Mark Neumann

Yes. Yes. Spending was growing much more rapidly than inflation, almost twice as fast as the rate of inflation.

Can the gentleman imagine, just go back to the past here for just a second, and let us say that in the past they envisioned a surplus occurring. What does the gentleman suppose the first thought in Washington would have been in the past if…

If you are a family of 5 and you are earning, say, $35,000 a year and let us just say you have got one headed off to college that is going to pay about $5,000 a year, could the gentleman help our colleagues this evening to understand if…

Could we talk a little bit more about that family earning $45,000 a year that actually gets paid $45,000 a year, but with their imputed tax under the liberal Democrat plan that goes all the way to $75,000? Would it be fair to say that they…

If you moved out of your house and rented it out so you collected that $12,000 more a year, so that your income went up by $12,000, where would you live? And would that not cost you money?

I think it is important again, we have moved into the present and what is happening and how is it different than the past. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings chart shows when the targets were not met. We have moved into the new theoretical model…

What happened over the last couple of years is that government was growing at a very, very rapid rate... Government spending in fact is going up, and in a very organized and direct and caring manner. Government is learning to control the…

It was going up by 5.2 percent a year in the 7 years before we got here. Under this plan, and the first 2 years since 1995, it is now going up by 3.2 percent. Let us put that in inflation-adjusted dollars. It was going up 1.8; it is now…

Just to make the record 100 percent clear, if this amendment is passed, there is still $700 million of unexpended FEMA money in here. So the gap that the gentleman is talking about and, by the way, I very much respect the chairman of our…

I would just add in the defense area that defense is not above wasting some money either and certainly is subject to our review as we find areas of waste within defense so that those dollars can be reallocated and better spent for the…

This is more than an issue about numbers and whether we need to pay down the debt or balance the budget. It is an issue about morals, and it is one of many moral issues facing America today. When a generation concludes that it is all right…

Right. Of that $75 billion, about $35 billion is actual cash over and above what is collected out of paychecks, and the other $40 billion is the interest on what is already in the trust fund. So, yes, they are paying all of it, it is about…

In 1997, we expect that number to read in the range of $74 billion. So they will take another $74 billion worth of IOU's. They will spend the $74 billion on other government programs, and they will simply put IOU's in the trust fund.

Well, to answer that I think we need to understand how Social Security fits into that picture. Because, in fact, Social Security is a very big part of whether or not we can balance the budget. A lot of people would like to take the Social…

That is absolutely correct, and we can do it without going into the Social Security trust fund money and spending that trust fund money on other Government programs.

I think just to make this very, very clear, we are both opposing a politically motivated adjustment to CPI, or a political adjustment, and we are both supporting a mathematical computation that is accurate and that accurately reflects…

Us country folks from East Troy, WI, call that inflation. That is really what we are measuring. In very simple English, we are measuring inflation. Would the gentleman like me to walk through how they determine inflation in this country…

They could not believe it. Spending is not going down under these budget plans, spending is going up each and every year. From the year 1996 to the year 2002 spending is not going down, spending has gone up from $1,568 billion to $1,810…

Thomas Jefferson said that. That is not today. Can you imagine if Thomas Jefferson, one of our Founding Fathers, was standing here with us today and we were showing him this debt chart, $5.3 trillion facing the American people, $20,000 for…

I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must…

So what my colleague is really telling me is, out of the $122 billion we are currently spending on education, only $79 billion is actually getting out there to help the students; and the other $45 billion roughly is going to bureaucracy?

We were simply requesting that the people in Wisconsin who had already passed a welfare reform bill, passed the State assembly and the Senate by a wide majority including both Democrats and Republicans, but after we debated this bill for…

Some union members from my hometown in Janesville, WI, particularly those that work in an automobile manufacturing plant, have expressed concern to me that their employer might require them to bank overtime hours and then use the hours at…

Further, Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman confirm my understanding that under H.R. 1, employers could not force the individual employee or union which represents the employee to accept comp time as opposed to cash overtime as a condition…

So I am correct, then, that at any time worked, even 1 hour worked over the standard 40 hours, would entitle the employee to time and one-half pay? Am I correct that this is the case under current law and would be the case in the future…