Mark Neumann: “I stayed late tonight to tell the American people that we have come a long way in the first 6 months of this new…”

“I stayed late tonight to tell the American people that we have come a long way in the first 6 months of this new Congress. We came here realizing that this nation was $4.8 trillion in debt, $19,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States of America. For a family of five like mine, the nation faces a $95,000 debt. In our district, the income, the average income is about $32,000 a year and to do nothing but pay the interest on that federal debt, the families in my district will be saddled with the payment of over $6,000 a year, $6,000 a year out of a $32,000 average household income going to do nothing but pay the interest on the federal debt. We came here, the 104th Congress, realizing that something had to be done about it. And after 6 months, I am happy to tell you that something has started. We have a long way to go but we have taken a lot of steps in the right direction. First, we have passed a seven-year balanced budget plan that at least is going to stop the continued growth of this debt that seems to be endless when we start looking at it and how big the numbers are. Although we have passed that, we have done some other things that I think are equally significant. We have talked about budgets that go even further than the seven-year plan. Out of my office we introduced a plan that would have balanced the budget in five years, and for the first time out here in Washington we started talking about paying off the debt.”