Gilbert Gutknecht: “I know that this chart is too small for people to see, but if people want to contact my office, I will certainly be…”

“I know that this chart is too small for people to see, but if people want to contact my office, I will certainly be happy to send them a copy, but it says that for the last 20 years, the 20 years from 1975 until 1995, on average, for every dollar that Congress took in it spent $1.21. For fiscal year 1997 that number will be less than $1.02. So when people say we are not making a difference, we are actually spending less than our original spending targets at a time when revenues are exceeding our wildest expectations. And I think the real good news, and the gentleman from Georgia is correct, balancing the budget is not just an accounting exercise. Sometimes we have to even remind people on the Committee on the Budget. It really is about what kind of a future are we going to leave to our kids. It is about generational fairness. For a long time those of us out in the Midwest, and I do not know if the gentleman has the same kind of feeling, I suspect he does in rural parts of Georgia, but the American dream, to a large degree, was to pay off the mortgage and leave the kids the farm. What Congress had been doing for so many years is we had literally been selling off the farm in small pieces and leaving our kids the mortgage. We all know that is morally wrong. And we were going to consign them to a lower standard of living. So balancing the budget is good. I believe we will do it next year. And that is just a start. We have a long ways to go.”