Thomas Foley: “I rise today because I want to inject a little bit of reality, I hope, into the ongoing budget debate on the surplus…”

“I rise today because I want to inject a little bit of reality, I hope, into the ongoing budget debate on the surplus that we continually hear around this Capitol. I know my home State has Disney World, and I know we have Universal Theme Park, and I know a lot of those expectations in those things are about not reality but about enjoying yourself. It seems with this apparent flush of revenues for years to come, fiscal responsibility in Washington, D.C. has become a thing of the past. Indeed, the Administration's fiscal year 2000 budget seems to promise a new government program for just about anybody you can think of. To be fair to the President, he does not propose using future surplus dollars for these new programs, but the assumption seems to be that with a healthy U.S. economy and a balanced budget in the black for the first time in decades, the government, the Federal Government, can afford to grow again. We take out of account any potential downfalls in the economy. In fact, everybody in this Capitol is now so rosy and so full of optimistic projections they do not assume that there is going to be a hiccup in the road at any time. I have to challenge this assumption. I have to bring some clarity to the debate. First, the fact that the U.S. economy is the envy of the world is due in large part to the fact that U.S. consumers are, indeed, confident, and armed with that confidence, they are spending in record numbers. That simply cannot last forever.…”