Glenn Grothman: “Most of the discussion in this building over the last 2 weeks has been on the debt limit, and I guess I should lead off…”

“Most of the discussion in this building over the last 2 weeks has been on the debt limit, and I guess I should lead off by addressing it a little bit. A lot of the American public is thinking, why are people fighting on this bill? What difference does it really make? Let us get it behind us. I want to leave the American public with two reasons why at least the Republican Party wants a little bit more fiscal restraint than otherwise would happen. First of all, the debt is now 100 percent of GDP. It is just shy of that. That is the first time it has happened since World War II. At the end of World War II, we knew we were going to lay off millions of people in the military. We were going to stop making ships. We were going to stop making planes. We were going to stop making tanks. So, there would be a dramatic reduction in government spending, and that is exactly what happened. Slowly, the debt fell from 100 percent to a little over 20 percent of GDP before recently rocketing up, in part due to COVID and in part due to President Biden's reckless spending. Now, we are at 100 percent of GDP, but all we see in the future is more people retiring, more money spent on Social Security, and more money spent on Medicare. We can never cut either one of those two programs--we should not--which means we have to exercise fiscal restraint everywhere else. The time to do that is now.…”