Jack Kingston: “The odd part is, and just in a personal home, it is fun to buy a new boat or a new car. I have had one new car in my…”

“The odd part is, and just in a personal home, it is fun to buy a new boat or a new car. I have had one new car in my life, and I have never owned a new boat, so I really do not know the feeling, but I know it is a lot more fun to buy maybe a new TV or a new stereo than it is to buy a new drier or to get a new set of tires for your car. In politics it is the same way, it is far more glamorous and sexy to go out and create a new government arts program or a new program for some special interest group that is going to help a limited number of people but it is going to sound real good to all, and we rush out and do that rather than pay down the debt. With a $5.4 trillion debt, I strongly urge, and I know the gentleman has been fighting for it, that we include not just debt service but debt payment in every budget that we have. We should have, and last year our colleague, Mark Neumann, advocated I think it was a 25-year budget debt pay-down that would have paid off the national debt I think by the year 2025, or maybe even sooner than that. That should be the center of the debate, not what are we going to do with this new money. That debt right now, we do pay interest on it, and that interest I think is something like I believe $500 per person, so a family of four pays about $2,000 a year in taxes servicing the national debt. That is $2,000 a year that could be used for college tuition, for groceries, for a vacation, for a couple of months of house payments.…”