Orrin Hatch: “The poor are being ripped off because, as the distinguished Senator from Illinois has said on many occasions, if we keep…”

“The poor are being ripped off because, as the distinguished Senator from Illinois has said on many occasions, if we keep going in the direction we are going, we are going to have to monetize the debt. And once we do that, this country's power in the world, economic clout in the world, its stability in the world will be gone, because nobody will believe in the dollar after that, because we will have paid off all these debts with worthless dollars, or at least very, very much devalued dollars. Now, that is where we are headed unless we do what is fiscally responsible, that which Thomas Jefferson indicated he thought we should have put in the Constitution from the beginning: That is, put in a fiscal mechanism in the Constitution that is not so tight that you cannot operate within it, but is not so tight that you cannot have unbalanced budgets if that is in the best interests of the country. If military spending is not efficient or unnecessary, we ought to correct the military. But there are not the incentives or the pressures to do that today because we simply spend the money the money with virtually no restraint. We just spend the money. If we are wasting money on social programs, we ought to correct those wastes. But we do not do it today because we just spend the money. If there are other programs in the Federal Government that are not working and are not as valuable as some programs, we ought to bite the bullet and get rid of them. But today we just spend the money.”