James T. Tucker: “Mr. Chairman, obviously we are all concerned with balancing the budget. There are three areas, however, Mr. Chairman…”

“Mr. Chairman, obviously we are all concerned with balancing the budget. There are three areas, however, Mr. Chairman, that are bones of contention. The first one is the area that my illustrious colleague who just yielded to me has produced an amendment about, and that is to have truth-in-budgeting. We should be honest with the American people. As my colleagues just indicated before I came up here, Mr. Chairman, we should not play hardball with the American people. They are not our adversaries. Therefore, we should be honest with them. Let them know where the cuts are going to have to occur because they are going to have to occur right in their pocketbook, whether we are talking about Social Security or whether we are talking about our young. It reminds me, Mr. Chairman, of an adage that says you can judge a society very carefully by how it treats its elderly and how it treats its young. So this is how we must look at balancing the budget.”