Lateefah Simon: “I want to touch on one other point, and then I will be leaving the floor here. The question has been mentioned about…”

“I want to touch on one other point, and then I will be leaving the floor here. The question has been mentioned about capital budgets, and that States have capital budgets. Now, frequently, States have to. But I also have to add, and I say this as a former State legislature in Illinois, frequently States take advantage of this. The State decides--in Illinois--does not need to have bond issues. We are now spending huge amounts of money on interest. We do not call it deficits but we issue bonds. It is not wise. The biggest capital budget in the history of humanity, not just the history of our country, has been the Interstate Highway System. It was proposed, to his credit, by President Eisenhower. But President Eisenhower said, ``Let's issue bonds to pay for it.'' And a distinguished Senator from Tennessee, the father of our Vice President, Senator Albert Gore, Sr., said, ``Let's not issue bonds. Let's do it on a pay-as-you-go basis, and let's increase the gasoline tax.'' And we did it. As of about a year ago the estimate was that we saved about $750 billion in interest because of that. What project is there that the Federal Government does today that requires that we have to issue bonds? The biggest single thing we do is a nuclear carrier. That will cost about $6 billion. We will say inflation goes up to $8 billion, pay for it over a period of 4 to 6 years. In a 1.6 trillion budget, we can do that.”