Bobby Scott: “Four hundred twenty billion dollars. The 2009 interest on the national debt is $316 billion over and above what we…”

“Four hundred twenty billion dollars. The 2009 interest on the national debt is $316 billion over and above what we expected it to be. These are numbers which mean that later on we will not be able to do the kinds of things that we want to do. We had projected surpluses in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which meant that we would be able to afford health care for the uninsured, education, college education, and veterans' benefits, including health care. The kinds of things that are real priorities. This year's budget did not have enough money in it to maintain present services for our veterans in health care. The veterans' groups wrote letters criticizing what we were doing, and yet we did not have the money because we are running up additional interest on the national debt. We have a lot of priorities we are not able to meet, and the interest on the national debt gets larger and larger and larger and starts hitting us at exactly the same time when the Social Security surplus evaporates.”