Sen. Paul Simon: “I have a letter from Charles Bowsher, the Comptroller General of the United States, dated February 18, in which, among…”

“I have a letter from Charles Bowsher, the Comptroller General of the United States, dated February 18, in which, among other things, he says the deficit problem, of course, has not gone away, the forces for escalation of the deficit are here, and it remains a very serious problem. Fred Bergsten, you will remember, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and one of the finest economists I know, testified last week in behalf of the balanced budget amendment and said: The so-called correction we are seeing is by no means an up. It will leave us with an abysmally low national savings rate. Productivity simply cannot pick up by the requisite amount. We will continue to have very slow economic growth, high unemployment, lagging standards of living in the future.”