Highest Debt in History
Floor Speech
HIGHEST DEBT IN HISTORY -- (House of Representatives - June 20, 2007)
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you very much, Mr. Ryan.
I think what happened here over the last 12 years, and I was watching it all from the outside, is that the Republicans, for a very long time, vastly overestimated the gullibility of the American people. They thought they could stand up here and say over and over again that the Republicans are being fiscally responsible, and that the American people wouldn't notice that they were racking up record amounts of debt, $3 trillion, up to $9 trillion now is the amount of Federal debt that this government has racked up. The fact that they wouldn't notice that every single dime for this war in Iraq and Afghanistan has been borrowed money. I think you give them too much credit, Mr. Ryan. You said they were spending like a bunch of drunken sailors. Well, drunken sailors spend their own money at least, they probably don't spend it very wisely, but their own money. These are like a bunch of thieving drunken sailors. They were spending other people's money, my money, my parents' money, my neighbor's money, all the while kind of pretending that we weren't ever going to have to pay it back.
So what we've seen here tonight and what we've seen over the last few days is a Republican minority now that continues to vastly overestimate the gullibility of the American people. They think they can stand here, try to make disappear everything that happened over the last 12 years, and that once again they can stand here and talk about being fiscally responsible, while the very mess that we're here cleaning up is all theirs in the making.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Now, Mr. Speaker, here is what we are doing. You mentioned that we have a balanced budget, in 5 years we are going to balance this budget. But on top of that, we are starting to fix some of the biggest messes they left this Democratic Congress.
Take for example the Alternative Minimum Tax. Now, not a lot of people know what this thing is. You know it if you are paying it, and you are going to start paying it year after year. More people will start paying more and more. This is the biggest middle-class tax increase potentially in the history of this country, imposed by a Republican Congress. And, guess what? We are going to fix it. We are going to take it on.
For the first time, legislation that comes before this House actually has to be paid for as we go along; the pay-as-you-go rule. Every spending increase that this Congress proposed has to be accompanied by either a revenue offset or a spending offset. That's real fiscal responsibility; rules passed by the Democratic majority here that are going to finally impose some fiscal discipline on this place.
So the Republicans and the minority can say over and over again whatever they want. They can hope that if they say it often enough that they will believe it and maybe a few people out there will believe it.
But what is going to happen here over the next few months is results, Mr. Ryan. It is going to be rhetoric matched with results: Fixing the AMT, balancing the Federal budget over 5 years, making sure that every bill that
comes before this House is paid for as we go along, record increases for veterans programs, for education programs, for the things that people want to have funded in their communities.
There are finally going to be some words that are matched with actions here. As much as the other side of the aisle may try to make this disappear, they are going to find an American people that isn't as gullible as they used to think they were.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, let me tell you what happened in my district, because it happened in 40 other districts around the country last fall.
All the people who are fiscal conservatives, people who were concerned about fiscal responsibility frankly probably voted Republican for a long time because they did believe that the words were backed up by the actions, finally saw through all that rhetoric. And all those true fiscal conservatives came out and voted Democrat.
My district hadn't been Democrat for 24 years. And, guess what? It wasn't just the social progressives and the anti-war activists who came out and said we want change. It was the fiscal conservatives, the people who were concerned about the absolute and utter incompetency in this Government that came out and decided to change this place.
And, guess what? They are seeing results here. They are seeing results because what they did was they saw a party that over the years started out as a collection of ideas that ended up just being a collection of special interests.
Mr. Speaker, the words they used were still the same. Their allegiances changed over time. Their allegiances didn't happen to sit with the ideas that they held. Their allegiances sat with the lobbyists and the special interests and the folks that they were protecting every single day on this House floor. Those voters who came out and voted Democrat based on fiscally sound and fiscally responsible principles last year are going to do the same thing 2 years from now because they are going to see that balanced budget. They are going to see the Alternative Minimum Tax. They are going to see the pay-as-you-go rules. Those are all results. Those are going to be voters that will be sticking with the Democratic Party.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Ryan, one of the most perplexing bars on that graph is the amount of money that we have borrowed from OPEC nations. You want to talk about why we can't stand across the table from the countries that are pillaging American consumers with these ridiculously, monstrously high gas prices?
Guess what? We can't sit across and be an honest broker from them because they hold the mortgage to this country. The same can be said of the Chinese and the same can be said of European nations. We have lost so much of our ability to sit and be an honest broker in negotiations over energy policy and foreign policy, because they own our currency. They hold all of our debt.
So beyond how terrible this is for the American taxpayers, it is also terrible for the American foreign relations. It has to stop.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Even when they did spend money, they spent it in such a ludicrous way as to waste the taxpayers' money on essential programs like the prescription drug benefit. Even when they chose to roll out a brand new and expensive new domestic program, they overspent to the tune of potentially $50 billion a year by cutting a deal with the drug companies so as to prohibit the Federal Government from using its bulk purchasing power.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I think it was a pretty simple formula. It was that we were going to squeeze and squeeze the people who have the least in this society, and that is the hospitals that care for the sick and the uninsured, it is the families that have the courage to send their loved ones off to war, it is middle-class families who can't afford to pay another dime. Those are the people that are going to get soaked in order to fund these giant tax cuts for the people.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I am not a hater. As a new Member, I am loving every minute of this, Mr. Ryan.
Listen to me: From every standpoint it makes sense. You talk about the jobs that an investment in alternative energy is going to bring. Undoubtedly it is going to make our air cleaner. It is going to reduce our contribution to global warming. We know in the long run it is going to bring prices down. It is going to be the thing that finally breaks our dependence on the high prices of foreign oil.
Also it is about national security. It is about finally breaking us free of dependency on the countries that produce that oil, that compromise a lot of our conversations in places in the world like the Middle East, compromised additionally by the amount of debt those OPEC nations hold. So, it is kind of a win-win-win-win-win-win scenario.
So the question is why didn't it happen? Well, it didn't happen because the agenda here wasn't about the economy. The agenda wasn't about cleaning up the air. The agenda wasn't about lowering gas prices. The agenda was about helping a bunch of people in the oil industry.
This is what happens when you break this place free of special interests. Good policy starts to happen. You get wins for everybody when you start making this about Main Street, right, instead of about the few people that get in the room and write the legislation based on how much money they have given to campaigns and how much influence they have inside the Beltway.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I think I work pretty hard. I get back to the district every minute I can. I see as many people as I am able to. But you don't have to work that hard to hear what the values of the American people are. I mean, you don't have to be everywhere at all times in your district to understand that when people were crying out for energy reform, energy reform wasn't giving more tax giveaways to big oil.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. No, but you do have to be listening. It is very easy to stand as a Member of Congress in front of a group of people, have a town hall meeting, be in a room sitting on your couch in your office, and you are there but you are not listening.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. All I mean by that is it makes it even more inexcusable that all you had to do was go out and listen a little bit to hear the cries from people.
There are these sort of ``are you kidding me'' moments that happen out there. They happened in my district, when people are asking, listen, do something about energy policy. And the ``do something'' was let's just empower the oil companies even more.
People are crying out for change in our policy towards Iraq, and the answer was we are going to commit ourselves to even more troops and even more money and an even greater failed policy.
People stand there and say, are you kidding me? Did you hear anything I said? And for 12 years, the answer increasingly was no. We didn't hear anything you said. We didn't try, and in fact our ears were attuned to a very different set of people.
So now, this revolution that happened here isn't terribly revolutionary. We are finally starting to listen to people again, and that means investing in alternative energy, that means setting a new course in Iraq, that means making it easier for kids to go to college.
These aren't new ideas. These are ideas that people have been talking about in bars and in diners and pancake breakfasts and pasta dinners for years.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. One of the miracles of what is happening here, we are starting to change those priorities without spending more money in order to do that. You can tack onto your list of help to kids and families the fact that we passed legislation that could bring on average $4,000 in relief to students by lowering the interest rate on student loans. That is $4,000 back in the pocket of a young man or woman graduating from college, that is going to be looking to pile on a mortgage on top of their debt. And we did it at no additional expense to the taxpayers. We changed in a small way the amount of money that we guarantee to banks, and the banks are doing pretty well out there already, and we got $4,000 back in the pockets of American students and graduates without costing anybody else a dime. Same thing on the energy policy.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I am excited that we almost got to the end of the hour without a five syllable word until Paleozoic. That is in part why I joined the 30-something Working Group, to get that kind of vocabulary help.
There is a lot of anger coming from the minority side right now, and I think there is probably reason for them to be angry. When 1 or 2 percent of the population gets the run of the place for 12 years.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. When the other 98 percent get their government back, I would be angry myself if all of a sudden my day was over.
But let's not overstate the partisan differences here because when we have put on the House floor good legislation for the American people, that student loan cut that we talked about, investment in alternative energy, stem cell research, when we put that before the House a lot of Republicans came over and supported it.
So there is a group of leadership, that is frankly the ones that come down the House floor and do most of talking, but there are a bunch of Republicans when Democrats finally put an agenda that is sticking up for regular people, they are going to support us on that. The newspapers and the TV talk shows are filled with the Republican leadership who, frankly, it seems to me, after 6 months on the job, don't speak for a lot of people on that side of the aisle.
I think what we are doing here over time is when you get past a lot of the rhetoric, a lot of the votes end up being pretty bipartisan because when you get beyond the leadership, you have Republicans who are appreciative of the fact that Democrats have finally returned this place to the American people.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, for all those people out there who came out to the polls and voted on national security or fiscal responsibility or competence in government, no matter what you hear late at night here or on the talk radio shows from the Republicans, pay attention to what happens here in the House of Representatives over the coming weeks and months.
Pay attention to the Democratic majority's plan to balance this budget, to pass on tax relief to people that need it, to start restoring order in this world so we are fighting the right fight at the right time. Pay attention to what happens here.
As we have said over and over again, for the first time in over a decade, words are going to be matched with actions. From one side of this Chamber, from the Republican side, you're going to see words. From the Democratic side, you're going to see words and action to follow. As a new Member of the 30-somethings and as a new Member of this Congress, that's what makes me proud to be here, is that we're saying the right things and then we're doing the right things behind it. All those people who came out and cast their votes based on those ideas are going to find those ideas put into action here.
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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Mr. Ryan.
It's a privilege to be a part of the 30-somethings, Speaker Pelosi's working group. You can e-mail us at 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. You can visit us on the Speaker's Web page, www.speaker.gov and there's a link there to the 30-something's page.
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