Congressman McClintock delivered the following House floor remarks in support of the 2015 Budget:

2015 Budget

April 8, 2014

Mr. Speaker:

        In August of 2010, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs warned that the greatest threat to our national security was our national debt.  That was $4 trillion of debt ago. 

        In fact, since Inauguration day, 2009, we have accumulated more total government debt than we had run up from the first day of the Washington Administration through the third year of the George W. Bush administration.

We were told this would jump-start the economy.  It hasn’t.

Instead, it has deprived markets of capital that would otherwise be loaned to businesses seeking to expand jobs, to consumers seeking to make purchases and to homebuyers seeking to re-enter the housing market.

        I would remind the House that before we can provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare we have to be able to pay for them, and the ability of our government to do so is being slowly, surely destroyed by our debt.

Balancing this budget and ultimately paying down the national debt is a national security imperative; it is an economic imperative; and it is a moral imperative.  

Under Chairman Ryan’s leadership, the House is about to pass the fourth budget in a row that will do so.   It stands in stark contrast to the President’s budget that never balances and that condemns our nation to a debt spiral that will consume our future.

It reforms and reorganizes our social safety nets, prevents their impending bankruptcy and restores them to sound financial foundations for the generations to come.

This is not beyond our ability.

President Clinton, working in cooperation with a Republican Congress, delivered four balanced budgets in a row.  Together, a Democratic President and a Republican Congress cut federal spending by four percent of GDP.  They enacted what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history.  They reformed entitlement spending by abolishing the open-ended welfare system.  The economy blossomed.

In the years since, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, we have veered far from these policies of fiscal responsibility and economic expansion.  And the economy languishes.

The budget before us combines the policies necessary to restore solvency to the government and its social safety net, and to restore prosperity to the American people.

All we lack is the same cooperation between the President and the Senate that we had achieved just two decades ago.  

Time is not our ally.  Every day we delay, the problem becomes more intractable and the road back becomes more difficult, protracted and perilous.    

We are told not to bother, since the Senate and President will never agree to put our nation back on the road to solvency.  Sadly, that is true.  But I look forward to a day, perhaps not far off, when they will become willing partners to balance our budget and by so doing, to restore our nation’s prosperity, security and future.