Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “Because, Mr. Meek, what you are saying here, it is not simply a matter of fact. It goes beyond just factual accuracy…”

“Because, Mr. Meek, what you are saying here, it is not simply a matter of fact. It goes beyond just factual accuracy that you are talking about. There is risk when it comes to this much debt being owned, this much of our debt being owned by another country. And then that doesn't even take into consideration whether the country that owns that debt, how friendly they are towards us. Let us just talk about some recent comments by some of the leaders of the nations that own our debt. The Japanese Prime Minister, obviously Japan is an ally of ours and not one that we have to do a lot of hand wringing about, but Prime Minister Hashimoto just recently, I think this was a couple of weeks ago, stated, ``We hope we don't have to succumb to the temptation to sell off U.S. Treasury bills.'' And later that same day the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 192 points, one of the largest declines in points in history. So there is real risk to accumulating that much debt in each of these nations economically in our country and economically across the world. I have heard many of our colleagues, very flippantly on the other side of the aisle, write off the issue of debt as if it is not a big deal. Debt, in someone's household individually, would be a big deal. When we talk about the deficit and deficit spending, which is obviously a separate issue, that is a very big deal. Debt is something that we should begin to move away from.…”