Bobby Scott: “For veterans. The President's budget does not include enough money to maintain just the little present benefits for…”

“For veterans. The President's budget does not include enough money to maintain just the little present benefits for veterans. They want some veterans to pay more fees for health services, some not to be eligible, less services, while the war is being fought. So the veterans themselves will have to come back and pay the interest on the debt on the war that they fought in. That is not right. We are not able to fund the kind of things like Cops on the Beat. Now remember, in just 5 years we will be spending approximately $300 billion more in interest on the national debt than we should have had to pay. You can hire at $30,000 a piece, 10 million people for that amount of money or 5 million at $60,000. We are trying to find a little money to hire 100,000 police officers, to hire teachers, health care workers; and we cannot find the money because it is all being used up in interest on the national debt that is run up because you have to pay interest on the national debt since you are obviously not paying off any debt while you are in the hole. When you are in the hole, you are running up more debt, you have to pay more interest on the national debt. We cannot pay for our transportation projects. There are so many things that we cannot do because we are running up so much interest on the national debt. And remember that we have the exploding Social Security problem in just a few years.”