Louise Slaughter: “Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New York talks about the great mandate the Republicans got in the election.…”

“Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New York talks about the great mandate the Republicans got in the election. Why did they not have the guts to bring up an increase in the debt limit before the election? This is no surprise. In fact, we technically reached default over a month ago. They have been borrowing Federal employees' retirement to keep the government floating, but now they say we have no option but to vote for this today, and they have no plan. Let us distill it down to something Americans understand. Trillions, billions, they do not get it. This is the third time we are going to ask for an increase in our borrowing on our credit card limit in 3 years under the Republican leadership, $2,000 per U.S. citizen. That is what they are authorizing today to borrow. Now everybody here is going to have to pay that back with interest. With interest. And they have no plan to stop borrowing into the indefinite future. No plan at all. They will not allow us to adopt a simple principle: If they want to increase spending, cut something else. If you want to cut income, decrease taxes, either get tax increases elsewhere or cut spending. That is all we are saying. It is a simple principle. It is something every American would have to do before their credit card company would give them an increase for the third time in 3 years. That is what they are doing here. They say, there is no time to do that.”