Lateefah Simon: “But my friend from Louisiana has just illustrated why we need the balanced budget amendment. It is absolutely ridiculous…”

“But my friend from Louisiana has just illustrated why we need the balanced budget amendment. It is absolutely ridiculous to be talking about a tax cut when we have these huge deficits. But we can do that because it is popular, and so we are going to go out and we will go back home and make speeches how we cut taxes--absolutely nutty to be doing that right now. And so I think the Senator has made the point. When the Senator said we can do it on our own, that is the same speech we heard here in 1986 when it lost by one vote in the Senate. The total Federal debt then was $2 trillion. Now it is $4.7 trillion. And if we make the mistake of turning it down again, if we have a chance before we have economic chaos, it will be $9 trillion and we will have hurt the economy much, much more. In terms of the Social Security trust fund, the Senator said the seniors are in the cross hairs--every group is being told. And those figures the Senator got from Treasury, they are about as inaccurate as any figures that I can imagine.”