Charles W. Stenholm: “that was the thing I was talking about a moment ago, which is why I call this the most fiscally irresponsible action…”

“that was the thing I was talking about a moment ago, which is why I call this the most fiscally irresponsible action because it is back-end loaded. We have had a little flury. I am not sure everybody in the country has seen this, but we had some folks in the other body suggest the way to get through this cap business is to increase by 1 month the number of months in a year. Apparently, they did it with a straight face. Now, back home, folks would be laughing about that. But I thought for a moment that, well, maybe that is a good way to see how serious the Y2K problem is if we could just postpone it for 30 days. We can see what is going to happen in there. But that is what some folks have seriously talked about doing. Well, that is not a good way to do business. The debt, $5.6 trillion, that is what we owe. We owe. The tax cut, $792 billion is projected, but they back-end loaded it. Instead of front-end loading, instead of moving spending, some are suggesting now let us spend it in the next 2 weeks because then it will not count against the caps next year. They conveniently overlook that spending is spending, and that is still going to come out of Social Security Trust Fund. Make no mistake about it. One cannot disguise the real numbers no matter how we debate it on the floor of the House. But that tax cut literally explodes by $4.5 trillion from 2011 to 2020 in its effect on the drain of the Treasury which some people honestly want to do.…”