Christopher Shays: “I would say right off that I have tremendous disagreement with the presentation that was just made by my distinguished…”

“I would say right off that I have tremendous disagreement with the presentation that was just made by my distinguished colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I look forward to filling in some of the missing pieces that I think were left out, to give people a better idea of clearly what happened last year and what we are attempting to have happen this year. Mr. Speaker, we have three primary objectives in this new Republican majority. Our first objective is to get our financial house in order and balance the Federal budget, not because balancing the Federal budget is the end-all and be-all, it is just the basic commonsense logic that is required before you build on top of it. We want a strong foundation. But the foundation is not what we want to have as the ultimate. We want to have a stronger economy that has to be built on a strong foundation of getting our financial house in order and balancing the Federal budget. Our second interest and concern is to save our trust funds, particularly Medicare, for future generations. I will get into great depth about the reason why we need to save this trust fund and the reason why our plan did save this trust fund. Our third objective is to transform our caretaking social and corporate and, frankly, farming welfare state into a caring opportunity society. We want to teach people how to fish, not just give them the fish.”