Gilbert Gutknecht: “On the tax side, it all fits with the total budget plan. I only wish that he were here tonight. I remember so many…”

“On the tax side, it all fits with the total budget plan. I only wish that he were here tonight. I remember so many nights doing special orders with Congressman Mark Neumann of Wisconsin. He has left us now, he decided to run for the other body, and now he is back in the private sector and doing quite well. I remember doing special orders and talking about, if we could get Congress to limit the growth in Federal spending to roughly the inflation rate, he had these models, he was a former math teacher, and he showed us with charts what would happen, how we could balance the budget, pay down debt, make certain that every penny of social security and Medicare went only for social security and Medicare, and we could provide real tax relief to the American people. In fact, what he said is if we did those things, if we could limit the growth in Federal spending to roughly the inflation rate, that we could pay off the national debt in 20 years. Americans have always loved big dreams. In fact, Ronald Reagan said, "America is the place where we love to dream heroic dreams." That has been the history of this country. What a great dream. What a great dream, to say that we are going to leave this country to our kids debt-free. The truth is, it can be done. We are on the path to do that today. Part of the reason is when we first came here, when I first came here, Federal spending was growing between 6 percent and 8 percent.…”