Roy Cooper: “Well, the gentleman's exactly right. An authority of no less than Alan Greenspan said that PAYGO was the most important…”

“Well, the gentleman's exactly right. An authority of no less than Alan Greenspan said that PAYGO was the most important reform that this Congress could undertake to right our fiscal imbalance. PAYGO was actually started under the first President Bush in 1990. It was instituted on a bipartisan basis. It worked extremely well for 12 years, from 1990 to 2002. And then sadly the Republican majority here allowed it to expire. And that's when, really, our fiscal wheels started running off the track. So we swung from a surplus, a surplus that was growing so fast there was actually fear that the United States would be debt free, as if you could be afraid of that, that would have been a glorious moment in our history for our children to be unburdened by interest payments and future generations. That was the prospect when President Clinton left office. And then to swing from that into, as all Blue Dogs have, we have the debt sign outside of our office. Now it's $9 billion, $29,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. But it's growing so rapidly. And that doesn't even take into account our Medicare, our Social Security, our Medicaid and other entitlement program liabilities. So it's a monster of a problem, and it's going to take a bipartisan commission to deal with it. But PAYGO, according to Alan Greenspan and other authorities, was the single most important reform step that we could undertake. The Blue Dogs are responsible for that reform. It's working.”