Byron Dorgan: “I was intending to come to the floor today to speak briefly about the work that is going on in the other body in which…”

“I was intending to come to the floor today to speak briefly about the work that is going on in the other body in which the majority party is proposing a tax cut of nearly $200 billion over the coming 5 years. So I listened with some interest to the discussion on the floor of the Senate about the formation of something called a 500 Club, apparently a group of Senators who feel that the Senate also should move quickly on a tax cut. I was especially interested in a couple of things. I was interested in the fact that at least a couple of the speakers this morning were the same speakers who were on North Dakota radio programs in recent weeks talking about the need for a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. They talked about their desire to balance the Federal budget, the fact that they were the willing warriors, willing to stand up and fight and do the right things and have the courage to cut spending to balance the Federal budget. All this is very curious to me. There must be some arithmetic book somewhere in America that tells us that if you are in a very big financial hole, what you ought to do is just keep digging. It seems to me, if you are in a very big hole, you stop digging and start trying to figure a way out of it.”