Christopher Shays: “Mr. Chairman, when I sent out my legislative questionnaire, my constituents wanted me to protect Social Security and not…”

“Mr. Chairman, when I sent out my legislative questionnaire, my constituents wanted me to protect Social Security and not spend the surplus. My constituents wanted prescription drug assistance. They wanted us to pay down the debt, and they wanted tax fairness. They wanted a tax cut. That is what our budget does. That is why we see absolutely no reason at all to have any other budget but the one we have. What have we done? In the year 1999, the last year, we do not spend Social Security. We are not spending it in this year's budget, and we are not spending it in next year's budget. That is in our budget plan. When we were elected in 1994 and took office in 1995, we were looking at public debt going up $34 billion, $48 billion, $67 billion. That is what we were looking at. Our plan changed that so it goes down rather than up. Public debt is going down. In fact, what happened is, not only is it going down, it would have continued to go up but we are actually reducing public debt significantly. What have we paid back? We paid back $51 billion in 1998, $88 billion in 1999, $163 billion in the year we are in now, for $332 billion of debt payment down, and in our budget another $170 billion in the budget to come. That has left us as well the opportunity, out of $10 trillion, to have a $200 billion tax cut. I am absolutely amazed that we cannot cut 2 percent of our revenue in the next 5 years.”