J. Exon: “I want to simply add my voice of concern, as I think has been so well articulated by himself, and I think before him by…”

“I want to simply add my voice of concern, as I think has been so well articulated by himself, and I think before him by my friend and colleague from the State of Illinois, who has been with us in trying to focus attention on the dire consequences of the United States of America continuing its course of reckless spending. I just cite a statistic or two that I think have been said so many times they may be old hat, but I am still not sure are fully understood. The national debt is the accumulation, year after year after year, of budget deficits. Put another way, that means the Government, year after year after year, is spending more than it takes in. Then, whether that is in millions or billions, it is shifted over at the end of each fiscal year to the national debt. But in 1980, the national debt was below $1 trillion, the accumulation of all the deficits since this Nation started over 200 years ago. From 1980 until 1995, that debt has gone up about five times, from under $1 trillion to $4.8 trillion as of now. And everyone in this body who understands the budget knows it is going to go up over $5 trillion sometime in this calendar year.”