Max Baucus: “our personal savings rates are negative. We consume more than we save in America today. Our national savings rate is low…”

“our personal savings rates are negative. We consume more than we save in America today. Our national savings rate is low today because our fiscal deficit is so high. Corporate and private debt is high. We have a great country, no doubt about that, a wonderful country. I am saying as clearly as I can say it, we run a great risk as a country of squandering what we now have as Americans if we do not, sooner rather than later, get our act together and get the deficits down. I am not being partisan. It was not too many years ago we had projected surpluses. President Clinton bit the bullet. It was tough, very tough. He sent a budget to the Congress which included spending cuts and included some revenue increases only on the most wealthy. It was 50-50, 50 percent revenue cuts and 50 percent revenue raises on only the top 2 percent income earners in America, and it got through the Congress, one vote in each body. Guess what. As a consequence, we projected surpluses, about $5 trillion in surplus over the following 10 years. I know that gave a great boost of confidence to businesses, to investors, that we would have a surplus in America, that we would be a strong country. It did not adversely affect the overall economic factors we face today. With that huge deficit, I remind everyone, who is financing the deficit? Foreigners. Foreign governments by and large are financing this deficit.…”