Charles W. Stenholm: “this will be another in a series of 1- hours that the so-called Blue Dog Coalition is taking to focus on the budget, to…”

“this will be another in a series of 1- hours that the so-called Blue Dog Coalition is taking to focus on the budget, to focus on the request of the administration to raise our debt ceiling by $750 billion. We want to continue to talk about this. I want to make it very, very clear that we, the Blue Dogs, are willing to support a temporary increase in the debt limit to meet the expenses of the war and to allow government to meet its obligations; but we suggest holding off on a long-term increase in the debt ceiling until we have a plan in place to return our country and our fiscal affairs to balance. I remind everyone that it was less than a year ago that we stood and debated on this floor of the House the economic game plan that we were going to follow for the next year and the next 10 years. I remind everyone just briefly that the Blue Dogs felt that we ought to be conservative with the $5.6 trillion projected surplus just in case it was not real, just in case something of an emergency nature might occur, just in case those who projected that surplus might be wrong. We suggested that we ought to take half of that $5.6 trillion projected surplus and pay down the debt.”