Claire McCaskill Quotes
You know, we've got to be responsible about our debt. We don't want the United States to ever be a dead beat, and not be able to pay its bills, either to our soldiers who are fighting or to Social Security recipients.
McCaskill, Claire. Town Hall Meeting. Joplin, Missouri, 12 Apr. 2011.
Almost every major corporation that is growing must borrow money to finance the growth. There is a great temptation to do this continuously, as if all works out the borrowed money is paid back and the nation has grown. However, not every investment succeeds, and when they do, few nations will take the growth and save it for a future date when a national investment does not work out as well as hoped. Gradually national debt as a proportion of the economy gets larger and larger and it makes mew investments more and more difficult to succeed because of the higher rates of interest that must be paid. Every modern country must find a balance. Those that do not can have a financial disaster such as Greece in the early part of the 21st century.
At the time, many conservatives were threatening not to increase the debt ceiling unless they could get their way on the budget negotiations which would come up later. The Congress had earlier actually committed to spend the amounts when they voted the appropriations that enabled the spending and increasing the debt. Most countries do not have this second stage in that there is nothing the Congress can possibly do to change get back the money that they already voted to be spent, and the process of raising the debt ceiling must be done else the “full faith and credit” of the United States.
Testifying about the U. S. arrears to the United Nations:
A minority group of very conservative members of the House of Representatives had decided to hold America’s full faith and credit and the economy hostage to implementing their minority proposal to reduce government spending more than the majority wanted shortly after the 2012 election where the voters had rejected the conservative position. None the less, they were threatening to force the government to default and not pay for the items that the Congress had previously already approved by not approving a debt ceiling increase. The President was determined not to negotiate with “hostage takers” and making sure that America paid its bills for the money spent as authorized by Congress.
Claire Conner McCaskill is an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Missouri from 2007 to 2019 and as State Auditor of Missouri from 1999 to 2007.
