Tom Coburn: “Now, supposedly we had a surplus, yesterday. That is what the politicians in Washington are saying. We had a surplus.…”

“Now, supposedly we had a surplus, yesterday. That is what the politicians in Washington are saying. We had a surplus. Why, then, did the debt go up $120 billion for our children and grandchildren to repay if we had a surplus? The American public should know this. If they want to know if we have a surplus, we will have a surplus the first time the actual debt goes down. And we will not have a surplus until the American people hear that. So if anybody says we have a surplus, people should ask them at the same time, does that mean a surplus with the debt rising or a surplus with the debt going down. Because the only way we can measure if we have a surplus is if the debt goes down. We can see in 1997 we had a small deficit, but the debt rose significantly. In 1998 we claimed, politicians, a $69 billion surplus; right? What happened to the debt? It rose from $5.330 trillion $5.445 trillion, another $115 billion increase in the national debt. Yet the politicians in Washington said we had a surplus. We did not have a surplus. It is totally dishonest to speak of a surplus.”