Frank Pallone: “The Republican leadership wants to hold this Congress hostage to their ideological agenda where they want to cut…”

“The Republican leadership wants to hold this Congress hostage to their ideological agenda where they want to cut Medicare, Medicaid, cut environmental programs, cut education, and they are saying unless you do some of that or unless you provide tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations, we are not going to extend the debt ceiling and we are going to threaten the possibility of this country going into default, again, a commitment that was made and a commitment that was broken. They should bring up a clean debt ceiling. They should not extend it for another week or another 2 weeks but continue it through the rest of the fiscal year so the possibility of default is not out there. I do not need to say what could possibly happen if this country went into default. Even the threat of it is a problem.”