Mark Souder: “I and others tonight will be using most of this hour to talk about the drug issue and our battle against illegal…”

“I and others tonight will be using most of this hour to talk about the drug issue and our battle against illegal narcotics in this country, but I wanted to take a few moments at the beginning here to kind of put some of the other issues in context. For the last hour we have heard from the Blue Dog coalition, and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) put an offer on the table that I think we should consider in the weeks and months to come, and that is to use some of this special order time, perhaps each splitting some of our time, to have an honest discussion and frank discussion about how we can actually work through and address some of these Social Security tax cuts and those issues. But I wanted to make a few comments based off of what I have been listening to for the last hour in this debate. Mr. Speaker, that is, I think, there is still some, and first let me pay tribute to most of the Blue Dog Coalition. It has had a strong track record here of working towards a balanced budget. Sometimes I wonder if they are called the Blue Dogs because they have turned blue holding their breath waiting for the President and most of their party to agree with them. But the bulk, the truth, is that a number of them have joined with the Republicans indeed to have a bipartisan effort since 1995 to rein in what is now an at least annual surplus. It is, as was mentioned by my colleagues across the aisle, an artificial surplus.”