Omnibus and Tax Extenders Legislation
Floor Speech
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Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, I was sitting in the chair and I was listening to----
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Mr. JOHNSON. Very briefly, I was sitting in the chair and I was listening to the Senators from West Virginia and Virginia, and I am sure the Senator from Maine will also be talking about an area of agreement. The Senator from West Virginia talked about our mortgaging our children's future. That is the truth.
I want to commend the Senators for highlighting this mortgaging of our children's future and the facts. I know a couple of Senators supported my amendment to the budget process, laying out the information. The only thing I want to chime in on is to lay out the truth of how severe this mortgaging of our children's future is. One of the things I did in the budget process was to lay out a 30-year deficit projection by CBO, putting it in dollar format.
The fact of the matter is, according to CBO, over the next 30 years the projection deficit is $103 trillion--about $10 trillion over the next decade, $28 trillion in the second decade, and $65 trillion in the third decade. We got that in the budget process to lay it out over 30 years. In the budget process, we also asked CBO to put this in as a 1- page income statement, to lay out where that $103 trillion comes from. We have this 1-page income statement that lays out revenue and deficit. The first two lines are Social Security and Medicare. Over the next 30 years, there will be $14 trillion more in benefits paid out than is brought in by the payroll tax into Social Security. It is a $34 trillion deficit in Medicare. The remainder of that $103 trillion deficit is interest on the debt.
I want to commend the Democratic colleagues here who are so concerned about the mortgage of our children's future and these added deficits from this tax extender package. It is a real concern. We have been trying to find the areas of agreement that unify us. This is certainly one of those things. We have to stop this process.
I appreciate the Senator yielding time.
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