[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2356]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             DEBT ADDICTION

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my Special 
Order at this time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Texas?
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, everyone knows our country is deeply in debt. 
Most Americans decry the rampant growth in government spending. 
Essentially, however, no one in Washington is concerned enough to do 
anything about it.
  Debt is like an addiction: the political pain of withdrawal keeps 
politicians spending, so they do not offend any special interest groups 
demanding that government benefits continue. As with all addictions, 
long-term dependency on a dangerous substance can kill the patient. 
Dependency on bad policy also can destroy the goose that many believe 
lays the golden egg.
  Our ever-increasing government expenditures, which perpetuate a 
runaway welfare/warfare state, simply are not sustainable. The fallacy 
comes from the belief that government can provide for our needs and 
manage a worldwide empire. In truth, government can provide benefits 
only by first taking resources from productive American citizens or 
borrowing against the future. Inevitably, government programs exceed 
the productive capacity of the people or their willingness to finance 
wasteful spending.
  The authority to accumulate deficits provides a tremendous incentive 
to politicians to increase spending. Total spending is the real 
culprit. The more government taxes, borrows, or inflates, the less 
chance the people have to spend their resources wisely. The way 
government spends money also causes great harm. By their very nature, 
governments are inefficient and typically operate as we recently 
witnessed with FEMA in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas over the last 
6 months. Governments are bureaucratic, inefficient, and invite fraud. 
This is just as true in foreign affairs as it is in domestic affairs. 
Throughout history, foreign military adventurism has been economically 
harmful for those nations bent on intervening abroad. Our Nation is no 
different.
  Largesse at home and militarism abroad requires excessive spending 
and taxation, pushing deficits to a point where the whole system 
collapses. The biggest recent collapse was the fall of the Soviet 
Empire just 15 years ago. My contention is that we are not immune from 
a similar crisis. Today, our national debt is $8.257 trillion. 
Interestingly, the legal debt limit is $8.184 trillion.
  This means we currently are $73 billion over the legal debt limit. 
Creative financing Washington-style allows this to happen, but soon 
Congress will be forced to increase the national debt limit by hundreds 
of billions of dollars. Congress will raise the limit, quietly if 
necessary; and the deficit spiral will continue for a while longer.
  But this official debt figure barely touches the subject. Total 
obligations of the Federal Government, including Social Security and 
Medicare and prescription drugs, are now over $50 trillion, a sum 
younger generations will not be able to pay. This means the standard of 
living of a lot of Americans who are retired will decline sharply in 
the near future.
  Two vehicles are used to fund this wild spending. First, the Federal 
Reserve creates dollars out of thin air and purchases Treasury bills 
without limit, a very nice convenience.
  Second, foreign entities, mostly central banks, own $1.5 trillion of 
our debt. They purchased over $200 billion in just the last 12 months, 
increasing their holdings by 15 percent. This is a consequence of our 
current account deficit and the outsourcing of more and more American 
manufacturing jobs. Few economists argue that this arrangement can 
continue much longer.
  Excessive spending, a rapidly growing national debt, the Federal 
Reserve inflation machine, and foreign borrowing all put pressure on 
the dollar. Unless we treat our addiction to debt, it will play havoc 
with the dollar, undermine our economic well-being, and destroy our 
liberties. It is time for us to get our house in order.

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