George Voinovich: “my amendment is easy to understand. Rather than reduce taxes by $150 billion over the next 5 years, about $13.5 billion…”

“my amendment is easy to understand. Rather than reduce taxes by $150 billion over the next 5 years, about $13.5 billion in this particular budget, my amendment would use those dollars to reduce the national debt. Most families and businesses that finally had a surplus of funds like we have would be paying off their debt. Today, 13 cents out of every dollar we spend goes to pay interest on the debt. That is almost as much as we spend on defense, and more than we spend on Medicare. All of the leading economists in this country say we should take the on-budget surplus and use it to pay down the debt. It encourages more savings and investment, and it lowers interest rates, which is a real tax savings. Last, but not least, it fulfills a moral obligation to our children and grandchildren to remove the debt Congress has put on their backs because Congress did not have the courage to either pay for the things it wanted, or do without. We have the resources now. We ought to use those resources to pay down the national debt.”