Charles W. Stenholm: “It is fascinating, having been around this place for now almost 23 years, to hear and to see how various Members of this…”

“It is fascinating, having been around this place for now almost 23 years, to hear and to see how various Members of this body react to certain situations that come up, depending on whether they are in the minority or in the majority. And there is no question that we have a serious problem facing our Nation coming up beginning this week, and then about June 28 it becomes of crisis proportion. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has formally requested Congress to increase the statutory limit on the publicly held debt by $750 billion, and that is billion with a ``b,'' up from the current level of $5.95 trillion to $6.7 trillion. Just today, Secretary O'Neill wrote the Congress again telling us that he will use up our borrowing authority by the end of this week and that we will have to begin juggling with the books in order to avoid a default, and by the end of June, at the latest, he will run out of maneuvers. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office issued a report indicating that revenues are coming in much lower than expected and the deficit will be much higher than they projected earlier this year.”