Sean Duffy: “I thank the gentleman from Texas for all of his good work on this legislation. Mr. Chairman, as all of us know in this…”

“I thank the gentleman from Texas for all of his good work on this legislation. Mr. Chairman, as all of us know in this institution and around the country, we are $19 trillion in debt. We borrow around $3.8 billion a day, and we spend about $250 billion a year to service our debt. One of the tools that we have in this Congress is the debt limit in order to get the administration to help reform the way we spend. In 2011, Congress challenged President Obama. When he asked to have an increase in the debt limit, we said let's have a decrease in how much money we spend. As a political fight played out, the administration promised that chaos would ensue across the global markets if the debt limit were reached, and it also said that any proposal that would prioritize payments through the Treasury for principal and interest on our debt could not be taken seriously. Mr. McClintock had a bill that would have done just that. The Committee on Financial Services, the committee on which I serve, did an investigation, and we found that, though they said Mr. McClintock's bill could not be taken seriously, they actually had a plan to do just what Mr. McClintock had recommended, which is, if the debt limit is reached, prioritize payments. They weren't being honest with the American people, because what they wanted to do was to use the argument of chaos to put pressure on Republicans to cave and not demand that we reform the way that we spend. My amendment here today is very simple.…”