Mr. POSEY. Well, first I will comment on the value of buying homes on credit. I think it's a pretty good idea; but when you go to get qualified for a home, the rule of thumb is that you should buy a home roughly not more than 2.5 times your annual income. If you compare that to our known debt of $15 trillion, our revenues of about $2.2 trillion, you would see that if our debt was a home loan, it would be 14 times our annual income. No lender would loan you money under those circumstances; they would say you are bankrupt far beyond any possibility of recovering. And that doesn't include the $60 trillion unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. So I don't know if that was really a very good analogy.

Now, to my point, there is an old political axiom that says that anytime you promise to steal from Peter to pay Paul, one thing usually happens: Paul votes for you. Total revenues, as I just said in answer to the chairman's question, are about $2.2 trillion; total expenses the Federal Government spends, $3.6 trillion. [Page: H7854] Where does the money come from? Rather than balancing our budget like every hardworking American family, 49 other States, and virtually every local government in the country, Congress instead currently puts about 40 percent of every what has been described as ``vote-buying'' dollar it spends on our kids' and our grandkids' credit cards, to the point where each American family's share of the national debt is about $125,000--actually, in excess of $125,000. It will be hard to stop the spending.

It will be like taking drugs away from an addict.

Since Congress--Republicans and Democrats--has not shown the political will to be accountable, I believe a voter-mandated, balanced budget constitutional amendment is the only hope this country has to preserve the American experiment at representative self-government. And I urge Members of this body to begin thinking about the next generation instead of the next election.