Jeb Hensarling: “tonight, we are coming here to talk about a very important piece of legislation titled the Deficit Reduction Act. Mr.…”

“tonight, we are coming here to talk about a very important piece of legislation titled the Deficit Reduction Act. Mr. Speaker, our Nation is seeing a number of challenges here, obviously 9/11, which we have heard a lot about. Recently our Nation has been hit with a number of hurricanes, natural disasters that have proven very, very costly to our Nation. Now we have seen the threat of avian flu. There are a number of different challenges our Nation faces, and we will meet these challenges; but meeting these challenges is not free. Particularly within the context of the hurricanes that have hit, at the end of the day, when we look at the Federal response, how much money the Federal Government is going to spend, there are really only three ways that we are going to be able to pay for this. Either number one we are going to raise taxes on hardworking American families yet again as they are facing challenges in meeting the cost of filling up their pick-up trucks and heating their homes, or we are going to pass debt on to our children, even more debt to be passed on to our children. But, Mr. Speaker, we on the Republican side of the aisle believe that there is another way, and that way is to restrain the growth of government. That way is to protect the family budget from the Federal budget. We are going to spend some time, Mr. Speaker, this evening bringing up some very interesting facts that we believe the American people need to know.…”