Political Quotes

“I suspect some of my colleagues might be disappointed in the message I am going to convey in the next 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, this is one of the several books that the President sent over on the budget that we will start in 1999. The budget books, however, go for the next 5 years. There has been a lot of maybe bragging done that we have a balanced budget or we now may have a balanced budget by the end of this year, definitely by the end of next year. The President suggested in his budget that we have a balanced budget next year. Well, I would like to suggest that it is not a balanced budget; that we are borrowing $100 billion every year, more than $100 billion from the Social Security Trust Fund. And like the saying goes, ``You can't fool Mother Nature,'' neither can you fool the economists and bookkeepers that decide what is happening to the national debt. Now, it would seem reasonable to me, Mr. Speaker, that if we had a balanced budget, the national debt would not continue to go up every year for the next 5 years under the President's budget.”