to the retailer who sold us the furniture, a mark goes on our record. Our credit report at the credit bureau downtown is there for every other retailer to look at before they decide to extend us credit or not. It may be that they will not extend us any more credit. Our failure to pay our bills will be a black mark that we will not be able to live down, and we will not be able to borrow again. Or, as I think in the analogous case with the Federal debt, we will have to pay far more the next time we borrow because we are a risk. We are somebody who is a deadbeat, we are somebody who does not really pay our bills. As a result, when we want to go back to the retailer and borrow some more money, we are going to have to pay 3.5 or 4 or 5 percent more, and that is a huge increase in what we have to pay as a family in order to be able to attain the goods and services that we need.”