Thomas Daschle: “The debt we have already authorized is going to expire once again. We are going to have to increase the debt limit…”

“The debt we have already authorized is going to expire once again. We are going to have to increase the debt limit within the next several months. We are told by some groups outside the CBO that we could see a total Federal debt within 10 years of anywhere from 8 to 10,000 billion dollars. That is right, 8 to 10,000 billion dollars. That is $8 trillion. That amounts to somewhere in the vicinity of $70,000 to $75,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. That is what we are facing right now. For us to say we are going to exacerbate that by borrowing even more to provide reconstruction assistance to Iraq is deeply troubling. They sit on perhaps the largest oil reserves in the world. It seems to me those oil reserves ought to at least be considered. Even though they are not available today, at some point that oil can be tapped.”