Bobby Scott: “we need to review, again, where we are, because we have heard lectures about fiscal responsibility, and this chart shows…”

“we need to review, again, where we are, because we have heard lectures about fiscal responsibility, and this chart shows where we are in fiscal responsibility, way down in the ditch. In fact, in 2001, we were on a trajectory to pay off the entire national debt by 2013. The gentleman from Wisconsin had a chart that showed that by 2040 we would almost have enough money to pay interest on the national debt and a little bit of Social Security, and that was it. Well, the main change in that was interest on the national debt. There would be zero interest on the national debt if we hadn't gotten into this mess. In fact, at this point, the gentleman talked about what he called entitlement reform. For those that aren't aware what entitlement reform means, that means cutting Social Security. Well, in 2001, we had a 10-year surplus of $5.5 trillion. We needed $4 trillion at that point to make sure that we had enough money to pay Social Security for the next 75 years without cutting benefits. So we had entitlement reform covered. The gentleman mentioned jobs that have been created: remind him, worst job performance since Herbert Hoover. The gentleman mentioned economic development: worst Dow performance in a quarter of a century. The gentleman mentioned all these revenues we have gotten: worst revenue performance in the history of recordkeeping back to 1934. We repeal some of the policies, some of the policies that got us in the mess to begin with.”