[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3409]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     NOW IS THE TIME FOR TAX RELIEF

  (Mr. GIBBONS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, this House, indeed, this Congress has a lot 
to celebrate and a lot to be proud of.
  After decades of wasteful spending and rising Federal deficits, our 
fiscal house is in order. Since 1997, we have paid down $363 billion of 
the Federal debt, and we are on course to paying off the complete $2 
trillion of the Federal public debt over the next 10 years.
  This Republican Congress has set aside nearly $3 trillion for the 
protection of Social Security, Medicare and further debt relief. Mr. 
Speaker, the nonpartisan CBO estimates that we will have a $5.6 
trillion surplus over the next 10 years. Our fiscal house is not only 
in order, it is in the best possible shape in generations, and now we 
are going to give Americans what they need, want and deserve, real tax 
relief.
  No one doubts that if the surplus money stays in Washington, it will 
be spent on bigger, more wasteful Federal bureaucracy. We need to put 
America's families first. The surplus belongs to them, not the wasteful 
spenders in Washington. The right thing to do is return the surplus to 
the people who earned it, the American taxpayers.

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