Joe Crowley: “last week the Congressional Budget Office released its latest estimates for the budget surplus. The CBO laid out three…”

“last week the Congressional Budget Office released its latest estimates for the budget surplus. The CBO laid out three different on-budget surplus estimates ranging from $800 billion to $1.9 trillion. Depending on the actions of this Congress, we can use the surplus wisely or it can be unwisely spent, without paying off the debt, shoring up Social Security, or funding desperately needed programs, such as providing prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients and school construction and modernization of our schools. Mr. Speaker, it is imperative that that we pay down the national debt. I fully support the President's goals stated in his State of the Union Address to eliminate public debt by 2013. As has been indicated, this Congress, and implied by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Republican leadership will not adhere to the spending caps in the fiscal year 2001 budget. For this reason, it is imperative that we use the surplus to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security and pay off the national debt. Once we have done this, we can then use the remaining surplus and the money saved in interest payments on our debt to enact a voluntary prescription drug plan so that seniors do not have to choose between food and medication. We can help our crumbling schools and build new classrooms to relieve a system bursting at its systems. And, yes, we can even give targeted tax cuts to help hard working American families make ends meet.”