[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 72 (Tuesday, May 21, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5305-H5306]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         BALANCING THE BUDGET WILL STRENGTHEN AMERICA'S FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Stearns] is recognized during 
morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues, behind me on the wall, 
behind

[[Page H5306]]

the Speaker's chair, high up on the wall, in fact way up there, is 
inscribed the following words by Congressman Daniel Webster:

       Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its 
     powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great 
     interests, and see whether we also, in our day and 
     generation, may not perform something worthy to be 
     remembered.

  In the quote I am trying to emphasize perform something worthy to be 
remembered in our generation. His words are a creed to live by. They 
are words by which our actions as representatives of the people should 
be judged, and I urge the American people to do just that. Judge us by 
whether we also in our day and generation may not perform something 
worthy to be remembered.
  I am confident that we have done just that, that we have done 
something worthy to remember, that in our action last week in passing a 
balanced budget resolution we have proactively and for the good of the 
country changed the course of American history; that we have halted 40 
years of reckless spending and that we have at long last set the 
country back on track. In our day and our generation we have faced the 
defining issue and we have offered a solution to the problem.
  Simply and emphatically, balancing the budget is the most important 
action Washington can take for the American people. Why, one might ask. 
Because not balancing the budget would be disastrous. It would mark the 
end of many of the things that we take for granted. It would, in 
effect, mark the beginning of the end of the American way of life as we 
know it.
  The national debt already stands at over $5 trillion and it is 
growing at a rate of $14,000 per second, which actually means in the 5 
minutes it takes me to give this speech, our debt will have increased 
by $4.2 million, totaling over $50 billion an hour, or $1.2 billion a 
day.
  Consider this, my colleagues. If Congress does nothing and allows 
spending to continue at its present course, a child, perhaps one of our 
children or our grandchildren, born today, will have to pay $187,000 in 
taxes over his or her lifetime just to cover the interest on the 
national debt.
  But getting Federal spending under control is not just about putting 
off this fiscal doomsday, it is also about tremendous and vital 
benefits, the foremost of which would be a dramatic drop in interest 
rates for all of us. The study by the economics firm of McGraw Hill 
predicts that balancing the budget would lower the interest rates on 
the average mortgage by almost 3 percentage points. On a 30-year 
$75,000 loan, that would translate into a total savings over the life 
of the loan of over $37,000.
  What will it take to balance the budget? Simply put, letting spending 
continue to go up, but more slowly than it otherwise would. Let us look 
at the numbers. This year Federal spending will total $1.6 trillion. If 
Congress does nothing, spending by 2002 will rise to $2.1 trillion, an 
increase of $600 billion. Under last week's budget resolution, spending 
in 2002 would rise to $1.9 trillion, an increase of some $400 billion. 
By any measure, a $400 billion increase in spending does not represent 
a cut.
  Abraham Lincoln said it best when he said:

       The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy 
     present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we 
     must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, so we must 
     think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and 
     then we shall save this country.

  We must save this country. We are at the crossroads, Mr. Speaker, at 
the occasion in our history when, we must disenthrall ourselves and 
save our country. To do this we must make the difficult decisions. We 
must take the steps to guarantee the fiscal solvency of our country so 
that our children and our grandchildren will have the same chances we 
had, so that they, too, have a chance to grow and to prosper in a land 
of greatness and of opportunity.
  For our Nation, for our solvency, and for our children we must 
balance the budget. This is not about politics and rhetoric, it is 
about the right of Americans to pursue and secure their dreams. it is 
about doing what is right and what is, as Daniel Webster said, ``worthy 
to be remembered.''
  So the question is not whether we can afford to balance the budget, 
but whether we can afford not to.

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