Byron Dorgan: “the Senator from Utah is overanxious. ``Phony,'' ``demagog,'' he uses the words with great abandon. Phony? You show me a…”

“the Senator from Utah is overanxious. ``Phony,'' ``demagog,'' he uses the words with great abandon. Phony? You show me a plan that says I have balanced the budget but my debt is still increasing, that is what I call phony. That is what the folks in my hometown call phony, a plan that says we have balanced the budget but the debt goes up. You say, why is that the case? Is that the case? Oh, yes, you don't understand, it is debt held by the public, and net debt is more important than gross debt. Tell that to the folks who are going to bear the burden of the debt. I have watched people make sausage and try to sell it as tenderloin. I see what is going on. We have a stack of books, a Tower of Babel here about balanced budgets. The way we are going to balance the budget is to make taxing and spending decisions. We had one big chance to do that in 1993. I signed up, and I said, ``Count me in.'' Some of the folks now speaking the loudest said, ``Count me out; I'm out the door because I want to vote no and tell the folks back home that what they did back there was unpopular.'' It is not popular to make the tough decisions to really balance the budget. I suppose it is popular to suggest we should alter the Constitution and then not want to describe to the American people why, after we boasted we balanced the budget, we are still increasing the Federal debt.”