John Cornyn: “So not only is the unemployment rate unacceptably high, those are people still looking for work. We know more and more…”

“So not only is the unemployment rate unacceptably high, those are people still looking for work. We know more and more people are simply giving up because they have quit looking, and they are reflected in that smaller percentage of people actually in the workforce. As we all know, the President has had multiple opportunities to make that grand bargain for long-term debt reduction. He has endorsed a grand bargain but walked away from his own bipartisan fiscal commission, the so-called Simpson-Bowles Commission, in December of 2010. He might have also endorsed a grand bargain put forward by the Bipartisan Policy Center's Domenici-Rivlin Commission, but he walked away from that one too. President Reagan negotiated with Tip O'Neill. President Bush 41 negotiated with George Mitchell. President Clinton negotiated with Newt Gingrich. President Bush 43 negotiated with Ted Kennedy. That is what Presidential leadership requires, and which is so obviously missing in this context. I hope the President will follow up on this meeting we had this morning and begin the kind of negotiations that would provide a payment plan to pay off the debt America already owes--by the way, it is not just America, it is every man, woman, and child in this country--before he comes back here and asks us to raise the credit card limit by another $1 trillion. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.”