Fiscal Crises

Floor Speech

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, the U.S. is facing a fiscal crisis which we must soon begin to address. This will not be easy, but there are two clear things that we know we must do.

First, we know we must fix the spiraling cost of our health care system, and those who would point to our Federal deficits ignore the much larger numbers associated with the promises that we have made through Medicare and Social Security that we are going to have trouble keeping if we don't take a hard look at those things.

Secondly, as the economy recovers, this House must put the brakes on government spending. That's why I am delighted that, tomorrow, this House will take up pay-as-you-go legislation that would simply say: You pay for what you spend. You either have the guts to ask the citizenry to pay for it via taxation or you choose other things that you don't want to spend it on. We've seen PAYGO rules in place before, in the 1990s, when the government ran surpluses and when we saw unrivaled prosperity.

So we need to look back at that and have the discipline to pass that legislation so that we restore confidence in our fiscal probity and in the prosperity to our economy.

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