Austan Goolsbee Quotes

The debt ceiling is not something to toy with.

It is simply science fiction fantasy to say that, if you do not raise the debt ceiling, that everything is going to collapse.

Not raising the debt ceiling is not an automatic trigger for a default.

I'm not going to raise the debt ceiling.

There's no debt limit in the Constitution.

There was no avoiding the fact that we were going to hit our debt ceiling.

The debt ceiling at some point has to be raised. I don't think there's anybody that questions the fact that if we ended up getting in a situation where the U.S. government was sending out IOUs like the state of California did at one point, that ends up creating quite a brand problem for our country.

I do not want America to default on its debt.

The debt ceiling serves no useful purpose.

I think at the end of the day we have to raise the debt ceiling, because America pays its bills.

When you're the president of the United States and you know that the biggest issue facing you is this cliff that we're about ready to head over if we don't get this spending and debt situation under control, it's very irresponsible not to take the action that is necessary to fix the problem.

Nobody wants to put the creditworthiness of the United States in jeopardy. Nobody wants to see the United States default. So we've got to seize this moment, and we have to seize it soon.

If anybody ran a business like that they would be out of business quickly, and Barack Obama's leadership is driving this business, the United States of America, toward a fiscal cliff.

The debate we won't be having is whether or not the debt ceiling should be raised. We will not have a situation where people will hold the American economy hostage in order to achieve a specific agenda - at least not until 2013. So we think that is incredibly important as a matter of economic good.

We have to deal with the nation's debt.

If we reach the debt ceiling, we don't have to default. Getting to that point just won't allow us to reach new debt.

The president says we need to raise the debt ceiling because America pays its bills. No if we paid our bills we wouldn't have all this debt. The reason we have to raise the debt ceiling is because we can't pay our bills and we have to borrow money because we don't have any money to pay our bills.

Now, 'the fiscal cliff' is a name that the media came up with, but some of us have been saying for years, 'You have got to stop the out of control federal spending, or you will end up at this point.' We're there.

I think it's important that people know what raising the debt ceiling is. It's Congress giving permission to the federal government to borrow more money that we don't have, and we borrow it for the purpose of spending it.

The country is facing a fiscal crisis, and the United States Senate is at the center of the debate about how to bring federal spending under control.

I think the whole issue of a debt ceiling makes no sense to me whatsoever. Anybody who is remotely adroit at arithmetic doesn't need a debt ceiling to tell you where you are.

The American people were really not 100% convinced that this idea of default was really going to occur, and I think the media, current company excepted here, did not help in that regard because they confused the American people about what default actually meant.

I don't know of any of us that want to see any kind of default happen.

I certainly don't want our nation to go into default, but at the same time, I'm very concerned about our ongoing debt problem.

We've got to start worrying about America. And if we don't start dealing with the debt we have and the deficit spending we have in Washington, politics doesn't matter, because the American people do realize that they have to balance their budgets.