Statement on House Passage of Bill to Raise the Debt Ceiling

Statement

"While preventing a default crisis is a necessary step, the deal before us today is not a good deal for hard working Wisconsinites.

Throughout the frustrating debate over raising the debt ceiling and reducing our nation's deficit, I have held fast to three essential criteria. I will vote for a deal that creates jobs, lowers the deficit, and protects the middle class through shared sacrifice. The bill passed in the House today does not meet that test.

Real solutions to our fiscal problems are readily available. We could lower the deficit by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, we could close tax loopholes that allow the wealthiest among us to avoid paying their fair share while shifting the burden to the middle class.

We could create jobs here at home through investments in infrastructure and vocational and technical training to give American workers the skills employers need.

We could bolster the middle class and put more money in family pocketbooks by allowing Medicare to buy prescription drugs in bulk at discounted prices.

We could do all that, and more.

Yet, Republicans reject these commonsense solutions. They have no interest in shared responsibility and ask nothing, I repeat, nothing, of millionaires, billionaires, and corporations that use tax loopholes to ship jobs overseas. Instead, they expect middle-class Americans, struggling to pay their own bills, to pay all the country's bills, as well.

These political games threaten to set back our fragile economic recovery. We need balanced, bipartisan solutions to get our economy moving. I cannot, in good faith, short change the middle class and small businesses while asking nothing of the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations."

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