John Spratt: “this is not the first nor will it be the last time that we take the floor of the House here in the well of the House to…”

“this is not the first nor will it be the last time that we take the floor of the House here in the well of the House to address a problem that is of great concern to all of us, and that is the budget deficit. This year past, it was $412 billion and while it appears to be improving, thankfully, a bit for the current fiscal year, it still will come in likely in the range of $350 billion, and that will make it the third-largest deficit in our Nation's history, the third in a row where we have approached the pinnacle, the largest deficits we have run in our country's history. We are not here to score political points. We are here to call attention to a problem that we think has grave consequences. It may be that we do not feel or see the consequences right now, but we feel that a day of reckoning lies on or just over the horizon. I believe that, because sooner or later the fundamentals in any market begin to take hold. It happened to the dot coms; it could happen again to us with the budget deficit that we are running today and the trade deficit we are running also today. It could hammer the dollar. After all, the fundamental is, simply stated, like this. When you raise the demand for credit, which is what you do when the government runs a deficit of $312 billion, $412 billion, when you raise the demand for credit, eventually you raise the price of credit. In other words, you raise interest rates. What do interest rates do when they go up?…”