Carl Levin Quotes
Restoring responsibility and accountability is essential to the economic and fiscal health of our nation.
Levin, Carl. "Opening Statement at Hearing on Wall Street and the Financial Crisis." Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, U.S. Government Printing Office, 13 Apr. 2010.
An unusual feature of the American governmental budgeting process is that Congress has passed a law limiting the amount of debt that the United States can maintain. When there is deficit financing, the law limiting the debt has to be changed periodically as the nation approaches the debt limit. Partisan politicians often take advantage of the fact that the debt limit must be passed and hold the passage hostage to obtaining something they want. The reality is that when Congress passed the previous budgets, they determined what the debt would have to be later. So they have already voted to exceed the budget ceiling. But the requirement of doing it in a second forum allows more pressure to be placed on the administration and the other party’s Congress members. While this process is ongoing, many people in the world are worried and often terrorized by the prospect of the debt ceiling not being passed, in which case the United States would have to default on its obligations—not pay interest, contractors, retirements, salaries, etc. Hence the admonition that the debt ceiling should never be a part of the budget negotiating process by most responsible statesmen and women. But the mist partisan of the politicians want to play politics with the debt ceiling precisely because the stakes are so high and they can get both headlines and leverage.
The Clinton budget was a very unusual one. He and Treasury Sectary Robert Rubin determined that the large deficit built up in the previous administrations and the high interest rate were competing with the private sector for investment capital. Therefore the budget raised taxes and took other steps to reduce the largest deficit then in American History. Virtually all of the Republicans saw disaster for the economy with this budget and even some of the fiscal conservatives from Clinton’s own party were opposed. The budget passed by a single vote in the House, and that started the largest economic growth period in American History. The economy became so strong that Clinton was able to produce a balanced budget, eliminate the Reagan deficit and produce more new jobs than any administration in American history. The prediction that the budget would cause the country to fail was, not only wrong, but the budget caused the nation to succeed, beyond what any thought possible. See {626772} for one of the warnings from his own party.
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.
Carl Milton Levin is an American attorney and retired politician who served as a United States Senator from Michigan from 1979 to 2015. He was the chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services and is a member of the Democratic Party.
