Fiscal and Economic

I thank the gentleman (Mr. Ryan) for yielding and I thank him for his vision and courage. It has truly been an honor to serve on this committee under his leadership. Mr. Chairman, a year ago, the House passed a budget that would have put our nation back on the path to fiscal solvency and ultimately paid off the entire national debt. It would have saved Medicare and Medicaid from collapse and put them back on a solid and secure foundation.

The House is about to consider a budget in a dangerous hour in the life of our country. Last year, we barreled past several urgent warning signals: the loss of our nation's triple-A credit rating; the size of the national debt surpassing our entire economy; a record third year of trillion dollar-plus annual deficits.

This nation is on a collision course with a sovereign debt crisis the magnitude of which we have never experienced. This is not some moonless night on the Atlantic. We are spending full speed ahead toward that iceberg of debt in the full light of day and we can all see it plainly.

The reason these times are so impassioned is because we have arrived at a moment when two very different visions of society are competing for our nation’s future, and they are very much reflected in the budgets put forward by the two parties in this House.

This bill presents us with a simple question: "It is possible - just possible - that from time to time Congress has passed a spending bill or two that ought to have had greater scrutiny?" The answer to this question might elude some members of the House, but I assure them it is self-evident to everybody else.

A family that excludes from its budget the mortgage payments it knows it must make is deluding itself and sabotaging its own finances. That's precisely what the federal government is doing right now with respect to billions of dollars of liabilities because of its ill-fated sponsorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The simple question now before us is whether it is better for Congress to have more information or less information when it is deliberating on matters that directly affect the economy of this nation. The answer should be self-evident, but apparently, some members of this house prefer blissful ignorance than having to go to the fuss and bother of actually assessing the full ramifications of the policies they are enacting.