On the recordFebruary 11, 2016
I appreciate the opportunity to offer this amendment on a very important bill, and I appreciate the work of the gentleman from Texas. I believe the bill is necessary. My amendment, hopefully, will provide some additional information. As we know, Congress has the authority to set the debt limit. The President, through the Secretary of the Treasury, however, has the apparent authority to set the date to which all the cable networks peg their doomsday countdown clocks. We saw this firsthand in 2011 and 2013. Even if receipts, expenditures, or use of extraordinary measures change their internal projections of the exhaustion date, Treasury is not required in any way to provide regular, independently verifiable updates to Congress or the American people. Instead, the elected officials charged with making the ultimate decision on increasing the Nation's maxed-out credit card are expected to simply take Treasury's word for it--sometimes months after an initial estimate. My proposed amendment is very simple. It would require that Treasury provide a weekly reporting of the extraordinary measures and the projected exhaustion date per our Nation's debt limit. {time} 1445 It is a matter of transparency. But it is also exactly the information we need as Members of Congress to fulfill our constitutional responsibility on this issue. Consider just how long the use of extraordinary measures lasted in 2015.…
