Debt Ceiling Negotiations

Floor Speech

Mr. ROKITA. Madam Speaker, I rise today to address the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations, or so they're called. The debt crisis currently facing our country is a grave one. Make no mistake, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has called the debt the greatest threat to our national security. Not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not al Qaeda, but our debt.

Since January 2009, $3.7 trillion has been added to the national debt. Currently, our debt stands at $14.3 trillion, and I'm told if you add in the cost, the present day cost of all of the promises that irresponsible people who have stood here before me have made to the American people, that the cost would be over $70 trillion.

Many Americans, including this one, can't even conceptualize that, can't count that high. And that's not their fault; that's this body's fault. There is a lot of fearmongering going on by people who want us to spend more. They have seen these tactics work in the past--bank bailouts, massive spending bills.

Even if the calamity forecast were to come to pass, it doesn't change the fact that the debt crisis we face is our fiscal sin. Our generation and generations before ours are responsible for it; not my kids, not your kids, and not our grandchildren. If addressing it hurts in the short term, then I say so be it.

I reject the idea that we would pass this mess on to our kids for some short-term economic or political gain. That is one of the most piggish ideas I've ever heard, and it runs counter to the spirit that helped make this Nation great, an exceptional Nation. We own this mess. If we have to suffer a little bit in the short term to right our fiscal house in the long term, that's our duty, and it's our duty to fix it. It is debt that is hurting the economy and, don't forget, the misguided, big-government economic ideas that have been implemented over the last 2 1/2 years.

These debt ceiling negotiations are a great opportunity to enact monumental reform within the Federal Government, making the future brighter for all Americans, so the next 2 weeks, my colleagues, are critical. We can do it, if we want to, in a bipartisan fashion. We must seize the opportunity. It is more important that we craft a deal that gets it right for the sake of our children and grandchildren than we implement a false fix driven by short-term thinking. Getting it right means enacting permanent and structural reforms to the way Washington spends. Raising taxes is not necessary and would only hurt the economy. Our government doesn't tax too little. Our government spends too much.

By ``permanent and structural,'' I mean a balanced budget amendment. A balanced budget amendment would be hard for a future Congress or a future President to change, and it would force the necessary things that cause us to live within our means again. In order to raise the debt ceiling, the price for that concession must be the passage of permanent and structural reforms like the balanced budget amendment--period. There is no additional negotiation. There is no additional request. The request is to raise the debt ceiling $2 trillion. Okay. Let's do it, but if we do it, let's make sure it never has to be done again. The only way to do that is through permanent and structural reforms like a balanced budget amendment. If the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling are as severe as some suggest, surely we can find the common ground necessary for a deal that forces our government to balance its budget like American families do every month.

I'm excited. Rarely does a legislative body have a chance to do something so monumental and so monumentally great. This would be among the most significant reforms in our Nation's history. I don't know that an opportunity to enact a balanced budget amendment will be within our reach again for a very long time.

I do know I've only been around for 6 months on this floor, and no matter how long I or others stay, I think we will look back on the next 3 weeks as one of the best opportunities we will have ever had for making things better for our future, for our posterity. That ultimately is how we should look at every vote we take on this floor, not how it will benefit us in the here and now, but how it will benefit our children's chances to inherit what we did--the greatest, most exceptional Nation the world has ever known. I didn't come here to vote for us in the here and now. I came here to vote for our future.

Now is the time for bold, decisive action. Now is the time for a balanced budget amendment. Nothing short of the future of our children and grandchildren is at stake.

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