MR. BERRY.  Mr. Speaker, when I came here in 1997, we passed the first balanced Budget Act in 30 years. That was a result of the work of a lot of people. I do not take credit for making that happen. But then after having a balanced budget and running a surplus until the year 2001, beginning in January of that year, when we turned over this great country to the Bush administration and a Republican majority in the House and the Senate, and let us be very clear about that. The Republicans have controlled the House, the Senate, the White House and the Supreme Court for all of this time. And we have turned over a $5 trillion surplus to these people.

Now, as we just saw a few minutes ago from one of our conscientious Blue Dogs, they have turned that $5 trillion surplus into an $8 trillion debt. And just last week when the budget was passed that I voted against and most of the Democrats voted against, as far as I know all of them did, they raised the debt ceiling again to $9 trillion.

We are having to raise the debt ceiling almost $1 trillion a year to keep up with the total mismanagement of the people's affairs by the Republicans. It would be hard to imagine a greater fiscal disaster than the Bush administration has led us to.

Over and over and over again, we tried to reach out and we tried to say, let us reestablish the budget rules that got us to a surplus back in the 90s. Let us admit that we have got a problem. Let us require a balanced budget. Let us require pay-as-you-go. If you cannot pay for it, you cannot spend it. Let us make borrowing money from our children and grandchildren much more difficult to do, and it should only be done in cases of great national emergency.

Recently, the President has gone before the Nation and declared he wants to save Social Security. Regardless of the outcome of what he wants to do, if we do not take care of the debt and the deficit, all we are doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It is a ridiculous exercise to talk about changing the Social Security system when we do not know how we are going to pay the interest on the national debt 5 years from now. 

If nothing is done by the time the Social Security so-called crisis occurs, it will take every nickel of the income of the Federal Government just to pay the interest on the debt. And my question to the Republicans that have created this situation, and I remember so well how they told us back in 2001, if we just do this, if we just cut taxes on the richest people in this country, the economy will just bubble up out of the ground. It will be the land of milk and honey. Nothing but free Bubble-Up and rainbow stew everywhere for everyone.