Adam Smith: “throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, no problem loomed larger in our Nation than the growing, seemingly never-ending…”

“throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, no problem loomed larger in our Nation than the growing, seemingly never-ending Federal debt. Now, we have gotten to the point where that Federal debt is at $5.5 trillion, and in the early 1990s we were adding to it to the tune of almost $300 billion a year and more, and projections showed that going up forever. It looked like it was never going to end and it did not seem like we were ever going to get out of the debt spiral. I rise today to give a little good news, that we are headed in the right direction finally on the debt issue, but also to emphasize the importance of going the whole way: getting the budget balanced, and perhaps as important, paying down some of that debt. Since 1992 we have seen reductions in the yearly deficit, to the point where in this past year that deficit is only about $30 billion. I know Members have heard we have a surplus, but we really do not, because we are still counting the money we borrow from the social security trust fund as income, and it is really not. We have to pay that money back. So within the unified budget we are $30 billion in debt this year, and have a projected surplus for 2001. So we are headed in the right direction, but we need to maintain that fiscal discipline to get there, to get the budget balanced.”