Max Baucus: “with all due respect to my very good friends, this is an uncertainty layered upon an uncertainty. The uncertainty is…”

“with all due respect to my very good friends, this is an uncertainty layered upon an uncertainty. The uncertainty is whether the surplus target will be met. The uncertainty layered on top of the uncertainty is whether the trigger will be pulled. We cannot legislate certainty. We can only exercise good judgment. We, as a Congress, in these next years, have to decide what to do according to the circumstances at the time and exercise good judgment as to what we should do. Unfortunately, nobody has discussed the substance of this amendment. It is because we are in this time constraint where everything is rushed, and we are in message amendment time. Nobody has looked at the substance. There have been no hearings on this. Let me tell you what this thing does. I am all in favor of the intent, but if this is enacted, we are making a mockery of the Congress--a mockery. First, you cannot and should not limit public debt management. The Treasury Secretary has to have discretion in debt management. Right off the top, we are tying the hands of the Treasury Secretary, for whatever reason he or she may want to borrow more, sell more securities, sell more bonds for domestic reasons or for international reasons. Secretary Rubin has said consistently that we should not tie debt management to fiscal policy. You should not do it. It is wrong.…”