On the recordJune 22, 2011
Mr. Speaker, we are now less than 6 weeks away from a magical date, August 2. That is the day when the Secretary of Treasury said we will essentially have to foreclose on the United States of America. We will begin paying China before we pay our troops. That is right. That is the day we run out of tricks to avoid raising the debt ceiling in this country. Just Sunday, my senior Senator, the minority leader of the Senate, said on CBS News that he was actually threatening basically to derail whatever deal comes on raising the debt ceiling if we don't do a deal on entitlements. It is an interesting threat, and I would like to point out what Ezra Klein wrote in The Washington Post. He said: ``But what, specifically, is the threat here? That Republicans will endanger the economy and run a campaign demanding deep Medicare cuts necessitated by an unrelenting hostility to tax increases on the richest Americans in an election year? That's not a credible threat. At some point, Democrats need to begin saying no to this stuff, and now's as good a time as any.'' I say no. ____________________
