Mark Neumann: “Today this great Nation of ours stands $5.2 trillion in debt. That is literally $20,000 for every man, woman, and child…”

“Today this great Nation of ours stands $5.2 trillion in debt. That is literally $20,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States of America. Every year as we keep spending more money than we are taking in, we just keep adding to that debt and our children get to get that debt. This is their inheritance, that is what we are going to pass on to our children. When this Congress came in here 2 years ago, we said we are going to be different. We said we were going to balance the budget, we were going to do it by the year 2002. We got off to a great start. For the first year, we met our targets and we did what we said we were going to do and stayed on track, and things were going pretty good until about 2 weeks ago. Two weeks ago, we passed a budget plan through this Congress that literally has the deficit going back up again. Let me say that one more time. The budget plan that we passed 2 weeks ago has the deficit going back up again next year. That is not OK. Tonight we offer an amendment that literally reduces spending by 1.9 percent to help get us back on track to a balanced budget, back to where we belong, 1.9 percent. That is not 20 percent. That is less than 2 cents out of every dollar. Is there really anyone out there in this entire country that does not believe we can find 2 cents out of every dollar of waste in government spending? I believe we can. I honestly believe we can go into these bills and we can find 2 cents on the dollar of waste.”