Jodey Arrington: “I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia, our chairman, for his leadership on, quite frankly, two of the most…”

“I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia, our chairman, for his leadership on, quite frankly, two of the most important issues that we face as a nation: number one, border security, which is national security; and then our national debt which if we ever--and we don't know when--but when it happens, it will be awfully hard to put it all back together, but a sovereign debt crisis would be devastating and would be our greatest national security threat. So I want to thank him for his leadership. Mr. Speaker, our great country is currently over $21 trillion in debt, and if we don't address this looming crisis, our children will not inherit the exceptional Nation that we as Americans have known for generations. This is the most important issue, I think, of our day. This is my generation's greatest challenge. One of the main reasons the American people are so frustrated and have lost confidence in Congress is because we play by a different set of rules. Nowhere is that disconnect more prominently on display than how we fund our government. No one gets to spend money they don't have on things they don't need. No one has a money tree growing in their backyard except, apparently, the United States Treasury. A day of reckoning is coming, and once the sovereign debt crisis begins, we won't be able to stop it, and the dark days of high taxes and high unemployment will descend upon the next generation of Americans.…”