Jeff Duncan: “first I rise and state my very strong support for this resolution and commend the gentleman from California (Mr. Herger)…”

“first I rise and state my very strong support for this resolution and commend the gentleman from California (Mr. Herger) for bringing this to the floor. After I was first elected in 1988, when I first came to the Congress, we were routinely giving 12 and 15 and 18 percent increases to almost every agency and Department. But after President Clinton came into office, a few months later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Ms. Rivlin, put out a memo stating if we kept going in the way we were going, we would have deficits, yearly losses, of over $1 trillion a year by the year 2010, and between $4 trillion and $5 trillion a year by the year 2030. If we had allowed that to happen, our whole economy would have crashed. Nobody would be able to buy a house; nobody would be able to buy a car. But then control of the Congress changed after the 1994 elections, and we started bringing these increases in Federal spending down to a manageable level of about 3 percent a year, about the rate of inflation. So this resolution is another important step in that direction, and I commend the gentleman from California (Mr. Herger) for bringing this to our attention and to the floor.”