[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17663]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          CREDIT CARD CONGRESS

  (Mr. CHAFFETZ asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. CHAFFETZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with grave concern about this 
``credit card Congress.'' Every problem seems to come with a spending 
plan, and no amount of money seems to be enough.
  The national deficit is our annual discrepancy between tax revenue 
and public expenditures. We just exceeded the $1 trillion deficit mark 
for this year, and we still have a long way to go this year. Our 
national debt is the cumulative amount of money the American people 
owe; and over the course of the past Congresses, it, too, has 
skyrocketed.
  As of June 30, the national debt stood at $11.5 trillion. During the 
month of June, the national debt increased by over $223 billion. The 
government spent over $18 billion in interest payments in just the 
month of June. That is $600 million a day.
  Because the Congress did not have the self-discipline to spend less 
than it took in, $600 million of your money is going out the door in 
interest payments. We can no longer afford to run Congress on a credit 
card.

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