[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 25 (Wednesday, March 11, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H1026]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       PHONY SURPLUS WILL NOT END RAID ON GOVERNMENT TRUST FUNDS

  (Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, just an aside. I understand 
that when the President was in Connecticut, that he was at a fundraiser 
at a tobacco lawyer's house.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a riddle: If you are in debt but you balance 
your budget and have surpluses for 5 years in a row, at the end of that 
time will you owe more or less money? If you are an individual, you 
will owe less money. But if you are the Federal Government, you will 
owe more money, almost $1 trillion more between now and 2002.
  How can this be? Here is the ugly truth. There is no budget surplus. 
The so-called budget surplus is a figment of clever Federal Government 
accounting. In 1988, the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, projects 
there will be a surplus of $8 billion and the national debt will be 
$5.5 trillion this year. In 2002, after 5 years of balanced budgets and 
surpluses, the national debt will be $6.4 trillion, almost $1 trillion 
more.
  The national debt will grow because the Federal Government does not 
count the billions spent each year from government trust funds like 
Social Security. Clearly, there is no surplus and the budget, 
obviously, is not balanced.

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