Sam Gibbons: “this House, indeed, this Congress has a lot to celebrate and a lot to be proud of. After decades of wasteful spending…”

“this House, indeed, this Congress has a lot to celebrate and a lot to be proud of. After decades of wasteful spending and rising Federal deficits, our fiscal house is in order. Since 1997, we have paid down $363 billion of the Federal debt, and we are on course to paying off the complete $2 trillion of the Federal public debt over the next 10 years. This Republican Congress has set aside nearly $3 trillion for the protection of Social Security, Medicare and further debt relief. Mr. Speaker, the nonpartisan CBO estimates that we will have a $5.6 trillion surplus over the next 10 years. Our fiscal house is not only in order, it is in the best possible shape in generations, and now we are going to give Americans what they need, want and deserve, real tax relief. No one doubts that if the surplus money stays in Washington, it will be spent on bigger, more wasteful Federal bureaucracy. We need to put America's families first. The surplus belongs to them, not the wasteful spenders in Washington. The right thing to do is return the surplus to the people who earned it, the American taxpayers. ____________________”