Gene Taylor: “I distinctly remember the incumbent telling me a little over 3 rac{1}{2} years ago that he could increase spending…”

“I distinctly remember the incumbent telling me a little over 3 rac{1}{2} years ago that he could increase spending, decrease taxes and pay down the national debt. Having watched this body for decades have huge annual operating deficits, I did not think it could work. It just did not make sense. It took fiscal restraints, it took some tax increases that I voted against, but it took both of those things to balance the budget. And here he was coming in saying, I am going to spend more, I am collecting less, and I am going to balance the budget. So on the night of my son's 13 birthday, they passed the President's budget. At that time our Nation was $5,643,283,000,000 in debt and owed over $1 trillion to the Social Security trust fund, and yet he said what we needed to do was spend more and collect less. In slightly over 3 years the national debt has increased by $1,735,784,685,911. To put that into context, if you went all the way from the American Revolution, the cost of the American Revolution, the cost of the War of 1812, the cost of the Mexican American War, the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, all the things that happened in those years, all the way up to 1979, our Nation borrowed $1 trillion. In a little over 3 years, our Nation has borrowed $1.7 trillion.”