Emanuel Cleaver: “As I raised the question earlier, my concern was and I knew we would eventually get to this point, was that the money…”

“As I raised the question earlier, my concern was and I knew we would eventually get to this point, was that the money that we do not budget we borrow. And most Americans are outraged over the U.S. debt which is rising even as we speak here tonight. When we borrow the money for the rehabilitation of the gulf coast and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are borrowing those dollars. And right now we owe Japan $683 billion. And then next to them we owe China $249 billion. We even owe OPEC $67 billion. And at a time when we are talking about reducing our dependence on foreign oil, it does not make sense to me, I am from the middle of the country so there are some things maybe I do not understand. It does not make sense to me that we are talking about reducing our dependence on foreign oil while at the same time borrowing more money from OPEC. There is a scripture, Proverbs 22:7 which says that the borrower is always at the whim of the lender. And when we are talking about owing OPEC $67 billion, I am not sure that we are in any kind of position to be influential with folks to whom we owe billions of dollars. And the debt continues to rise with even our neighbor to the north, Canada. And most Americans cannot understand that debt because we have to pay our bills each month. And with the gasoline prices reaching $3 a gallon it means that someone who is earning minimum wage, $5.15, works the first hour of their week to buy 1\7/10\ gallons of gasoline. That is obscene.…”