Saxby Chambliss: “We were talking about that fact earlier, that because we are now in a situation where we have excess cash flow and we…”

“We were talking about that fact earlier, that because we are now in a situation where we have excess cash flow and we can pay down that debt, we are having the debate now over the prescription drug issue, for example. But I can just see us if we had lived up to the Clinton-Gore administration expectation of having $194 billion deficit this year when they presented their budget in 1995. Does my colleague think we would be here arguing over how we are going to come up with an additional entitlement program within Medicare? There is just no way we would have done that. And the gentleman is exactly right. If we had that debt payment down to zero, and we had that additional funding from what we are paying out in interest, we could do a lot of things that would benefit the American people all across the tax spectrum, all across the social spectrum, and we can make life a lot easier for folks. That is why it is just so critical. And we are talking about now 13 years, just 13 short years we could pay off this entire debt.”