George Voinovich: “I believe it is a responsible way in which to deal with the problem of reducing the national debt. First, we need to pay…”

“I believe it is a responsible way in which to deal with the problem of reducing the national debt. First, we need to pay down our national debt so we can decrease our interest payments on that debt, a debt which stands at $5.7 trillion. The way I calculate it, the interest we'll pay this year comes out to over $224 billion. We pay about $600 million a day on interest costs alone. Out of every Federal dollar we spend, 13 cents goes to pay interest on the national debt compared, for example, with 16 cents for national defense and 18 cents for nondefense discretionary spending. We will spend more money on interest this year than we do on Medicare. These numbers make me determined to do all I can to decrease our debt even further. I believe every fiscal decision we make in Congress should be measured against the backdrop of how it will decrease our national debt. And I am not the only one who believes that.”