Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016
Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Ms. Moore. She is still on the floor and serves on the Budget Committee with us. She is such a good, productive, and contributory member of that committee. I appreciate the perspective that she brings, and I know that she has worked diligently on the budget that the CBC is bringing before us today.
I do not support that budget. I support the committee print that we have. Mr. Chairman, here is exactly why.
We all know Washington does not have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. Last year, more revenues came into our Federal coffers than ever. It is always important, as we talk about the budget, to put in perspective where this money comes from. It comes from hard-working taxpayers, and the government has not one single penny to spend until a taxpayer sends that money in.
Now, the budget that we have brought out of committee does something quite significant. Number one, it will reduce Federal spending $5.5 trillion over the next 10 years. That is an important thing to do, and here is why.
We are continuing to borrow somewhere around 30 cents for every dollar that we are spending. It is bouncing right now, I think, between 28 and 30 cents for every dollar. That is too much. It gets to be a fairness issue for future generations.
We have got $18 trillion worth of debt, and $9 trillion worth of that debt has come on our books in the past 6 years. That is not fair to future generations. It is not fair to our Nation's security.
Getting the debt under control is important. That is why a budget that saves $5.5 trillion and comes to balance--comes to balance--for our annual outlays in 9 years is significantly important.
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. I thank the gentlewoman for the time.
You see, when we talk about what will be accomplished by our budget and we talk about fairness, it is imperative that the spending be brought under control. What we are bringing forward is a way for us to bring that into balance and to begin to get the agencies, even reducing the Federal workforce by 10 percent, making certain that we are rightsizing that workforce. Those are steps that should be taken. They are steps that we ought to be taking, and it is something that we all should support.
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