Mark Neumann: “I rise this evening to bring my colleagues and the country as a whole up to speed on where we were, where we are now and…”

“I rise this evening to bring my colleagues and the country as a whole up to speed on where we were, where we are now and where I hope we are going to in this country. I left a very good job in the private sector. I had no experience in public life, I had no one I knew that was in politics and I left the private sector, I left a very good business, because of this picture and this chart. What this chart shows is the growing debt facing the United States of America. This shows how much money our Federal Government has borrowed on behalf of the American people. It shows a pretty flat line from 1960 to 1980. The debt did not really grow very much from 1960 to 1980. But in 1980 forward, the debt has just grown right off the chart. I would just point out to the folks that are watching this evening that we are currently about here on this chart. It is a very serious problem facing our country, and it is why a lot of us came here in the class of 1994.”