Senator David Perdue (R-GA) spoke on the Senate floor on Thursday after supporting President Trump’s bipartisan deal to provide relief for Hurricane Harvey victims. He highlighted "how Washington’s refusal to deal with the broken budget process got us into this debt crisis."
Highlights of his comments:
Hurricane Harvey: “Our hearts go out to the people impacted by Hurricane Harvey.
I relate to this personally because just last year, almost exactly to the day, my family was evacuated from our home in South Georgia.”
Losing Ability To Do Right Thing: “Hurricane Irma reminds us of a bigger issue—that because of our inability to get our financial house in order and the resulting debt crisis we have today, we're losing the right to do the right thing, whether it's medical research, infrastructure, education, or funding our military.”
Getting Finances In Order: “Moving forward, we will not be able to continue dealing with these emergencies and crises if we don’t have a functioning federal government that can pay its bills and has its financial house in order.”
Arbitrary Measure: “I would argue the debt ceiling has been the most ineffective thing that I've seen in the United States Senate. It's been extended or increased over a hundred times, and it has not slowed down deficit spending in Congress. It has not kept us from being in $20 trillion of debt today.”
Spending Borrowed Money: “Every dollar we're spending on our defense, our veterans, and our discretionary domestic programs, like what we're doing here today, is borrowed money. This simply cannot continue.”
Saw This Coming: “Back in June, I led a group of senators who listed the debt ceiling as one of the key reasons why we thought we ought to stay here during the month of August instead of going home for the state work period. We felt that this needed to be debated and we needed to get to a long-term solution.”
Overdue Action: “The debt ceiling issue should have been resolved way before now. We actually hit this debt ceiling earlier this year. The Treasury is now using extraordinary measures to keep the government funded during this period of uncertainty. In fact, we hit the debt ceiling at a time when we should have been dealing with the budget.”
Debt Ceiling Isn’t The Issue: “The debt ceiling has got to be dealt with, but it is not the driver of our problems. The budget process is the underlying release valve that causes this problem. It allows both parties to spend money that we don't have.”
There Is A Solution: “The budget process is broken but can be fixed. Right now, we have Democrats and Republicans working together behind the scenes to find a bipartisan, politically neutral platform that responsibly funds the federal government without all this drama and without the release valve of extra spending.”
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