{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://www.thune.senate.gov//public/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=2FB37599-3DB4-43E8-86A9-BAAA344E91FC", "Thune: Congress Cannot Ignore the Effect Washington Spending Has on Future Generations", "2020-09-16", "2020", "2020-09", "Republican", "House", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Washington\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\tU.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today discussed the soaring U.S. national debt and the effect it could have on future economic growth. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), next year, America's debt will be greater than its gross domestic product (GDP) and rise to 107 percent in 2023, the highest percentage in the nation's history. Thune expressed his frustration with his Democratic colleagues and their general lack of concern regarding the amount of money that would be spent to advance their own political agendas  like the Green New Deal.\r\n\r\nExcerpts of Thune's remarks below:\r\n\r\nMr. President, at the beginning of September the Congressional Budget Office issued its latest budget outlook.\r\nThe news wasn't good.\r\nCBO announced that next year, our country's debt is projected to exceed the amount of our gross domestic product. \r\nIn other words, the size of our debt will be greater than the size of our economy.\r\nThat is a very bad position to be in.\r\nCountries with that kind of debt-to-GDP ratio face time-sensitive decisions if they want to avert an all-out economic crisis. Greece is just one recent example.\r\nWe all know the kind of economic devastation, and accompanying turmoil, that Greece has experienced in recent years.\r\nNow, as the United States, we can probably hang on a little longer than most other countries before entering a full-blown debt crisis.\r\nAnd it's helpful that our economy was surging before being waylaid by the onset of the coronavirus.\r\nBut even we can't hang on forever.\r\nSooner or later, if we don't address the size of our soaring debt, we're going to have a problem.\r\nA lot of problems, in fact.\r\nNow, Mr. President, that is not something most of my colleagues across the aisle want to hear.\r\nThey'd like to spend as much as they want, whenever they want, on whatever new government program they've come up with.\r\nAnd they imply that Republicans are miserly for not wanting to join them.\r\nRepublicans, Democrats imply (or say), just don't care about the ordinary Americans who would supposedly benefit from Democrats' spending.\r\nIn fact, Mr. President, the opposite is true.\r\nIn the face of the pandemic, Republicans have been willing to spend huge sums to help our fellow Americans weather this crisis.\r\nAnd Republicans are worried about our spending and our debt precisely because we care deeply about ordinary Americans.\r\nWe know what the consequences of unchecked debt and spending can be, and we want to protect Americans from those consequences.\r\nTo start with, the larger our debt grows, the more interest we're likely to have to pay.\r\nAnd we're already paying a lot.\r\nRight now, we're paying roughly $484 billion a year in interest on our debt.\r\nThat's a substantial chunk of our yearly budget\r\nAnd that's money that could otherwise be going to other priorities.\r\nAnd the problem is only snowballing.\r\nBy 2029, the yearly interest on our debt is projected to reach $807 billion, according to one estimate.\r\nThat's going to eat up a lot of money that could otherwise be spent on important investments.\r\nHealth care, veterans, infrastructure, defense, seniors, education  we'd have a lot more money to devote to those priorities if we weren't paying hundreds of billions in interest each year on our debt.\r\nThen there are the economic consequences of a huge debt.\r\nThe economy will struggle.\r\nUnemployment will grow.\r\nBusinesses will create fewer jobs  if they create jobs at all.\r\nWages and benefits will likely stagnate.\r\nThe stock market will struggle.\r\nMr. President, we've had to borrow a lot of money this year to meet the coronavirus crisis.\r\nAnd there's no doubt it's money we needed to borrow.\r\nThat happens sometimes during a crisis.\r\nBut we need to be very aware of the fact that we've driven up our deficit by $3.3 trillion just this fiscal year  further increasing our nation's debt.\r\nAnd we need to be very careful about any additional borrowing and ensure that we're only borrowing what's absolutely necessary.\r\nRepublicans have caught a lot of flak from Democrats for not being willing to use the coronavirus as an excuse for unchecked government spending  including for NON-coronavirus-related measures.\r\nBut we've made a priority of scrutinizing additional spending because we don't want to get our country out of one economic crisis only to plunge it into another.\r\nUnfortunately, that's a lesson that's lost on my Democrat colleagues.\r\nWe think the debt is bad now  and it is.\r\nBut it's nothing like what our debt will look like if Democrats take Congress and the White House in November and start putting some of their bigger spending plans into effect.\r\nPlans like Medicare for All, which would cost, at a conservative estimate, $32 trillion over 10 years.\r\nOr the Green New Deal, Democrats' $93 trillion boondoggle.\r\nThat's right  you didn't mishear. \r\nThe Green New Deal is estimated to cost up to $93 trillion over 10 years. \r\nTo put that in perspective, the size of the entire federal budget in 2019 was $4.4 trillion  or substantially less than the cost of one year of the Green New Deal.\r\nNow, Mr. President, you might think a pie-in-the-sky fantasy like the Green New Deal would have been abandoned by Democrats by now.\r\nBut you'd be wrong.\r\nMore than a year after its introduction, it's apparently still going strong.\r\nYesterday I spoke on the floor about Democrats' threat to eliminate the legislative filibuster in the Senate  the Senate rule that helps ensure that bills that come before the Senate require bipartisan cooperation.\r\nWell, shortly before I spoke, the senator from Massachusetts who introduced the Green New Deal resolution in the Senate appeared on NPR, where he was asked whether he thought there were any parts of the Green New Deal that could attract bipartisan support.\r\nThe senator's response?\r\nThe whole thing needs to be enacted  and if Republicans don't allow that to happen, Democrats should change the Senate rules to eliminate the legislative filibuster.\r\nSo apparently Democrats aren't willing to even moderate their proposal.\r\nIf the senator from Massachusetts has his way, Democrats will shove that entire $93 trillion down the throats of the American people.\r\nAnd I guess the American people will just have to survive the resulting debt crisis.\r\nNow, Mr. President, when you ask about the price tag for Democrats' socialist fantasies, Democrats make noise about paying for it somehow.\r\nWe'll tax the rich, they say.\r\nThe rich aren't paying their fair share.\r\nThe problem, of course, is that increasing taxes on the rich isn't going to pay for these proposals.\r\nYou could tax not only the rich but a good portion of the middle class at rates near 100 percent and not come anywhere close to getting $93 trillion.\r\nThere is in fact no way to pay for these proposals.\r\nThey will be financed by enormous additions to our national debt, and ordinary Americans will suffer the consequences.\r\nA shrinking economy.\r\nFewer jobs.\r\nLost jobs.\r\nLower wages.\r\nLack of opportunity.\r\nAnd more.\r\nMr. President, I hope we'll take action on our debt before it's too late.\r\nOne thing we have to consider is how to shore up and protect Social Security and Medicare, which are currently the main drivers of our national debt.\r\nThanks to an aging Baby Boomer population, these programs are under a great deal of strain.\r\nMy colleague from Utah, Senator Romney, recently introduced legislation  the TRUST Act  to begin to address these endangered trust funds and start to rein in our national debt.\r\nBipartisan legislation like this would be a good start to preventing our country from facing an economic crisis in the coming decades.\r\nThe Republican senators sponsoring the legislation were joined by a handful of Democrats, which gives me hope that perhaps not all my Democrat colleagues are determined to explode our national debt with their socialist fantasies.\r\nUnfortunately, too many Democrats  including Democrats' vice presidential candidate  are open to bankrupting Americans with the Green New Deal and other plans.\r\nI hope they won't have the chance to implement their legislation.\r\nBecause our economy  and the American people  might never recover from the consequences.\r\nMr. President, I yield the floor.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://www.thune.senate.gov//public/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=2FB37599-3DB4-43E8-86A9-BAAA344E91FC"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4360689092427492, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}