Roscoe Bartlett: “I want to speak today about an issue which is very important to America and its future. I have here a chart which shows…”

“I want to speak today about an issue which is very important to America and its future. I have here a chart which shows the Federal budget. Ordinarily, things above the line are good. But, in this case, things below the line are good. Because when we are above the line, we have a deficit; and when we are below the line, we have a surplus. What we see is that, for fiscal year 1998, we have a surplus; for 1999, a surplus; a small surplus for 2000; and then big surpluses after that. That is really good news. Supposedly, we have balanced the budget; and America will now be on a course to reducing our debt. If we pay this money back on the debt or if we spend it or give it back as a tax cut, at least the debt should stay the same as it is now. But when we look at the next chart, what we see here, and these are estimates from CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, the official office that estimates where the economy is going, how large the deficit is going to be, how large the debt is going to be, and what we see here is that there is an ever-rising debt, that the debt goes up and up. How can the debt go up when we have balanced the budget and we have a surplus? Now, if we spent the surplus, at the worst, the debt ought to stay the same. But the debt is going up and up. As a matter of fact, the debt goes up almost a trillion dollars, from about $5.4 to about $6.4 trillion by about 2002. How in the world can that happen?”