mr. speaker , i think the american people just want to hear us try to get along and give them the level , be on the level with them , give them straight talk . 
what has happened here in the last several years is we have reduced revenues with bills like this and increased spending . 
now , you can do that for a little while , and all of us have done it from time to time , i assume , with our credit cards . 
but you can not do it forever and every american knows that . 
to give you some recent history , in 2002 , we had to increase the debt limit of money that we could borrow by $ 450 billion in this country . 
in 2003 , we had to increase it again by $ 984 billion . 
in 2004 , again , by $ 800 billion . 
and in the budget resolution , it is not in this bill , they propose another $ 781 billion increase in the limit that we can borrow . 
now , what that means is , since 2001 , the federal debt has grown from 5.6 to $ 8.1 trillion . 
this is available on www.publicdebt.treas.gov . 
do not take my word for it . 
go , please , look it up . 
in 2004 , 16 of 23 federal agencies could not provide an acceptable audit . 
that is available at www.gao.gov . 
right now , mainland china and hong kong have accumulated over $ 300 billion worth of our debt . 
that data is available on the treasury department 's web site . 
again , this is not an argument . 
this is fact . 
go look it up . 
i said the other day when i was talking , things are so bad with our borrowing out of control that if china attacked taiwan , we would have to borrow the money from china to defend taiwan . 
16 percent of all the taxes we collect now in this country go to pay interest . 
and it gets worse by the minute . 
interest on the public debt grew more now , what does that mean ? 
where are we now ? 
this is hard to imagine , but so far , in this fiscal year , we have borrowed $ 130 billion and spent $ 39 billion on interest in just the first 2 months of this fiscal year . 
november 's $ 22 billion payment was the largest ever . 
debt interest grew more rapidly in the first 2 months , 38 percent , relative to the same rate last year . 
the federal reserve is raising interest rates and has 12 times . 
really , all i am saying is this . 
we are on an unsustainable financial glide path and every reputable economist will tell you that . 
we want to work with the republicans . 
we want to try to do tax relief when it makes sense and makes more commerce happen and so forth . 
but we can not do it because we can not reach the real problem . 
you know what the problem is around here ? 
you let the paygo rules lapse in 2002 . 
we do not have meaningful enforceable budget caps . 
we do not have a balanced budget amendment that has ever been voted on . 
and what we have is a failure of not only communication but a failure of management of the budget process . 
and we are getting deeper and deeper in trouble by the minute . 
