Sylvester Turner: “we are on this floor today trying to get our financial house back in order, trying to get this House to adopt a very…”

“we are on this floor today trying to get our financial house back in order, trying to get this House to adopt a very simple, straightforward rule requiring us to pay as we go that has already been adopted by the Senate. And it is really hard for me to understand why our Republican colleagues do not want to do this. I always thought they were the party of fiscal conservatism. They always wanted to balance a budget. Yet now they come to the floor and claim that the only remedy here is to cut spending when, in fact, they control both Houses of the Congress and they control the White House. So if they think that is the answer, why do not they get on with it? We just simply believe that you have got to run the Congress and the Federal Government like we do any household or any business. We have got to pay our bills. We have got to pay as we go. And why do we think that is so important? We think it is important because next year it is projected we will have the largest Federal deficit in the history of this country, over half a trillion. We are going to come to this floor, and we are going to vote on 13 appropriations bills as we do every year to fund this government, and we are going to borrow 60 percent of that total of those 13 appropriations bills. One could not get by with that at home. One could not get by with that in their business. One cannot get by with it at city government, county government, State government.…”