Establishing the Commission on Freedom of Information Act Processing Delays-Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. President, there are no easy answers to our current dilemma. The majority leader's proposal is the best option we have to overcome the bipartisan impasse. Failure to increase the debt limit is not an option. Working families cannot afford the increased costs associated with default, and seniors cannot afford not to have their Social Security payments.
In my time as a mayor, as a State legislator, as a Member of the House of Representatives, and now as a Senator, I have learned there are times when one needs to stand and fight, and there are other times when one needs to reach a compromise. I am not excited about the decisions we are being forced to make, but I think the majority leader has crafted a proposal that can bring the two parties together and avoid economic disaster without destroying Medicare, Social Security, and other priorities of working families.
If you compare that to Speaker Boehner's proposal, that is just more of the partisan gamesmanship, and the path we have to take becomes clear. So I rise today in favor of the majority leader's plan in the hope that reason will prevail on the other side, and that our Republican colleagues will finally agree to help govern and not make irrational demands that drive us down the road to default.
Having said that, these debt negotiations have left America longing for a better time and a better government, a time when public service was, as Robert Kennedy said, a noble profession, when public servants served the public's interests, when they came together and found common ground and respected the opinions of those on the other side.
My generation has always viewed public service as a noble profession and the fight for what we believe is right as a noble cause. But none of us should expect to win every battle. None of us should dismiss the valid beliefs of those whose politics we oppose but who have been duly elected and sworn in to represent their State or their district.
The tea party Republicans in the House seem to have forgotten that we live in a democracy, and in a democracy people hold different views, contrary but equally valid opinions. They approach problems differently, from a different perspective, a different background, a different political view, and have differing views on the best solution.
The art of governing is bridging those differences. Governing is finding common ground. Governing is what Ronald Reagan talked about in his autobiography, ``An American Life,'' when he spoke about the importance of political compromise. He understood that in a representative democracy each of us has a right to our opinion but not a right to our own way.
President Reagan said:
When I began entering into the give and take of the legislative bargaining--
This is in Sacramento. This is when he was Governor--
a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election did not like it.
Compromise was a dirty word to them, and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing, and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said don't take anything.
Sound familiar? It should. It is the view of today's radical tea party--the same view Ronald Reagan confronted.
Reagan went on to say:
I learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom get everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said, in 1933, ``I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.''
If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.
Ronald Reagan in his own words--a lesson from a conservative hero for those modern-day radical conservatives who have watched us walk 90 yards down the field, but would rather move the goal posts than meet us at the 10-yard line. Ronald Reagan would tell them to grow up, step up and govern. But they have reiterated the mantra of the radical conservatives Reagan faced: ``If you don't get it all, don't take anything.''
Edmund Burke, another conservative icon, once said something today's House Republicans today would label as ``weakness'' or ``too liberal.'' He said:
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
House Republicans have chosen to do nothing. Edmund Burke understood the art of governing and the art of compromise. Ronald Reagan knew how radical conservatives think, how they negotiate, and now we are seeing how they stand in the way of governance and governing to maintain the purity of their ideology.
Clearly, Democrats have offered much. We have offered the other side an opportunity to govern, and they have rejected it on ideological grounds. We have lived up to our duty to govern. They have lived up to Ronald Reagan's own view of radical conservative tactics and philosophy.
I say to my friends, it is time to compromise and time to govern.
I was shocked to witness the audacity of the House Republicans who stepped to the microphone this week, one by one, each claiming that, if this Nation defaults on its obligations, it will be the President's fault. It will be the Democrats who caused us to default.
Democrats have come a long way and the Republicans know it--they just won't accept it, and they can't sell it to the American people because the American people know the truth.
Everyone knows the House tea party Republicans have rejected every proposal. They have even rejected the Republican Speaker's original proposal. They claim to love democracy and freedom of speech only when it is their speech, only when it expresses their ideas and their beliefs.
They claim to love our system of government, but clearly are at war with the idea of governing, and with all those on this side who--I would respectfully remind them--have also been elected to serve, just as they have.
They claim to embrace constitutional notions of tolerance and majority rule, but clearly see such notions as an inconvenient obstacle to getting their own way. They have the audacity to blame us for offering them what they want, and then to claim we haven't offered enough--that we are the problem.
The fact is, with the plan the majority leader has put forth, Democrats are now offering exactly what the Republicans have asked for, and yet they still will not take yes for an answer.
They even claim that they are willing to compromise as long as it is within their framework--the framework of their original demands--that they will compromise on the kind of a balanced budget amendment we pass. They will only compromise on how deep the cuts to entitlements are,
but they will not compromise on subsidies to big oil companies or billionaire tax cuts that wealthy Americans have, themselves, told us they don't need.
In effect their only compromise is getting their own way and calling it compromise. Well there is a difference between compromise and total capitulation. There must be a common ground that simply doesn't call for surrender. There's an Old Scottish proverb that says: ``Better bend than break.''
I say to my colleagues: We have done all the bending. Now it is time to govern.
I say to my colleagues: ``Better bend than break,'' because in this case it is our economic integrity that stands to break.
It is time for the truth.
It is time we look at the real impact on real people's lives if Republicans continue to stand firm--unwilling to bend, unwilling to compromise, unwilling to govern--but clearly willing to take America down the road to default.
According to Secretary Geithner, the consequences for the Nation--and for millions in my State of New Jersey--would be deep and far-reaching.
Failure to raise the debt limit--failure to allow Treasury to meet the obligations of the United States that we have already incurred--would be the ultimate tax increase on every American.
As such, surely it would violate the radical right's pledge to Grover Norquist. And, make no mistake, it would be a tax increase.
The no-compromise-Republican tax-increase would come in the form of increased interest rates--driving up the costs for every American family: the cost of mortgage payments would increase over $1,000 annually; equity prices and home values would decline which, in turn, would reduce retirement savings and affect the long-term and short-term economic security of every American.
There would be reductions in spending and investments, jobs would be lost, businesses would fail, credit card interest would increase by about $250 annually, families would be paying $100 more for gas, $182 for utilities, and $318 more for groceries.
Based on J.P. Morgan's financial analysis during the debt ceiling and government shutdown debate in 1995 and the crisis in 2008, interest rates on Treasury bonds could conceivably rise 75 or even 100 basis points.
Between mortgages and credit cards alone, an increase of 75 basis points would translate into an additional $10 billion in consumer borrowing costs every year at a time when middle class families can ill afford any increase at all in expenditures.
From an international perspective, default would have prolonged and disastrous negative consequences on the safe-haven status of Treasuries and the dollar's dominant role in the international financial system.
It would reduce the willingness of investors here and abroad to invest in the United States.
In my State of New Jersey, the impact of default would be immediate and all too real. Payments on a broad range of benefits--on other obligations--would be either postponed, limited, or discontinued.
That includes military salaries and retirement benefits for 1,219 troops currently deployed from New Jersey, both active and reservists and almost 500,000 veterans; benefits for almost 1.5 million Social Security beneficiaries and 1.3 million Medicare enrollees would be interrupted; student loan payments; Medicaid payments to States for seniors and the disabled in nursing homes, and payments needed to keep government facilities operating and providing the services people need. The total for all these expenditures for New Jersey alone is $80 billion.
That averages out to be about $26,000 per household in my State, putting a significant portion of the Federal Government's investment in New Jersey and its people at risk.
And yet the Republicans in the House and many in this Chamber will not bend, will not compromise, refuse to step up and govern. Their ideology demands that they protect entitlements for the most entitled Americans--big
oil, corporate jet owners, and those who hold a majority of the wealth in this Nation.
In my view, in my life, in my work, I have come to understand how wrong they are.
When the 400 richest Americans at the top hold more wealth than the 150 million Americans at the bottom, we cannot simply put the burden on those who can afford it the least and need our help the most.
Let's be clear. The Republican protection of the entitled class has nothing to do with balancing the budget or reducing the deficit, nothing to do with values, nothing to do with faith or cultural conservatism, nothing to do with community responsibility, and everything to do with an extreme antigovernment political agenda that is, in fact, anticommunity.
I believe we can do better for families, better for every American if we live and govern by the values we preach.
During this process, those of us on this side of the aisle have held to what the sociologist Max Weber once called the ``ethic of responsibility.''
House Republicans are pursuing what he called the ``ethic of ultimate ends.''
George Packer in a recent New Yorker article said:
These ethics are tragically opposed, but the true calling of politics requires a union of the two.
We, on this side, believe in ethical responsibility, in doing what is right for the Nation.
Republicans have shown that they believe in one thing and one thing only--achieving their ultimate political end and, in this case, achieving that end means standing in the way of any compromise--even if it threatens to paralyze this Nation's economy, even if it means rejecting the wisdom of their own hero who understood the importance of compromise in the art of governance.
I repeat what Reagan said:
Compromise was a dirty word to them, and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said don't take anything.
Well, it is time to realize that governing is not about getting it all, it's about getting it right for the American people.
Let America understand that Reagan himself stood against those radical conservatives whose rigid adherence to ideology at the expense of reason is now taking us down the road to default.
It is on them, and it is up to them to grow up, step up, and compromise.
As the American people have said in every poll, they want a balanced approach. That means a combination of significant spending cuts but also revenues. If they accepted that, we could govern.
I yield the floor.
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