DENNIS A. CARDOZA: “I rise today once again to express my disappointment with the lack of attention to our Nation's fiscal crisis. The…”

“I rise today once again to express my disappointment with the lack of attention to our Nation's fiscal crisis. The system is broken, plain and simple. We need to focus our efforts on finding a cure for our addiction to deficit spending in this body. The Blue Dog Coalition, which I am a proud member of, has been a leading voice in Congress on fiscal responsibility for over a decade. Recently the Blue Dogs have posted signs in front of all of our offices that explain to everyone exactly how bad the fiscal crisis is, an example of which is on my right here. We update the numbers on these signs every day. The sad part is that our Nation's debt is increasing so fast that by the end of each day, these signs are inaccurate. As you can see from the sign, today the National debt is at $7,755,874,000 or $27,000-plus per person. Ladies and gentlemen, these numbers are appalling. The Blue Dogs are dedicated to fighting our Nation's ballooning national debt, and we will continue to lead the fight for fiscal sanity until Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle and the White House realize that we cannot continue to run our Nation deeper and deeper into the deficit hole. There is no secret that our National debt is out of control, as we are expected to run another $427 billion deficit in 2005, with more deficits projected into the future. We do not even have a firm grip, ladies and gentlemen, on where our money is going.…”