George Voinovich: “in the year-and-a-half that I have been in the Senate, I have taken several opportunities to come to the floor to talk…”

“in the year-and-a-half that I have been in the Senate, I have taken several opportunities to come to the floor to talk about the need to reduce our national debt. Every chance I get, I remind my colleagues that we cannot let the excitement of having a record-high surplus allow us to lose sight of the fact that we must keep spending in check, and use our Social Security surplus and on-budget surplus dollars to pay down our $5.7 trillion national debt. I can't help but wonder why the media is quick to report that we have such tremendous surpluses, but is virtually silent when it comes to reporting that we have such a huge national debt. I think the people need to know that we have a national debt that is costing us $224 billion in interest payments a year, and that translates into $600 million per day just to pay the interest. Out of every federal dollar that is spent this year, 13 cents will go to pay the interest on the national debt. In comparison, 16 cents will go for national defense; 18 cents will go for non-defense discretionary spending; and 53 cents will go for entitlement spending. Right now, we spend more federal tax dollars on debt interest than we do on the entire Medicare program. This debt didn't accumulate overnight. In fact, it took decades of misguided fiscal policies on the part of the Congress and the Executive Branch to get this way.”