George Voinovich: “when I came to the Senate in 1999, one of my goals was to bring fiscal responsibility to Congress and to our Nation. In…”

“when I came to the Senate in 1999, one of my goals was to bring fiscal responsibility to Congress and to our Nation. In this regard, I have pursued my fiscal priorities, which are: pay down the debt, control spending, and, if possible, return to the taxpayers any of their money that is not needed to meet our most pressing obligations. Over the last 2 years we have had the proverbial ``good news/bad news'' with respect to putting our fiscal house in order. The good news is, we are not using the Social Security surplus or the Medicare Part A surplus to cover our spending, allowing them instead to be used as they were intended. In effect, we have managed to ``lock box'' Social Security since 1999, and Medicare since 2000. I think we need legislation to make sure we continue to do that. In addition, because we haven't dipped into Social Security or Medicare surpluses, we have been able to allocate a total of $363 billion towards debt reduction in the last 2 years. The bad news is, we have spent far too much money over the last 2 years. For fiscal year 2001, we increased non-defense discretionary spending 14.3 percent last year and we had an 8.6 percent increase the year before. In the last half of last year, the 106th Congress increased spending over 10 years by $598 billion. Nearly $600 billion of the taxpayers' money gone--used up. That is disgraceful.…”