Randall Cunningham: “the No. 1 priority should be to provide the aid, not only to the earthquake victims, but to the flood and hurricane…”

“the No. 1 priority should be to provide the aid, not only to the earthquake victims, but to the flood and hurricane victims. However, most Americans feel that this aid, this No. 1 priority, should be offset by a lesser priority spending. The gentleman just spoke about crime being cut. If we keep increasing the national debt of $4.3 billion, estimated to go over $1 trillion in the next 5 years, we will not have any money. At $1.3 billion per day interest, we can provide a lot of crime and education and other things that we need. The priority should be to reduce that debt and put these things on budget. Without these offsets, they do not count on the deficit. It is easy for the President to say, ``Look what I have done for the deficit,'' and it does not count, but the money still goes on the debt. That is a priority. We would like the offsets identified on the House floor. We would also like, and I think the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt] has asked for, a bipartisan task force to identify future problems we may have. There may be additional. With the failure of any other these amendments for offsets, we would ask the committee on rules to grant us a freestanding bill at a later time, bipartisan, to make these offsets, because these are important, and the debt is the number one enemy of this country.”