Steve Pearce: “Yes. I would comment to my colleagues that a government depends on the confidence of the people. We make promises all…”

“Yes. I would comment to my colleagues that a government depends on the confidence of the people. We make promises all the time, and we are expected to honor those promises if we are going to be a good government. We make promises to our seniors. We make promises to our veterans. We make promises to our young men and women who serve in the military that we will watch out for them, that we will take care of them. But like the gentleman says, we also make written contracts and written agreements. In this bill today, we have undermined the contracting process. We have declared that previous agreements simply must be renegotiated or you give up all future rights, and when we as a country choose to do that, not only do we offend and compromise our constitutional protection of private property rights, we undermine the confidence in our Nation and in our government. This is such a very serious step. It is a step that other Nations take very easily and yet is so significant, and yet this major step, this change in American policy was done without one single committee hearing.”