On the recordMay 31, 2011
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, last December, the President's own Fiscal Commission offered a plan to rein in our budget deficits and debt. While I did not support the final package--especially the tax increases it proposed--it did contain several meaningful suggestions for ways to get our Federal spending under control. Yet last February, when the President submitted his budget for 2012, he ignored their advice and provided no plan to rein in deficits and debt. Last month, Standard and Poor's downgraded the outlook for the U.S. credit rating because Washington appeared to have no plan to rein in our budget deficits and debt. In recent weeks, many congressional Democrats were proving them right when over 100 of them called for an unconditional increase in the U.S. debt limit. They signed a letter calling on their colleagues to establish ``the Democratic position in favor of a clean extension of the debt ceiling,'' something Secretary Geithner has also repeatedly called for. It's time to come clean with the American people about our deficits and debt. At over $14 trillion, our debt is as large as the entire U.S. economy and is putting the American Dream at risk for future generations. It has become an anchor on economic growth, costing us 1 million jobs at a time when the unemployment rate has not been this high for this long since the Great Depression.…
