[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 204 (Tuesday, December 19, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H15092]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FACTS ON THE BALANCED BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ewing] is recognized during 
morning business for 3 minutes.
  Mr. EWING. Mr. Speaker, I come here today to talk about the balanced 
budget and to talk about some things that may be educational to people 
who watch this.
  First of all, I think the attacks on the majority fail to recognize 
the total picture. If you follow the rhetoric that you hear in 
attacking the Republican majority in their effort to balance the 
budget, if you follow their line of reasoning, we could never balance 
the budget so long as there was one individual out there who may not be 
served to the same extent that some think they should.
  You ask the American people how they feel on these different issues, 
and we all know that it depends on how you ask the question. But the 
one thing that we are aware of and that has come through loud and clear 
is that when you ask the question ``should we balance the budget,'' the 
American people say yes.
  Yes, we will have to make choices. Yes, we will have to rearrange how 
we do business. Otherwise, some day the house of cards will come 
tumbling down.
  It has been 30 years almost since the Federal budget was balanced, 
and the new Republican Congress has the opportunity to make this 
happen, with some support from the minority side. They say they want a 
balanced budget. Let us see some support from them to get that done. 
Or, if we fail, I think the American people will say ``business as 
usual.'' We will not revisit any of the hard decisions between now and 
the next two decades if we fail this time.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, there is an article in the morning paper which 
I think was very interesting and might be very interesting to all of us 
and to the viewers at home. There are two categories of Government 
spending. One, where we purchase things for use by Government; and the 
other is transfer payments, and that is where we take from the middle-
class family and transfer it, transfer it to somebody else, because 
they are not working or do not work or cannot work. And you have to 
address that problem, because it is now almost 20 percent of the 
Federal income that goes to transfer payments, and it is growing at an 
enormous rate.
  So the discussion about the budget just is not crunching a few 
numbers and the President giving here and the Congress giving there. It 
is about how we do government and how we spend the money.

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