When I became Speaker of the House in 1995, many in Washington considered balancing the federal budget impossible.
However, House Republicans believed that the American people would support balancing the budget and paying down the national debt. In fact, we believed that if they saw a practical doable plan to balance the budget, they would force the Democrats in Congress to go along with the idea. The American people would also convince President Bill Clinton that he had to support a balanced budget if he wanted to be re-elected.
With a lot of hard, determined work and a fair amount of problem solving and invention, we passed the only four consecutive balanced budgets in the last century. By 1999, then-U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified in the Senate that the Fed thought the national debt would be paid off by 2009 – and its economists were studying how to manage the money supply with no federal debt.
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- When America Stops Believing in America, the World Notices
The Founders understood that a republic’s strength begins in the settled conviction of its own citizens. - The Jeffersonian Political Future
Republicans should develop a broad embracing platform which will be supported by 75 percent to 80 percent of the American people. - The Hospital-Insurance Company Rip Off System
There has been a long struggle to enable Americans to know what they are really paying for in healthcare — and what their options are in quality and price of service. - Mamdani’s Anti-American Fantasy Reflects Far Left’s Reliance on Alternative Facts
If the radical left is forced to stick with the record and the facts, its complaints fall apart. - The Empire of Liberty vs the Dictatorship of Hate
Watching the parallel television coverage of the American celebration of our 250th anniversary and the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave me a deep sense of contrast.