On the recordJuly 6, 2011
I don't anticipate taking 20 minutes of time. I hope to be back on the Senate floor this afternoon talking about a related subject, but I do want to take the opportunity essentially to bring us back to the central problem we are facing in this Chamber and in this country; that is, dealing with an out-of-control spending program in Washington, DC, that has occurred over many years. In fact, the accumulation of debt not only is at the federal level, but it has been at the State level. It has been at the local level. It has been at the personal and the private level. We have been in a cycle of debt accumulation that simply is coming to an end, and it is coming to an end because we can no longer afford to pay the interest and can no longer afford to fulfill the promises that have been made on a political basis to people over a whole series of years, both by Democrats and Republicans, and only accelerated in a dramatic fashion in the last 3 years where we have seen an explosion of spending at the Federal level. This simply cannot continue and be paid for under any system of taxation at all. So what we have seen is a nice deflection away from the central issue, a deflection into--well, the whole thing comes down to whether we tax millionaires and billionaires. The President's speech last week, which set the stage for all this discussion, is a nice deflection away from what we all know we need to do.…
