John Ensign: “the scope of this legislation is enormous and endangers our country's future economic health. Currently, the U.S. debt…”

“the scope of this legislation is enormous and endangers our country's future economic health. Currently, the U.S. debt burden is huge, but it is going to rise to 54 percent of the economy in just the next 2 years. That is before we take into account this omnibus spending bill that is still to come before the Congress, another round of TARP, and approximately $1 trillion that we have in the bill before us today. When we add the Children's Health Insurance Program that was passed, TARP, a supplemental, the omnibus bill, we will add an additional $2 trillion to our national debt. That means higher taxes for our children, our grandchildren, and actually just in a few years for almost all Americans. We have been borrowing against future generations. Keep in mind that we have a $60 trillion debt out there in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs. That money has to be paid someday. We have to ask ourselves: What will the credit markets around the world think? What will they think about the idea of the United States being actually solvent? The previous administration, as we heard from the other side, spent money like crazy. I am not going to defend them. I was one of the people fighting against a lot of that spending. The spending that is before us today is unprecedented. Unfortunately, in the so-called stimulus bill, only about 25 percent of the bill is in true tax relief. A lot of it is disguised as tax relief, but it is just spending.”