Senator Lee: Thank you, Senator Johnson. There is no issue that is more important — no issue more important or pressing for the American people than this one;  where the GDP ratio is about 95% of our economy. 

It can’t long endure that kind of borrowing. It has an effect that will result in an estimated loss of about a million jobs a year for each year that we remain above the 90% of debt to GDP ratio. We simply can’t endure that. The American people can’t endure it.

We need to increase revenues. The only way we’re going to increase revenues is to allow the economy to recover. That won’t happen as long as we keep borrowing more and more money while doing nothing to control the underlying problem, the systemic problem that requires a structural reform.

The American people understandably, justifiably and very correctly are demanding that before we raise the nation’s debt limit yet again, before we extend yet another credit card for the United States of America, we commit to some kind of cuts. Future borrowing requires us to make future cuts. The problem with that is the moment that that debt is actually used up, the moment it’s incurred, the American people are under an obligation.

But if we make a promise today that we’re going to cut, let’s say $2 trillion or $3 trillion or $4 trillion over the next 10 or 12 or 14 or 15 years, that’s a promise that we can’t make. That’s a promise that we can’t really commit to because this Congress, the one that sits right now, will not be the same congress that convenes in January of 2013 or on January of 2015 or in future years.

We’ve got to make changes right now. And the only way that we can commit to future cuts, to future structural reforms, the only way we can bind future Congresses is by amending the U.S. Constitution, to change the way we spend money, limit spending as a percentage of GDP and to require a supermajority to spend more than we have or to raise taxes.

That’s what we’re demanding. We’re willing to work, we’re willing to come to the table on the debt limit, but we demand some kind of solution that will put us on course towards sanity. That’s why we’re here.