House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
October 26, 2011
M. Speaker:

The government’s continuing failure to address our nation’s gut-wrenching unemployment stems from a fundamental disagreement over how jobs are created in the first place.  

We are now in the third year of policies predicated on the assumption that government spending creates jobs. 

We have squandered three years and trillions of dollars of the nation’s wealth on such policies, and they have not worked because they cannot work.

 Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy until it has first taken that same dollar OUT of the economy.

S. 365 – “Budget Control Act of 2011:” NO.  

This act increases the debt limit by between $2.1 and $2.4 trillion, the biggest explosion of debt in American history.  It allows the government to avoid spending reductions for the next two years while squandering our last best hope of averting a sovereign debt crisis. 

I am opposed to this measure for the following reasons:

1.    

The purported cuts, even if realized, are far below the $4 trillion deficit reduction that credit rating agencies have warned is necessary to preserve the Triple-A credit rating of the United States Government.

2.    

It blows the lid off the House budget passed in April by more than a half-trillion dollars over ten years.

3.    

It makes no significant spending reductions for at least the next two years, essentially freezing spending at an unsustainable level.  While the debt increase occurs this year, deficit reductions are to be spread over many years and could be reversed by future acts of Congress.

4.    

The spending caps are easily circumvented by declaring appropriations to be an emergency, a response to a “major disaster,” or necessary for the “Global War on Terror.”

5.    

The balanced budget amendment provisions are illusory because the amendment is completely undefined.

Congressman Tom McClintock delivered the following remarks during a debate on the 2012 budget bill introduced by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan:

House Chamber, Washington, DC
April 14, 2011

History walks with us today as we begin this debate. 

History offers us not a single example of a nation that has ever spent, borrowed and taxed its way to prosperity.  Not one.

Mr. Chairman:  History walks with us today as we begin this work.  History offers us not a single example of a nation that has ever spent, borrowed and taxed its way to prosperity, but it offers us many, many examples of nations that have spent, borrowed and taxed their way to economic ruin and bankruptcy.  And history is screaming this warning at us: nations that bankrupt themselves aren’t around very long, because before we can provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare, we have to be able to pay for it – and the ability of our nation to do so is now in grave danger.

Throughout these hearings, economists from every part of the spectrum have warned us that if we have just a few precious years left to avoid a sovereign debt crisis and potentially the financial collapse of the United States Government.

House Chamber, Washington, D.C. January 6, 2011

M. Speaker:

I rise to express the hope that historians will look back on the 112th Congress as the session that restored American prosperity – and to express my strong agreement with the new leaders of this House who have declared that every action of this body must be measured against this goal.

We speak of “jobs, jobs, jobs,” but jobs are a product of prosperity.  And prosperity is the product of freedom.

House Chamber, Washington, D.C., September 14, 2010.

Throughout what was supposed to be a “recovery summer,” the President has repeated a familiar theme: that Republicans ran us into a ditch and now they want the keys back. 

That’s an important point, and we need to understand exactly what the Bush administration did to run us into a ditch.  In fact, President Bush made two major policy blunders.