There was also the assertion of last year that you would be paying down the maximum amount of national debt. The President said in his address to the Joint Session last year: "We owe it to our children and grandchildren to act now, and I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years."

Again, we see that that statement was inaccurate; that instead of paying down $2 trillion of debt during this period, the President's budget this year shows we will be paying down just over $500 billion of the debt.

Amounts Available to Pay Down Debt (FY 2002-2011)

The result is that total Federal interest costs go up by over $1 trillion, this according to the Congressional Budget Office. Instead of paying $600 billion of interest over the next decade, we will be paying over $1.6 trillion in interest.

When Director Crippen of the Congressional Budget Office came here to testify, he indicated that the surpluses which last year were projected at $5.6 trillion had been reduced to $1.6 trillion. And when we looked at the reasons, according to CBO testimony, what we found, despite the indications from the Administration that this was all related to the war and the economic downturn, was that in fact the biggest factor was the tax cut that the President proposed and pushed through Congress last year. Over the 10 years, 42 percent of the decline in the surplus was as a result of the tax cut; 23 percent, the recession; 18 percent, spending largely caused by the attack on this country on September 11; 17 percent, technical changes.

Total Federal Interest Costs

Increase by $1 Trillion

January 2001 versus January 2002 CBO Baseline, FY 2002-2011

All of this tells me that the prudent person putting a budget out this year would decide not to dig the hole any deeper. But what we see in the President's budget is to keep digging the hole deeper and deeper, taking more Social Security Trust Fund money to use for other purposes, taking all of the Medicare Trust Fund money to use for other purposes. In fact, instead of $5.6 trillion over the period of 2002 to 2011, the President's budget leaves something over $600 billion.

I believe the truth is there are no surpluses because all of that money is fully committed. In fact, it is overcommitted. In fact, as Chairman Greenspan told us, these so-called contingent liabilities of the Federal Government are not contingent at all. We owe that money, and we are going to have to pay it. And to fail to acknowledge it puts this country in much the same position as Enron--not acknowledging the true debt that we face.

So what does it all mean? Director Crippen when he was here concluded his testimony by saying: "Put more starkly, Mr. Chairman, the extremes of what will be required to address our retirement are these. We will have to increase borrowing by very large, likely unsustainable, amounts; raise taxes to 30 percent of gross domestic product"-we are at about 19 percent now-"obviously unprecedented in our history; or eliminate most of the rest of government as we know it. That is the dilemma that faces us in the long run, Mr. Chairman, and these next 10 years will only be the beginning."