Charles Rangel: “I do not want to go back to the days of deficit spending. There are a lot of numbers flying around Washington, D.C.…”

“I do not want to go back to the days of deficit spending. There are a lot of numbers flying around Washington, D.C. these days, and I know a lot of people do not know who to believe. So I am not going to use any of the numbers of the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) or any of the numbers of the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) or any of the Daschle numbers; I am going to use the President's numbers. He stood in this Chamber not long ago and he projected we would have over the next 10 years a $5.6 trillion surplus. Some people think that is a guess, some people think it is a gamble, some think it is a dream. But sometimes dreams come true. Let us assume it happens. He wants to pay down $2 trillion on the national debt. As a fiscally conservative Democrat, I want to do that. I like that. That takes us down to $3.6 trillion. Then he says, as we all have said, 'We are not going to touch the Medicare or Social Security trust fund monies.' Now, 400 of us voted to do that. The chairman of the Committee on Appropriations just said we are not going to do that. We subtract that out and we are down to $700 billion. Now what do we do? We are going to have a tax cut in the amount of $1.35 trillion. I rounded that down to $1.3 trillion, and we have a $600 billion deficit.”