Charles W. Stenholm: “one of the reasons why he has not brought it up is we cannot have the kinds of budgets that have been here in this body…”

“one of the reasons why he has not brought it up is we cannot have the kinds of budgets that have been here in this body for the last 3 or 4 years and get to a balanced budget. We have to change our overall budget philosophy and go back to pay-as-you-go. It is pretty simple arithmetic. We cannot run this country on philosophy. The banks will not lend us money on philosophy all of our lives. At some point, the law of economics is going to take over and as the charts the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) has shown us tonight, if it does not begin to get the attention, which I am glad again today, USA Today put it on the front page, maybe now, tomorrow night in the debates between the two candidates for Vice President, this issue will come up. Maybe Thursday or Friday night it will become part of the debate, and people will start asking the question, what is your plan? The three of us will be here, hopefully with three friends from the other side of the aisle with a plan; and if we will start working together, we can begin to address this problem. But we cannot do it with the game plan that we are under today. The game plan today is giving the results of what the gentleman is showing us right now in the charts.”