Lifting the Crushing Burden of Debt

This is an important hearing, basically on the future of our country. We here in Congress have our differences over how to solve our most urgent fiscal challenges, but I don't think that there is any serious debate over the urgency of these challenges. I doubt anyone here would dispute the fact that if we fail to act, we are inviting a debt crisis with potentially catastrophic consequences. Those seeking to cling to our unsustainable status quo are, quite frankly, putting us at the greatest risk.

Erskine Bowles, the Co-Chair of the Fiscal Commission, former Chief of Staff to former President Clinton, I think said it best, quote, The era of deficit denial is over. The failure to address the structural drivers of our debt has been a bipartisan failure over the years, yet the gusher of government spending and the creation of new, open-ended health care entitlements turned a fiscal challenge into a fiscal crisis.