Orrin Hatch: “I want to compliment the two leaders for their leadership in helping to bring about this agreement. I hope everybody…”

“I want to compliment the two leaders for their leadership in helping to bring about this agreement. I hope everybody will support the leadership amendment. Not everybody is pleased. That is what compromises are all about. But I have to tell you, a lot of people felt when we started this debate that it would drag out for weeks; that there would be no effective resolution; that we could not bring both sides together, because there are too wide viewpoints: One side wants more and more for welfare and wants it for the best of reasons. The other side believes balanced budgets are the prime effort that we should be taking at this time, because if we do not, the moneys we have will not be worth anything anyway. If we go to $10 trillion in the national debt, who cares what is going to happen. What happened here because of the two leaders is we have been able to work together and bring together a package that is going to make a whale of a difference for the whole society. It is a savings package, a compassionate package. In other words, it is a package that points toward a balanced budget in a reasonable period of time by the year 2002.”