Adam Smith: “I rise today to talk also about debt and how we can get rid of it, and about our current budget situation. We are…”

“I rise today to talk also about debt and how we can get rid of it, and about our current budget situation. We are getting better, which is the good news. In 1992 it seemed like we would never have anything but rising yearly deficits contributing to a larger and larger national debt for the rest of our lives and beyond. But we have turned that around. We have seen the earlier deficits go down steadily since then and we have now even heard talk of actually running a surplus. The gentleman who preceded me is absolutely correct, we are not there yet, because we are still borrowing money from the social security trust fund and counting that as income, but we are getting closer. Even without counting social security, the debt this year was $30 billion, which is a lot less than it was 5 or 6 years ago. If we maintain the path of fiscal discipline we can get to the point where we begin to run surpluses. What I would like to talk about today is taking that one step further, not just begin to run surpluses, but actually begin to pay down the debt.”