[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 16 (Tuesday, February 10, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H419-H420]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              WE SHOULD ALL ABIDE BY SOUND FINANCIAL RULES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I am from Kansas and I go home virtually 
every weekend. And when I go home, I talk to my constituents; and they 
tell me, not in these words, these are mine but I guess it is what I 
have kind of distilled from their comments to me over the past 5 years 
I have been in Congress, why can Congress and America not live like 
American families do?
  There are three simple rules that Kansas families and American 
families follow: number one, do not spend more money than you make; 
number two, pay off your debts; number three, invest in basics for the 
future. Of course, the basics for a nation are national defense, some 
sort of highway system to move goods around the country and make our 
economy work strong.
  The basics for a family are food, shelter, education, health care, 
transportation, all the things that you think of, that we pay our bills 
on a monthly basis. And yet we routinely in government have spent more 
money than we took in, resulting in a $7.1 trillion national debt, $7.1 
trillion. That is 7,000 billion dollars, more than most people, myself 
included, can even imagine.

                              {time}  2015

  My colleagues have heard other speakers talk about our deficit this 
year as opposed to combination of all the years of deficit, but our 
deficit this year is the highest in our Nation's history, $521 billion, 
and that does not even include the supplemental the administration says 
they are going to request for Iraq, which the OMB director, the Office 
of Management and Budget director, said would be as much as $50 
billion, if not more. That means we are $521 billion in deficit for 
just 1 year.
  We are spending right now $1 billion a day on our debt tax; and the 
debt tax, of course, as my colleagues heard another speaker say, is the 
interest we pay on our national debt, $1 billion a day. We used to say, 
another day another dollar. Now it is another day, another billion 
dollars.
  The interest we pay on our national debt is the third largest 
category of expenditure in our national budget. After defense and 
Social Security and Medicare is interest on the national debt, and that 
is money that could be used for health care for children, for 
education, for anything worthwhile besides interest on the national 
debt.
  I am on the Committee on the Budget and Committee on Financial 
Services, and I have heard Chairman Greenspan testify the last several 
years, and I have had a chance to question him at least once or twice 
each year. The one question I routinely ask Chairman Greenspan is, if 
this Congress could do something, what would he ask Congress to do that 
would help shore up our economy in this country? And his answer is 
consistent. Fiscal responsibility, live within our means, and that 
means a balanced budget and when we can to start to pay down debt.
  Chairman Greenspan, I am confident if he were standing right here 
tonight, in fact I will predict in the next 30 to 60 days Chairman 
Greenspan is going

[[Page H420]]

to issue a stern statement or a major policy address talking about his 
concern about the possibility of rising interest rates if we do not get 
our fiscal house in order.
  Some of my colleagues are old enough to remember the late seventies. 
We had interest rates in this country of 13, 15, 17 percent; and that 
would be absolutely devastating for the real estate industry, for 
business generally and for consumer borrowing, 15, 17 percent interest 
rates. We cannot do that as a Nation, and we cannot anymore afford and 
we should not pass on our charge debts to our children and 
grandchildren. It is the wrong thing to do.
  I spoke to a high school class three weeks ago, and I said to this 
class, why should they care about a $7 trillion national debt. A senior 
in high school, girl, said because we are going to have to pay it off, 
and her teacher said she gets an A for today. I told these students 
that is absolutely wrong, they should be angry, and they should contact 
their senators and their Member of Congress and tell them they are 
taking our country down the wrong path, to turn us around.
  We are the greatest country in the whole world. We are the only 
superpower in the whole world, but a country like the United States, 
even the United States cannot be strong and free and broke. We have to 
turn our country around for our children, for our grandchildren and for 
America.

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