On the recordApril 8, 2011
I say hello to my good friend from Delaware. He made some very good comments. I want to follow up and talk about this debate we are having. The Senator from Tennessee, Senator Corker, talked about the need to forget about whether you are a Republican or a Democrat and think about what is best for the country, and that is what we should be doing right now. People around the country understand we have a serious debt problem. Spending has been run up under Republicans and Democrats. People can blame whichever party they want, but the reality is we now have a $14 trillion national debt. This year alone, $1.6 trillion is how much more we are going to spend than we take in. That is 40 cents, or a little over 40 cents, out of every dollar we are spending this year we are borrowing from countries like China. That is such a dangerous thing to do, because we are now dependent on other countries and our economy is on very shaky ground. Everyone in this body understands this is completely unsustainable. Let's look at the path the President has set us on as far as his budget is concerned. If we took up his budget, this year alone we will spend about $250 billion in interest on our national debt. That is kind of like having a credit card and you are spending $250 billion in interest on that credit card. If we follow the President's plan over the next 10 years, that $250 billion will go to almost $900 billion a year.…
Said by
John Ensign
Source
govinfo.gov