Joe Cunningham: “I heard the excuse that, well, we have not had hearings. I do not think you have to have a hearing, to go in your…”

“I heard the excuse that, well, we have not had hearings. I do not think you have to have a hearing, to go in your district, to have people feel that they are taxed too high. You can go into any district across this country and people will say that they are taxed too high. But the Democrats will give you every excuse in the world why we should limit Democrats from increasing taxes. Why? Because everything that we have been fighting for on these budget debates is about the ability of the Federal Government to spend money, to spend money to their constituents so they can get reelected, so they got the power to start with, whether it is Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment, welfare. It is about the flow of dollars that are going out of the Federal Government. It is like they are talking about free money. Mr. Speaker, it is not free money. They have to take it from their constituents in the first place, send it to Washington, DC, feed a big bureaucracy, and get very little of the money back to the areas which they are trying to help: for example, welfare, where you only get about 30 cents on a buck back; education, 760 programs in education, where you only fund about 6 percent of the total education revenue; 760 programs, where you only get 23 cents on every dollar back into the classroom, because of the spending. Mr. Speaker, they say, ``Well, we all want a balanced budget.'' I submit that that is not true, Mr. Speaker.…”