Mark Neumann: “I think I will conclude my part of this by just reminding the folks one more time how different 1997 is versus the 1985…”

“I think I will conclude my part of this by just reminding the folks one more time how different 1997 is versus the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill where they said they are going to balance the budget and they missed their targets. They never got on track. They fixed it in 1987. They hit targets once, but they never stayed with it. The deficits just ballooned. We are now not in our first year and not in our second year; we are now in the third year of our promised plan to balance the federal budget, and we are not only on track, we are ahead of schedule. The theoretical model that we dealt with back in 1995, this idea that if we control the growth of government spending, that meant the government would spend less, which meant they had to borrow less. When they borrowed less out of the private sector, that left more money available in the private sector. More money available in the private sector meant less money supply and lower interest rates. Lower interest rates meant people bought more houses and cars, and I get excited when I talk about this part because when people buy more houses and cars, somebody has to go to work to build those houses and cars, and that is job opportunities. That meant people left the welfare rolls and went to work and started paying taxes in, and it becomes a snow ball down a hill where this thing gets easier, and easier, and easier to make it happen. We are in the third year of a 7-year plan to balance the budget.”