Steny Hoyer: “I was here in 1981. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey) was not. He was then an economist, perhaps not so successfully…”

“I was here in 1981. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey) was not. He was then an economist, perhaps not so successfully because he came to Congress. Ronald Reagan asked the Congress of the United States to spend every nickel of Social Security surplus in his budgets. George Bush first asked the Congress of the United States to spend every nickel of Social Security and Medicare surplus. The Congress of the United States from 1981 to 1993 spent less money than Ronald Reagan and George Bush asked us to spend. Those are the facts, my friends. Those are the facts. Very frankly, my colleagues knew the facts in 1981. I mentioned them a little earlier today. Let me recite them again so that my colleagues understand the premise that was underlying 1981. He was not a liberal. He was not a Democrat. His name was Stockman. He knew what you were doing in 1981, notwithstanding the same kind of rhetoric that we heard on this floor today. He said that we knew that the budget we were passing would result in triple digit debts, deficits. We knew that we would escalate the debt. We knew that interest rates would remain high and at historically high levels in 1980. You light a time bomb today that will blow up for generations yet to come. It is your duty, your responsibility to defeat this bill. Do so.”