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Public Statements

Making Life Work for American Families

Floor Speech

Location: Washington, DC


Mr. GRIFFIN of Arkansas. I appreciate that transition. Thank you very much.

What I'm concerned about is because we haven't gotten our fiscal house in order, we are not able to invest in a lot of things, like medical research and roads and education, the way we need to in order to be prepared for the future. I've got a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, and I want their America to be as good as the one that I grew up in. To do that, we have to invest in these things.

So I call this the ``PAC-MAN problem'' because nearly two-thirds of our Federal budget is on autopilot. It's mandatory spending. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest make up that mandatory spending; and this is money that's basically spent without congressional approval because it's written into the law. Unless we save and strengthen those programs represented by the yellow here, then they're going to go bankrupt; and they're going to crowd out the investments that we need to make that will help families and help grow our economy. Basically, PAC-MAN eventually will swallow all the investments up; and when it does, all the spending for medical research, scientific development, and all of these other things will go away. So we've got to get that under control for our families.


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