Now we are raising the debt limit 3 times, up to $8 trillion, so that our children and our grandchildren will have to pay for the cost of our expenditures.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It took the first 204 years of our Nation's history to accumulate $1 trillion in debt. And now we are doing that every 2 or 3 years.
I am prepared to discuss the things that I believe we need to do not just to raise the debt limit. Raising the debt limit is the easiest thing. That's one vote away. The hard thing is to show the world we are serious about putting our spending in order so we can show people we'll able to pay our bills down the road.
I can tell you if you look at the polls, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, they do not think we should increase the debt limit.
Plus, 40% of our debt is owned by foreign interest. I can't support a plan that passes along cost burden to our children and makes us more reliant on foreign dollars.
I think at the end of the day we have to raise the debt ceiling, because America pays its bills.
If we weren't running deficits, if we weren't spending more than we were taking in, there would be no reason whatsoever to increase the debt ceiling.
I really truly worry that the debt is one of the single biggest threat to the United States of America, that we're talking about a problem that is multi-trillion in its depth and I think we ought to be cutting more.
My point is cutting spending shouldn't be reliant on the debt limit though. It's something we have to do. The good news for America is, leaders in both parties, the president, believe that we have to have significant deficit reduction. So the intent is there. And I think what America is going to demand is that our leaders come together.
The biggest change we have to tackle that's out there is that we're digging the hole deeper and deeper and spending is totally out of control. And that's something that, quite frankly, is affecting future generations. You're giving a lot of debt to them and you can't keep doing it. It's not helping anybody.
Raising the debt ceiling is not additional spending. It is simply saying, you, the United States of America, can continue to borrow the money you need to pay the bills you have already rung up.