Deborah Koff Ross: “I rise on behalf of the 37-member strong, fiscally conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition. There are 37 of us that…”

“I rise on behalf of the 37-member strong, fiscally conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition. There are 37 of us that are Democrats. We are fiscal conservatives and we are concerned about the debt and the deficit that plagues this great Nation ours. In fact, you can see here, the Blue Dog coalition today, the United States national debt is $8,361,683,340,530 and some change. Now, for every man, woman and child, including those born today, their share of this enormous national debt is about $28,000. It is what we call the debt tax, d-e-b-t. That is one tax that cannot go away until we get our Nation's fiscal house in order. It is hard now to believe that from 1998 to 2001 we had a balanced budget in this country. Things were going pretty well. Now, what do we have? We have gasoline prices that are up 80 percent, health care up 50 percent, higher education, college costs up 40 percent. Things are not going so well. Mr. Speaker, I submit to you, it is directly related to this debt, the largest debt ever in our Nation's history, this deficit, the largest deficit ever in our Nation's history. You know, the projected deficit for fiscal year 2007 is $348 billion. But the reason it is $348 billion is because they are borrowing, our government is borrowing from the Social Security trust fund.…”