Bill Pascrell: “I rise, Madam Speaker, in strong opposition to the Pay China First Act. This is a Pyrrhic proposal if I ever saw one. By…”

“I rise, Madam Speaker, in strong opposition to the Pay China First Act. This is a Pyrrhic proposal if I ever saw one. By the way, the firefighters are in town today and tomorrow, and I'm going to go to every firefighter I see in Washington, D.C., and tell them how foolish--you know, the sponsors of this legislation believe that the Federal Government has no responsibility to firefighters or police officers anyway. It's strictly a local thing. So they're not trying to balance a budget. If this bill becomes law, the government will still be borrowing money and our deficit will increase. It's what this bill allows us to borrow money for that is so shameful. Is the government allowed to pay our Active Duty military? No. Can we add to our deficit to fund veterans' benefits? No. What about Medicare? Sorry, we're not going to pay those bills. However, the government is allowed to borrow to pay back foreign bondholders. The majority apparently believes it's okay to borrow money and add to our deficit to pay China, but not to honor the obligations we have to our troops, our veterans, our seniors, et cetera. Shameful. There is simply no other word. The United States of America pays its bills, period, end of sentence, case closed. We've done it for 200 years, whether it's obligations that we have to our troops or seniors, we have to those who have bought our bonds. We all saw what happened in the summer of 2011. We don't need a repeat. {time} 1020”