[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19646]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             BEING RESPONSIBLE WITH OUR NATION'S RESOURCES

  (Mr. FLAKE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, we have already made a down payment of $10.5 
billion. We will do another $50 billion likely later this week, as we 
should.
  I want to encourage my colleagues in our leadership to seek out 
offsets. When a family has an emergency, they will sometimes put it on 
a credit card or plan for it some other way. Our credit is just about 
at its limit, and we have to dig deep within ourselves and say, how are 
we going to pay for this? What else are we going to cut?
  I have many suggestions. A prescription drug benefit that will go 
into effect next year has about a $40 billion price tag for 1 year. 
That will be a great place to start. We just passed a massive 
transportation bill that we ought to have revisions on. There are many 
ways that we can look for the money, but we have to find the money 
somewhere, and we should not simply assume that we can spend new money 
and that everything will go along just fine.
  We have to be responsible with the Nation's resources.

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