Jim Matheson: “I thank the gentleman for conducting this session tonight with all of the Blue Dogs to talk about what I think is such a…”

“I thank the gentleman for conducting this session tonight with all of the Blue Dogs to talk about what I think is such a critical issue. Let us remember why we are here. We are talking about a request that has come in for us to raise the debt limit by $750 billion. We throw numbers around here all the time, and sometimes they lose a little of their meaning. We should really think about this. This is a lot of money, and it is going to extend the debt limit by a lot. Think about how this relates to us in the private sector. Before I came here, I worked in the business world. There were times when I used to develop a couple of large projects and I had to go to a bank because I did have to borrow money to help pay for the project. There are times when one does need to go into debt to borrow money for a project in the business world, to take out a mortgage on a house. But what I had to do when I took that money out for that business project is I had to have a story I could tell to the lender about how I was going to pay that money back over time. When I took out a mortgage on my house, I had to explain to the lender how I was employed, how I had a salary, and how I was going to be able to pay back that mortgage over time. The problem we have here now as Members of Congress is that we are being asked to take on this new mortgage, $750 billion, in fact, a pretty big mortgage.”