Richard K. Armey: “Through the decade of the 1980s. This incidentally is labeled by the Vice President and his friends as ``the decade of…”

“Through the decade of the 1980s. This incidentally is labeled by the Vice President and his friends as ``the decade of greed,'' where also incidentally you had charitable giving not only double but charitable giving to faith-based institutions triple during this period of time. The American people did a magnificent job. They not only built more, created more jobs, earned more, paid more in taxes; but they doubled what they gave to charities and tripled what they gave to faith-based charities. Yet they have the audacity to look at you and me and our families back home and indict us as having lived a decade of greed. We doubled what we sent to Washington. Bless us. What did Washington do with it? Washington increased spending by $1.68 for every increased dollar we sent them. It does not take any genius to figure this one out. Any time you increase the money coming in by a dollar and increase the money going out by $1.68, you are going to run a deficit. That is what we did. That deficit was so large that it not only spent all of the Social Security trust fund surpluses we generated in those areas, up to $60, $70, $80 billion a year; but it ran a $250 billion deficit.…”