John Thune: “over the President's Day break I had the opportunity to travel the length and breadth of my great State of South Dakota…”

“over the President's Day break I had the opportunity to travel the length and breadth of my great State of South Dakota, and during that time I met with senior groups, with business groups, with education groups, with volunteer groups, with student groups, with community leaders, all across my State. This is the real world. These are real people who are concerned about their future, their children's future, about their children's education, about affordable health care, about retirement and about the deterioration of American values. Now, there was an aversion as I traveled across the State, I didn't find anybody who was very much in favor of the situation in the Middle East of our going to war there. I heard a lot a lot of interest in getting a transportation bill passed in the very near future, and I also had a lot of skepticism expressed by the people in my State about the budget situation in Washington, the so-called budget surplus, and what might be the right thing to do with that. And what is the right thing? That is a question I asked as I traveled the State. And the answer I frequently got from the people of South Dakota, according to them, is to use the budget surplus to the extent there is one to pay down, begin retiring our $5.5 trillion debt, to repay the Social Security Trust Fund. Beyond that, there wasn't much appetite for new Washington programs and new Washington spending.”