Harold Volkmer: “the other evening, on Tuesday night, the President said, ``Let us work together,'' on many things. Now is the time to…”

“the other evening, on Tuesday night, the President said, ``Let us work together,'' on many things. Now is the time to work together to make sure that we increase the debt limit that needs to be done so that the financial conditions of many, not only of the U.S. Government, but of many of our municipalities, our States, and even some of my school districts that have Treasury bonds, do not have their bond rating reduced. Mr. Speaker, we can work together to do this. All we have to do is come forward and sign the Discharge Petition No. 8 that provides that we will have before this House a clean debt limit extension so that we can do it and we can get past this hurdle. Mr. Speaker, I am afraid that if we do not do this, that under the leadership of our Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], we are not going to get it done, and we are going to see a chaotic financial condition throughout this country for no purpose whatsoever. There is no reason that we cannot increase the debt limit and do it now. Now is the time to do it, not to wait until the Government has to default on their bonds. So if Members want to prevent that from happening, the easiest way to do it is to sign Discharge Petition No. 8. Any Member can sign it. They do not have to be a Democrat; Republicans can sign it, and I welcome Republicans to sign the discharge petition.”