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I thank the chairman.
Mr. Chairman, one of the reasons I ran over here right now is that I have been listening to some of the speakers on the left.
As the gentlewoman just spoke, in referring to the budget as a moral document, I actually somewhat agree with that, but let's actually discuss what is moral for the next generation and the generation after that and the generation after that.
For the fun of it, as I was running out the door, I grabbed this little poster which had been dropped off to me last week. It is a little poster from over at the Mercatus Center, which has been doing some calculations of what the United States' debt would look like if you took the debt in the unfunded liabilities of this country and put it on GAAP accounting, so if you actually treated it honestly.
What is the real number, the typical actuarial 75-year window, attached with regular debt?
Process in your mind what you have been told year after year of our unfunded liabilities, and I need you to wipe that number clean. The number they came up with recently has hit $205 trillion of debt in unfunded liabilities.
You do realize, if you go right now to Google and look up the best estimates of the wealth of the world, our unfunded liabilities are now exceeding many of the estimates of the wealth of the entire world.
This is what so many Members are willing to hand to our children, to our great-grandchildren, and to the future generations?
If you want to make a moral argument, that debt--those unfunded liabilities--is the moral argument.
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