Hoyer Remarks on Republicans’ Unserious Bill That Does Nothing to Address the Debt

WASHINGTON, DC – House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) spoke on the House Floor today in opposition to a Republican bill that intends to further politicize the paying of our nation’s bills and is not a real attempt to address the debt in a responsible way. Below is a transcript of his remarks and a link to the video:

 
Click here to watch the video.

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The gentleman from Texas says he gets asked all the time about the national debt. He can give a very simple answer. Because the Congress keeps spending money and not paying for it. That’s how you incur debt. You buy things and you don't pay for them. They can be all sorts of things. They can be Social Security, they can be Medicare, they can be battleships, they can be health care, they can be roads, they can be bridges. And if you don't pay for them, it shouldn't be any surprise you incur debt.

"Who spends money in the United States of America? The Congress, under the Constitution. We’re the ones that spend money. And you might also, I say to my friend from Texas, say, well, when you create $800 billion-plus of new debt by cutting taxes and not paying for them, you have less revenue. But you don't cut buying stuff, you have more debt. $800 billion-plus in December. I didn’t vote for that bill because we didn’t pay for it.

"I’ve been in office a long time—it’s easy and takes no courage to cut taxes. No courage, whatsoever. What takes courage is buying things and if people want them saying we need to pay for them. We need to pay for them so our children don't pay for them, so our grandchildren don't pay for them. Because guess what? They’re going to have their challenges in their time. National security challenges; natural disasters, like [Hurricanes] Katrina or Sandy; Ebola; AIDS; [and other] health crises. They’re going to have to have resources and we're spending them.

"I’ve been here some time – longer, I think, than the gentleman from Texas, longer than my friend from New Jersey. There’s one person in America that can stop spending in its tracks. I’ve been here 36 years. No president in the 36 years that I’ve served has had a veto overridden of a bill that spent too much money. Not one. Not one Republican President, not one Democratic President. So, a President can stop spending in its tracks. Under Ronald Reagan, we increased the national debt 189%. It was less than $1 trillion when I came to the Congress of the United States. And it was increased under [President] Ronald Reagan 189% - the largest of any President. Under [President] George Bush in four years it was increased 55%. Under [President] Bill Clinton, 36%. But guess what? During the last four years, we had a balanced budget. The only time in the lifetime of anybody in this body that we've had four years of balanced budgets.

"Now my Republican friends, ladies and gentlemen, will say, well, we were in charge of the Congress, for the last six years you were. But you were in charge of the House, the Senate and the Presidency under George [W. Bush], and the budget deficit was increased 87%.

"Apparently we're out of time. The President says we’re going to veto this bill. But the irony is, and the Chairman sits on the Floor, the irony is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget has submitted a budget on behalf of the Administration to respond exactly to the questions that this bill wants to ask. And for the first time in 41 years the Administration has been refused the opportunity to testify, which The Washington Post called ‘gratuitously contemptuous.’

"And then the audacity, my friends, to bring a bill on the Floor in the same week and ask the Secretary of Treasury to come down and testify, talk about the debt, when we know darn well why the debt is what it is. And it’s our responsibility, because we incur it, to make sure that we pay our debt. That is our moral responsibility as well as our constitutional responsibility.

"This is politics at its most contemptuous level. It is to pretend that somehow the President is responsible. My friends we ought to reject this bill, not because the bill on itself, but we get this information as been so often said. We already get this information. We don’t need the Secretary of Treasury to come down here and give it to us. He testifies before Ways and Means Committee, he testifies before many other committees. Let’s reject this bill because it is phony. Not because substantively we don’t need this information—we have it. It’s redundant. Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that my time has expired. This bill ought to expire with it."