A Comprehensive, Balanced Solution to Save the Economy

Floor Speech

Mr. COURTNEY. Last night, Speaker Boehner addressed the American people and said that if the President would just simply sign his debt ceiling bill, the crisis, in his words, would disappear.

Actually, the opposite is true. An hour or two before his speech, the Standard & Poor's rating agency issued a report, saying that, if the Boehner plan passed, the American bonds would be downgraded from its AAA status. A downgrade is as bad as a default in terms of driving up lending costs and damaging a fragile economy that today needs all of us to work together to strengthen job creation to solve our problems. The Boehner plan calls for three separate votes over the next 15 months for a debt ceiling increase, exactly the kind of political instability that rating agencies are not looking for.

It is time for a comprehensive, balanced solution, which the President has said he will work with the Congress to pass in order to get this economy moving again and to create jobs.

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