On the recordMay 22, 2013
And in particular the debt ceiling was not contained in the budget, it was not debated in the budget, it is not part of the budget, and the only question here--we could have gone to conference 60 days ago if the Democrats had simply agreed not to use reconciliation as a backdoor trick to raise the debt ceiling, which has happened three times in the past. So this is not a hypothetical risk. This is, I believe, the intention of the majority, and it is why we are objecting to raising the debt ceiling--to issuing an unlimited credit card--and digging the hole deeper without actually fixing the problem.
