Lloyd Bentsen: “I was asked by a reporter yesterday as to why my colleague, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Doggett], and I introduced a…”

“I was asked by a reporter yesterday as to why my colleague, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Doggett], and I introduced a privileged resolution to bring a clean debt limit extension to the floor. My first response was, because it is the obligation of the Congress to make sure that America pays its obligations. The Speaker has chosen not to schedule on the calendar a clean debt limit extension, which has very serious implications. Additionally, we have had to follow what Mr. Kennedy of Massachusetts is trying to do through a discharge petition to bring this up, because we have a small band of self-described revolutionaries who do not think that we ought to do this. Let me briefly remind this House that the last small bank of revolutionaries who chose not to pay their obligations were the Bolsheviks who in the early 20th century decided that they would not pay the obligations of the nation of Russia and thus defaulted on what were then called czar bonds, and even today there is no market for other obligations.”