Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I appreciate what the majority leader has said. There is a lot going on, and there is the beginning, perhaps, of coming…”

“I appreciate what the majority leader has said. There is a lot going on, and there is the beginning, perhaps, of coming together, hopefully, with the President and the leadership of the House and the Senate. I just hope that we can establish why it is that there is such a divide on how we accomplish the issue of raising the debt ceiling with real reforms that will assure that we will not have to raise the debt ceiling again; that we will cut deficits so the debt will also be cut in this country. We cannot sustain the level of debt we have now. It is the highest we have ever had in the history of this country. Mr. President, let's face it. We have two basic problems. We have this looming $14 trillion debt that is about to hit the ceiling, and we have to raise the ceiling. It would be irresponsible to do that without significant reforms that will assure that we are not going to hit it again. But the second problem we have is 9.1 percent unemployment. So it is not like we are in a vacuum and we can just start taxing our small businesses, when small business has already had the looming hit of the health care plan that was passed that is going to cause every business in this country significant increases in their cost of doing business. So when people are out there saying: Why is unemployment still so high? Why is hiring lagging?…”