Jeb Hensarling: “Mr. Chairman, how much government is enough? Can we ever have enough? It seems many Members in this Chamber would say…”

“Mr. Chairman, how much government is enough? Can we ever have enough? It seems many Members in this Chamber would say no. They seem to believe there should be no limit to the size, to the power, to the expense of the Federal Government. Mr. Chairman, the Founding Fathers disagreed. They believed in limited government. They warned us of the pitfalls of allowing government to grow out of control. James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers: ``There will be little avail to the people that laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read or so incoherent they cannot be understood.'' Thomas Jefferson wrote that the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground. Well, Mr. Chairman, just how much ground has government gained? Since I was born, the Federal budget has grown seven times faster than the family budget, as you can see from the attached chart. For only the fourth time in the history of our Nation, the Federal Government is now spending over $20,000 per household. This figure is up from $16,000 per household just 5 years ago. This represents the largest expansion of the Federal Government in 50 years. Last year what we call mandatory spending reached 11 percent of our economy for the first time ever. Nondefense discretionary spending is now almost 4 percent of the economy for the first time in 20 years.”