Jodey Arrington: “Mr. Speaker, let's pause for a brief moment of intellectual honesty. Both parties have failed. This institution has…”

“Mr. Speaker, let's pause for a brief moment of intellectual honesty. Both parties have failed. This institution has failed. We have failed our country. We have jeopardized our economy, our security, and our leadership in the world. Worst of all, we have compromised on our children's future and the blessing of their inheritance of freedom and opportunity. We have failed. That is why we are talking about a constitutional amendment to impose fiscal responsibility on a body politic that has not done that, that has not mustered the political will to do that. We have a national debt per GDP that exceeds World War II levels of debt, an annual deficit that is larger than both the defense and nondefense discretionary budgets, with 50 cents or greater on every dollar that we borrow up to $2 trillion going to service our interest payments. Half of what we borrow, a trillion dollars, is more than what we spend on defense. Then, there is this ominous forecast by CBO that even at $39 trillion today, where we are teetering on a potential sovereign debt crisis, we will add $180 trillion to the national debt in the 30-year out. If that is not unacceptable to everybody, I don't know what is.”