Christopher Shays: “Ultimately, this Government is going to be shut down until the President doe his job and provides this Congress with his…”

“Ultimately, this Government is going to be shut down until the President doe his job and provides this Congress with his balanced budget. That is a fact. It is not something that either you or I like, but we know what the cause is. This is the cause that only happens and an opportunity that only happens once in a lifetime. For over 30 years, particularly since the end of the Vietnam war, our national debt his gone up from over $300 billion to $4.9 trillion or $4,900 billion, and that has happened in peacetime. Both the gentleman from Iowa and I and other Members, particularly on this side of the aisle, want to put an end to that. We want to end the deficits so we have lower interest rates; so our mortgages cost us less; so our car payments cost us less; and so that businessmen and women, when they want to invest in new plant and equipment to make their workers more efficient and more productive, do not have to pay so much for the cost of money to invest in new plant and equipment. What I would like to do is I would like to get into one particular issue to illustrate what we did during the last 11 months, and that was the whole issue of Medicare. We know that Medicare is going up from $178 billion to $289 billion. first off, we know that Medicare is going bankrupt. It becomes insolvent starting this year. Less money is put in the fund than goes out the first time ever in Medicare Part A. We know it ultimately starts to go insolvent and becomes bankrupt in the seventh year.”