Wayne Allard: “the amendment that was just reported at the desk is an amendment that is cosponsored by myself, Senator Voinovich…”

“the amendment that was just reported at the desk is an amendment that is cosponsored by myself, Senator Voinovich, Senator Grams, and Senator Enzi. I do want to take the time to thank them for their willingness to be a part of this very important effort to try to pay down our Nation's debt. We have two debts that are referred to frequently in debate, and I want to talk about each one of them individually. One is the burden of the national debt on America, and, as of June 14, 2000, the total national debt to the penny was $5,651,368,584,663.04. If we look at the debt that was owed to the public, there is an equally astounding figure of $3,499,251,116,128.15. How does this break down to each citizen's share of the national debt? If you were born today, what kind of debt would you have to face as you grew and paid for your education and started your own business and raised your family? Each citizen born today in America would owe $20,550 on the national debt; or another way of putting it, $12,724 on the debt owed to the public. In 1961, Congress established within the Department of the Treasury the Bureau of the Public Debt, an account for citizens to repay the public debt. Our amendment is an attempt to accomplish just that. What it does, it makes a one-time payment out of the fiscal year 2000 surplus--that is the budget we are operating under right now--to the account. We have a total of about 26.5 billion surplus dollars that have come in this year.…”