[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 137 (Tuesday, September 27, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 27, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
             THE REPUBLICAN CONTRACT AND THE NATIONAL DEBT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bilbray). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, our national debt is a disgraceful legacy. 
That is why I support the balanced-budget amendment.
  But that is also why I must speak out today. Republican Party bosses 
have commanded their candidates to come to Washington to sign a so-
called contract to try and buy an election and send a trillion-dollar 
bill to our grandchildren. Their premise is this: tax cuts for the 
wealthiest few, tax breaks for large corporations, and somehow, 
someday, someway, a promise of a balanced budget.
  We have been down the borrow-and-spend road before. During the Reagan 
and Bush era, the burden placed on every American, every American under 
18, quadrupled from $15,000 to over $60,000. I have a grandchild 7 
years of age. We quadrupled the debt on her head.
  We are thankfully finally on the right track. Three years of 
declining deficits; that is the first time since Harry Truman that that 
has occurred.
  But tough choices must be made before America is truly economically 
secure.
  I know that my constituents in southern Maryland, Mr. Speaker, demand 
and deserve real results, not a public-relations gimmick that mocks 
their priorities. My advice to those candidates on the steps today is 
this: Defy your party's bosses, forget their bankrupt ideas, do not 
sign on to supply side II. Supply side I, which was adopted in 1981, 
promised a balanced budget. As a matter of fact, when Ronald Reagan 
signed the tax bill that was associated with supply-side economics in 
August 1981, he said to the American people, by signing this 
legislation, we will get a balanced budget by October 1, 1983. How sad, 
how very sad that that premise was not achieved.
  Lest anybody think that it was the Congress spending more money than 
Reagan asked for, in point of fact, President Reagan asked that 
Congress to spend more money than this Congress, in his 8 years, 
authorized to be spent.
  Defy, my friends in the Republican party, candidates who come to 
Washington to make a contract on the steps and then go the special-
interest lobbyists to make another contract tonight in a fundraiser. 
Forget this bankrupt contract and the bankrupt ideas that it 
incorporates. Go home. Go home and listen to your neighbors instead.
  Our country and our grandchildren will be better off.

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