Mark Neumann: “That is certainly good news for the farmers in the Midwest, which all of us represent. With that, we will turn our…”

“That is certainly good news for the farmers in the Midwest, which all of us represent. With that, we will turn our attention to the reason that we are here today, that is to talk about the budget process, the debt, the deficit, where we have been, where we are today, and where we are going to, and we are going to divide this into three separate parts today as we talk about first the past, where we have come before, before any of us who are here on the floor right now were here in Congress. But I think it is important that we talk about the past and that we take note of how fast and how much of this debt has accumulated. I start with the chart that I have here. This chart shows the growth in Federal debt. It can be readily seen that from 1960 to 1980, there was very little growth in Federal debt. As a matter of fact, it is almost a flat line. But from 1980 forward, this thing has grown right off the charts. Before my colleagues react to this, I know 1980 is the year Ronald Reagan became President and all the Democrats will blame him. I know 1980 is the year that all the Republicans say the Democrats ran spending out of control and ran the deficit up. The bottom line is today we as a Nation stand way up here on this deficit chart. And the facts are that whether you are Republican or Democrat, this is a problem that we as a nation must now address.”