Charles W. Stenholm: “today I want to take this time to continue a discussion that we, the so-called Blue Dog Democrats, the Blue Dog…”

“today I want to take this time to continue a discussion that we, the so-called Blue Dog Democrats, the Blue Dog Coalition, have been carrying on for the last 2 or 3 weeks talking about the urgency of this body in dealing with the debt ceiling and dealing with our economic game plan that has now pushed us once again into a position of having to borrow on the Social Security trust fund for the next 10 years. Just a little bit of a reminder or a refresher on everyone's mind tonight. It was just 1 year ago that we were on this floor advocating a budget, an economic game plan for this country that was different from what the majority and the administration wished. The thing that we said was that this $5.6 trillion was projected surpluses, and we emphasized projected. These were guesstimates. Most everyone agrees we cannot predict tomorrow, much less 10 years. But we lost. What we suggested was let us take half of that projected surplus and pay down our national debt. We were told we were in danger of paying it down too fast. That was somewhat laughable to most of us, the idea that you could pay down debt too fast, when you owed $5.6 trillion.”