On the recordApril 28, 2023
Mr. Speaker, I think the next 2\1/2\ months of this institution are going to be consumed with the budget and the amount of spending. I don't think the press has done an adequate job of alerting the public to the crisis we currently have. As we have talked before, we are headed towards the Federal debt of $31 trillion being 100 percent of GDP. Of course, over time as the value of the dollar changes, it sometimes makes it difficult to see exactly how bad that is. The last time the debt was as great as the Gross National Product was the end of World War II. Now, at the end of World War II, America was very economically strong because Japan and Europe were flattened by the end of World War II, but even more, we knew at the end of World War II that we were going to lay off hundreds of thousands of military personnel. We knew the factories would stop building the ships, the planes, and the tanks that were necessary for World War II, and therefore, we knew we were heading into a time of dramatically decreased spending. That is exactly what happened. At the end of World War II, slowly we dropped from 100 percent of GDP debt ratio down to a little over 20 percent. Things were really getting under control. We were a little bit over 20 percent during the Presidency of Richard Nixon. Then things began to slowly rise again. Recently, in part with COVID and in part the completely reckless spending under President Biden, we are headed back to 100 percent again.…





