Bobby Scott: “We have to put this in perspective. We have heard a lot about strength, growth, and opportunity. This is a budget…”

“We have to put this in perspective. We have heard a lot about strength, growth, and opportunity. This is a budget deficit that we are in right now. This is the Clinton administration, the Bush administration. When we run up those deficits, we have the opportunity to pay interest on the national debt. By 2010 we will be paying almost $350 billion a year in additional interest on the national debt over what we were going to pay, and we will have that opportunity to pay it year after year. We have suffered this kind of growth. This is the number of jobs created every 4 years since this administration, a loss of jobs, the worst in 50 years. When we have that kind of squeeze on the government, there are things we cannot do and one is port security. We passed a bill last year that required the Coast Guard to look at what we needed to protect our ports. We have vulnerabilities. These ships can contain anything. They can be used as weapons. And we need more personnel; we need more equipment to protect our ports. They estimated $1.1 billion was needed by now to protect our ports. We have appropriated about half of that.”