Daniel Schaefer: “as sponsor of the balanced budget amendment which passed this House last year, my concern for the financial future of…”

“as sponsor of the balanced budget amendment which passed this House last year, my concern for the financial future of our country is well known. I support a balanced Federal budget because we owe it to our children and grandchildren. It would be unconscionable to saddle them with the accumulated debts that we ourselves failed to pay. In this regard, I am very pleased that all the budget plans we are considering here today also envision a balanced budget by the year 2002, as well. However, I am concerned about the treatment of solar and renewable energy programs and the complete elimination of wind energy research and development in House Concurrent Resolution 178. These large funding cuts will greatly harm American research efforts in these important technologies and give our foreign competitors an unparalled opportunity to take the world lead from the United States in this high-growth field. We have seen other kinds of new technologies invented and developed by Americans, only to be successfully deployed by foreign countries. This is the so-called VCR syndrome. We are now in danger of letting our technological leadership in another important field slip away once again.”