Sylvester Turner: “we are debating tonight this bill because our fiscal house is in total disarray. After 8 years of shrinking deficits…”

“we are debating tonight this bill because our fiscal house is in total disarray. After 8 years of shrinking deficits, and finally reaching one true surplus in fiscal year 2000, we have seen over the last months a deteriorating fiscal condition that has allowed us to be bumping up against the $5.95 trillion statutory debt ceiling, when we were told by Secretary O'Neill just a year ago we would not reach it until 2008. The truth of the matter is that we need to return to fiscal responsibility. We need to stop raiding the Social Security trust fund. If any corporate executive in America raided the employees' retirement trust funds, they would be thrown into jail. Yet we are doing it tonight. The truth is, the Democrats have laid out a plan. That plan has been introduced in the form of legislation. That plan says we will agree to a $150 billion increase in the debt ceiling immediately and no further increase until we have a plan to return us to a balanced budget by 2007, until we establish spending caps to control our spending, and until we strengthen and extend the pay-go rules. That is the Democratic plan. That is what this House should be approving tonight.”