[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 23 (Thursday, February 27, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H694-H695]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             PASSING THE AMERICAN DREAM ON TO OUR CHILDREN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, I came up today to talk about passing 
the American dream on to our children.
  We have heard so much today, and it appears that people have been 
getting together on the other side of the aisle for some time the past 
couple of weeks trying to figure out a strategy, where to take their 
party over the next 2 years. We heard a lot more talk about children. 
In fact, that is what we heard over the past 2 years, constant 
references to children, children, children. We have got to help 
children.
  I can tell you as the father of a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old 
boy, I have got to say that our children's future has got to be our top 
priority. Like my parents, I want to ensure that my children and all 
children have an opportunity to achieve the American dream, an 
opportunity. In America we cannot guarantee the outcome, but we are at 
least responsible in ensuring that all American children have the 
opportunity to achieve the American dream.
  There have been fights over the past two decades, three decades on 
how we ensure that all American children have the opportunity to 
achieve the American dream, battles over affirmative action, battles 
over quotas, battles over other issues. But those have been fights of 
the past. Unfortunately, the fights that we are going to be waging in 
the future may be trying to figure out how to make sure that any 
American children can achieve the American dream.
  Because, you see, a fiscal crisis, a financial cloud hovers over this 
country that is so tremendous, so great, so frightening that all of our 
children face an economic Armageddon in the next 20 years.

                              {time}  1500

  Right now we are $5.6 trillion in debt, and it has gotten so out of 
hand that few Americans can even begin to fathom what $5.6 trillion 
means to the next working generation. One way to put it is an 
illustration, and I heard it earlier today, and I have heard it before 
and used it before. To try to understand what a trillion dollars is, or 
$5.6 trillion is, think about this:
  If you made $1 million every single day from the day that Jesus 
Christ was born 2,000 years ago until today, you would not make enough 
money to pay off our Federal debt, a million dollars every day for 2000 
years.
  But the news gets worse. If you made $1 million every day from today 
until the year AD 4000, and added all that money up on top of the 
million dollars a day that you made over the past 1,000 years, you 
still would not have enough money over that 4,000-year timeframe making 
$1 million every day to pay off our Federal debt.
  And yet I hear people come up and get behind that microphone and 
actually have the audacity to tell us how much they love children, when 
at the same time these are the same people that are opposing our 
attempts at a balanced budget amendment or a balanced budget that would 
restore fiscal sanity to the United States of America.
  I see some younger people here in the audience, and unfortunately I 
have some bad news for them. If you think it is going to be bad enough 
trying to pay off $5.6 trillion, wait until the baby boomers start 
retiring in the year 2010. Then your chances are completely eviscerated 
unless the adults in this Chamber start behaving like adults very, very 
soon.
  You see, the Senate had a bipartisan commission put together 3 years 
ago, headed by a Democrat, Senator Kerrey. And you know what they 
figured out? They figured out that, unless we balance our budget and 
take control of financial spending in Washington, DC, that the average 
American--now get this--the average American is going to be paying 89 
percent of their income to the Federal Government by the year 2020.
  Now, I do not know how many people are planning to be alive in the 
year 2020, but I know I am planning to be here, and I pray to God that 
my children will be here. But what is it going

[[Page H695]]

to be like if we live in an America where the Federal Government gets 
$9 of every $10 that we earn?
  Mr. Speaker, we are not making this up. This was a bipartisan 
commission that came to this realization. And every day that we wait, 
every day that we delay, every day that we steal money from our 
children's pockets to pay off political promises that we have made to 
the hacks and cronies that lobby us day in and day out is an 
opportunity lost. And as this country slouches toward the 21st century, 
as we slouch toward an economic Armageddon that will crush our 
children's opportunity to have the same shots at the American dream 
that we had, we miss an opportunity, and we betray those very children 
that people that get up behind these podiums claim to be so interested 
in.
  Mr. Speaker, I really do not know how to explain it to my children. I 
do not know how to explain it to friends' children. I do not know how 
we are going to do it 30 years from now. They are going to ask us: What 
did you do when you had an opportunity to actually save America? How 
did you vote? Did you get on the floor? Did you speak against the 
travesty when the press was ignoring it? When the media did not want to 
touch it? When the politicians were afraid to come close to it, what 
were you doing? And I will have to tell them that, while some of us 
actually cared enough to stick our necks out on the line and try to 
make a difference, there are others that simply lacked the moral 
conviction and the courage and the discipline to do it.
  Mr. Speaker, I have got to admit right now that I am somewhat ashamed 
to be associated with some Members of the U.S. Congress, and it greatly 
pains me to say that. I have only been up here for a few years. I was a 
middle-class father of two sitting on the couch back in 1994 when I 
decided I wanted to get off the couch, I wanted to come to Washington 
and I wanted to make a difference. Nobody knew who I was. I had never 
run for political office before. I did not come from a wealthy family. 
I did not have anybody that would bankroll my campaign. I just had 
ideas. I wanted to contribute to this country. I wanted to save my 
children from the future that they appeared to be facing because 
politicians were stealing money from their pockets and from their 
generation's pockets to pay off their political friends.
  So I got involved, and it was not until I got up to Washington that I 
understood part of the problem. I understood that not only were there 
politicians that were opposed to the Federal Government living by the 
same rules that the middle class, where you only spend as much money as 
you take in, but that there were actually people in this Chamber who 
would make one promise while they were campaigning for office and then, 
when they got to Washington, DC, would do what we call the bait and 
switch, which for the rest of America is illegal. For the rest of 
America, if an advertiser does a bait and switch, they get sent to 
jail.
  But in Congress I guess that is OK because there is a Senator back in 
1994, who in November 1994 promised that if she got to Washington, DC, 
again, if she was reelected again, that she would support the balanced 
budget amendment. Well, she got elected in November 1994, and 6 weeks 
later she came to Washington, DC.

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