DELAURO URGES REPUBLICANS TO STOP PLAYING POLITICAL GAMES WITH OUR ECONOMY

Washington, DC—Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (CT-3), Ranking Member on the Labor, Education, Health, and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee, made the following remarks on the Floor of the United States House of Representatives today about the debt ceiling.

As Prepared for Delivery

We are five days away from a historic, unprecedented, and needless default. But instead of acting responsibly and in a bipartisan way to raise the debt ceiling, the Republican majority continues to hold the American economy hostage to press their agenda. Even though the debt ceiling was raised seven times under President Bush, even though 110 current members of the majority have voted to raise the debt ceiling in the past, the majority continues its dangerous game of brinkmanship.

Included in this bill is $917 billion in cuts, mostly to critical public investments such as education, infrastructure, biomedical research, law enforcement, food safety. And yet, discretionary spending is only 3.1 percent higher than it was five years ago, less than what it was under both the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

It is disingenuous for this majority to continue pretend that these public investments, critical to job creation and economic growth, are the source of our deficit problems. The primary reason the deficits have grown is because revenues are lower than they have been in 60 years, by 15 percent, thanks to the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy and because we initiated two wars on the nation's credit card.

If the majority was serious about deficit reduction they would allow for additional revenue by asking the wealthiest Americans and corporate special interests to share in the sacrifice, rather than seeking to protect them, which they do in this legislation.

This bill is not about deficit reduction. It is about using the threat of default to enact a radical agenda, one that will cost jobs and undermine the American economy, where middle-class families will have an opportunity for a decent retirement. In a few months they're coming back, $1.6 trillion in cuts to Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. This form of hostage-taking is not responsible leadership. It is the wrong direction for our country. I urge my colleagues to vote against this incredible, outrageous piece of legislation, and I call on the majority to quit playing political games.