[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 23, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H5]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       A BALANCED FEDERAL BUDGET

  (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, in this past year and future year of war and 
politics and recession, I rise today to urge my colleagues to respond 
to that higher calling of Members of the United States House of 
Representatives under the Constitution of the United States and commit 
ourselves on this first day of this second session of the 107th 
Congress to be a Congress that balances the Federal budget.
  The headlines, Mr. Speaker, are filled with an American corporation 
which through either mismanagement or criminality has done a disservice 
to millions of middle-class shareholders and to thousands of its 
employees, even some from my own family who live in Texas.
  It is fundamentally a failure of that corporation to manage its 
budget. Let us not likewise fail in this Congress to give the American 
people, even in these recessionary times, a balanced Federal budget. 
Let us begin this day to live out that proverb that if you owe debts, 
pay debts. And let us live out our commitment in this Republican-
dominated Congress to provide a balanced Federal budget for the 
American people.

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