Jim Nussle: “Mr. Speaker, last month, H.R. 4601 took the first step toward eliminating the national debt by the year 2013. That bill…”

“Mr. Speaker, last month, H.R. 4601 took the first step toward eliminating the national debt by the year 2013. That bill set aside additional non-Social Security surpluses for fiscal year 2000 for debt reduction by depositing the money in a newly created public debt reduction payment account in Treasury. Money deposited in this account would be taken off budget and could not be used for any purpose other than paying down the publicly held debt. The bill passed an overwhelmingly 419 to 5. Well, what a difference a month makes. Since then, as my colleagues may recall, the budget surplus for this next year was going to be about $180 billion, the Congressional Budget Office has announced that that now is going to rise to a level of $268 billion. So today, H.R. 4866 would build on that progress of H.R. 4601 by depositing into the account an additional $25 billion out of the non-Social Security surplus for the fiscal year 2001. A debt reduction payment account has already been established from Treasury. The account is not part of the budget. So any cash, any money that we put into that would be taken outside of the budget. Twenty-five billion dollars of the non-Social Security surplus is automatically deposited into this account if this bill is passed. The statutory debt limit will also be reduced by an equivalent amount. Once the money is deposited into the account, the Treasury must use the money to reduce the public debt.”