Jack Kingston: “what if we were to go on a 6-month diet to lose 30 pounds and we got to the 4th month and we had already lost 28 pounds?…”

“what if we were to go on a 6-month diet to lose 30 pounds and we got to the 4th month and we had already lost 28 pounds? Would we quit exercising and quit dieting because we were so far ahead of schedule? We had not reached our goal yet but we were way ahead of the game. The United States Congress and the American people are in that situation right now with deficit reduction. An article today in The Washington Post shows that the deficit, the projected deficit may go down to $45 billion, which is way lower than the expectation. Now, what this means is that Congress and the American people may not have to wait until the year 2002 to see a balanced budget. We may see it a lot sooner, even potentially as soon as next year. So how do we react? Well, all over America people will be very pleased to hear this. But how do certain big-government liberal types in Washington react? Hey, we are ahead of schedule; that means we can relax and we do not have to cut so many programs and we can spend more money. We can have more pork back home. It is very good news to some of them. I would say to my colleagues that, if we change from the path of having fiscal responsibility and lower spending, then we will get back into the hole that we are just now digging out of. A balanced budget to the folks back home is not about numbers, it is about opportunities, it is about lower interest rates.…”