WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor Monday regarding the oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, and the growing national debt:
As a nation, our focus continues to be on the disaster in the Gulf. This is a national tragedy the full dimensions of which we still do not know. But one thing is clear: the top priority at this point — as it should have been from the start — is to stop this leak.
Americans are far less interested in how tough the administration plans to be after this leak is fixed than they are in fixing it. People want action more than they want accusations. There will be plenty of time to assess blame and tighten regulations after this crisis is met. But weeks of blame has done nothing to plug the leak. Let’s focus on the crisis.
As we work to stem the crisis in the Gulf, Congress cannot continue ignore another pressing crisis — an exploding federal debt that threatens our very way of life.
This week, the Senate will debate the deficit extenders bill that the House passed just before the recess. Just for a little context, let’s remind ourselves what this bill is. The original purpose of this bill is to give America’s job creators an assurance that the longstanding tax benefits they’re counting on to retain workers won’t be pulled out from under them. But because Democrats can’t seem to resist any opportunity to use a must-pass bill like this as a vehicle for more deficit spending, they’ve piled tens of billions of dollars in unrelated spending and debt on top of it, all at a moment when the national debt has now reached $13 trillion for the first time in history.
This is fiscal recklessness, plain and simple.
The time has come for hard choices. Americans see what’s happening in Europe, and they’re begging us to bring the debt under control, to cut it down before we face a similar fate. Instead, Democrats in Washington just keep piling on, as if they’re oblivious to the consequences.
Some Democrats in the House started to rebel last week. And some Democrats in the Senate have indicated they’ll ask for amendments on the bill too. They’re demanding that party leaders make an effort to at least acknowledge this debt crisis exists. But Americans want more than lip service.
Here’s what the protests of squeamish Democrats in the House achieved: a bill that was supposed to increase the debt by $175 billion will now increase the debt by $54 billion. In other words, instead of agreeing the debt is out of control, Democrats played politics: They spent as much money as they could on this bill without losing the votes needed to pass it.
So even in the face of public outrage, Democrats are showing either that they just don’t get it on this issue of the debt, or that they just don’t care.
But it’s even worse than that, because not only are Democrats clearly unserious about this issue, they’re not giving the American people the whole picture. They didn’t lower the price tag on this bill by making tough choices; they just shortened the timetable on the programs that it funds while openly promising to add that spending back later. They don’t plan to spend any less; they just plan to spend it all by putting it in separate bills, which is a little bit like arguing that you’ve got less debt because you put it on different credit cards.
Clearly, Democrats don’t see a $13 trillion national debt for the emergency it is. So let’s just remind ourselves where we stand, so there’s no confusion about the gravity of the situation. As I stand here this afternoon, every man, woman, and child in America would have to cough up more than $42,000 apiece to pay down our debt. And that’s just the current debt. Remember: it took two centuries to accumulate a $10 trillion debt. In the first 500 days of this administration, Democrats added $2.4 trillion to the debt and plan to add more than another trillion this year. Americans are as worried as I’ve ever seen about the course we’re on. And they’ve got a simple message for Congress: stop spending money we don’t have.
And one more thing: If all the domestic crises of the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that more government is not a solution in itself. And yet this administration has approached virtually every crisis it’s faced with more government as the primary solution.
Right now, among other challenges, we have a debt crisis, a jobs crisis, a housing crisis, a financial crisis, and an oil spill that the American people clearly don’t believe government is effectively responding to. So you can understand the American people’s skepticism when they’re told that simply adding more government is the solution to government’s previous failures. Now’s not the time to propose more government as a solution to these crises. It’s time to rethink the model, to start focusing on accountability and results.
And a good place to start is on the debt. Americans expect action on this issue and they expect it now. Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress don’t seem to be listening on this issue any more than they did on health care or the Stimulus, or Financial Regulatory Reform, or anything else.
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