Washington, DC—U.S. Representative John Rose expressed concerned on the House Floor this week, following an the release of an updated timeline from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as to when the United States is projected to default on its debt.
The full remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below:
Mister Speaker, House Republicans are the only ones who have done their job to pass legislation that raises the debt ceiling in a responsible and reasonable way.
Now, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says that the United States may run out of funds to pay our bills in just 8 eight days. Yet, the Democrat-controlled Senate has yet to even hold a single vote—on either their own proposal or ours.
And unfortunately, the president has wasted valuable time refusing to negotiate; in fact, it’s taken more than one hundred days for him to even come to the negotiating table! Despite Speaker McCarthy’s repeated calls to the White House just to have a meeting—President Biden declined at each and every turn until recently—inching our nation towards a democrat-induced default.
So, with only eight days left until our nation potentially drives off the fiscal cliff thanks to Democrats’ wasteful and out-of-control spending, you’d expect the president would be at the negotiating table every single day until we got a deal done to avoid a disastrous default. But instead, he spent the weekend traveling overseas.
To me—and many of the Tennesseans I represent—the president seems to be neglecting his duties during these most critical moments. Republicans have done everything we can to avoid this scenario. Like I mentioned earlier, the House is the only body to pass legislation that responsibly raises the debt ceiling and does so while also saving taxpayers trillions of dollars.
His actions remind me of a child who doesn’t get their way. But unfortunately, the president’s temper tantrum will have much more dire consequences than that of a toddler. Now, there’s an easy solution to this problem. If the president were serious about avoiding default, he could instruct his counterparts in the Senate to pass our bill, the Limit, Save, and Grow Act, which raises the debt ceiling in a responsible, reasonable, and sensible way.
Sure, maybe the President and Senate Democrats didn’t get their homework done by the due date. But they are more than welcome to copy ours and turn it in for full credit.
So, Mister Speaker, if a Democratic president delays negotiations, and if a Democrat-controlled Senate doesn’t pass anything, what do you get? You get the United States’ first-ever default that will lie squarely on Democrats’ shoulders.
It's a shame that after all those years in the Senate—a body known for its bipartisanship and ability to compromise—the president has brought us this close to default.
Make no mistake Mister Speaker: the Democrats’ default will have catastrophic impacts on the U.S. economy. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, and we can come together to save our country from fiscal insanity by limiting Washington’s out-of-control spending.
Thank you, Mister Speaker, and with that, I yield back.
You can watch the speech here.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://johnrose.house.gov/media/press-releases/us-representative-john-rose-urges-white-house-senate-take-action-ahead-default