Charles W. Stenholm: “I like the spirit of optimism that my friend, the gentleman from Texas, has taken. I would encourage him to look at the…”

“I like the spirit of optimism that my friend, the gentleman from Texas, has taken. I would encourage him to look at the letter that a large number of Democrats have sent to the Speaker offering a considerable number of votes for a clean debt ceiling next week in order that we might avert a crisis and send unnecessary signals to the marketplace. What we ask in return is not a blank check, but that we have a debt ceiling, and we revisit our budget in September when we come back after we have seen the reestimates. As the gentleman knows, we are now currently estimating that the deficit this year is going to go over $200 billion. That is after we have used all the Social Security trust fund, all the Medicare, all the civil service, all the military retirement fund. I would hope the gentleman would agree and would accept the hand that is coming from this side of the aisle from the minority leader as well as the Blue Dogs of saying that we are ready to work with the gentleman in that endeavor, and I hope he puts that as a third option.”