Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. I thank the gentleman from Indiana.

Oftentimes, Madam Speaker, I have friends that come up to me on the street and they say, Trent, why aren't you talking more about this? Why aren't you explaining these things in the media better? Why aren't you going to the floor and telling us about these critical issues? So, oftentimes we do and the media just ignores it or somehow the people don't have the advantage of hearing what we say.

And I hope that doesn't happen to this bill, Madam Speaker, because I truly believe if the American people could just read the Cut, Cap, and Balance legislation that they would understand how profoundly reasonable it really is. All it really says is that we are going to cut our budget at least as much as we raise the debt ceiling, and that we're going to put some steps in place to begin to rein in the spending of this government in a real way; and that as we go forward, we will begin to index the spending of this Nation with a certain percentage of the gross domestic product, or the amount of productivity of our Nation.

Madam Speaker, that's so imminently reasonable because that creates a great deal of incentive on the part of government, then, to see all people in our society successful, to see everyone have gain and to be able to accumulate wealth in every way that they can, from the janitor to the Senator.

And then, finally, this legislation says that we need a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution.

Madam Speaker, I have the privilege of being the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution in this place. I will just suggest to you that the balanced budget amendment seems [Page: H5140] so intuitive to me because, as I said earlier, all budgets have to balance at some point.

You know, I have two little babies, Joshie and Gracie, and they have piggy banks. They know that if they take more out of it than they put in it, then it goes empty. They understand that. I don't know why something so fundamental and basic escapes the erudite minds that pervade government. But it seems that we think that somehow because we have Ph.D.s and that because we are able to perpetrate monotonic polysyllabic obfuscation, semantic gymnastics, and verbal circumlocution that people won't know what we're talking about and that somehow we can get away with anything that we want to. And I just think that's so tragic because a reality is still in place that says that if we live outside our means, that pretty soon the entire system begins to collapse. That's where we are, Madam Speaker. We are seeing people losing confidence in their government. And I'm very concerned about that because I believe that it is vital that people have confidence.

Somebody said to me, they said, you know, if all of the gold in Fort Knox were stolen tonight and none of us knew about it, that the gold market wouldn't change much tomorrow morning in The Wall Street Journal. But if someone put out a press release, say, from Fort Knox that all of the gold had been stolen in Fort Knox but that that wasn't really true, that all of the gold was still there but somehow the public believed that it had been stolen, that gold markets across the planet the next day would crash because people's perception, their confidence in the system is vital to the system.

Right now, people are losing confidence in our system, and I think there are very few things that threaten us more. We talk about a default. Well, the default is not going to happen on August 2 unless the President chooses to arbitrarily force that to happen. But I am concerned that the markets may begin to say, Maybe the Congress of the United States just doesn't have the courage to do the right thing. Maybe somehow they're going to let politics intervene to the extent that they're actually going to step back and not do what's necessary to stabilize the economic foundation of this Nation. And that is so tragic because it doesn't have to be that way.

This Cut, Cap, and Balance bill can accomplish everything that's reasonable. It can say, okay, we recognize the challenges that we face in this country today. We recognize that we've overspent. We recognize that our country is at a low economically. We recognize that we're not working on full employment. We recognize that the markets don't know whether to jump or go blind. They don't know what this President is going to do next. And if we put this Cut, Cap, and Balance bill in place, all of a sudden, the markets of the world, the person on the street, they're going to realize, hey, maybe there is hope after all. Maybe America is going to go forward and do what she was destined to do from the born of time and continue to be that great city on a hill that Ronald Reagan spoke of. I believe that it can be that way.

But I am afraid that somehow the people won't understand what's in this bill. I will just suggest to you, in all due deference and respect to the President of the United States, his plan is incumbent upon the people not understanding what it is, and the Republican plan is incumbent upon the people understanding what is really in the bill. And I so hope that the people are able to truly get the information that they need to understand what this bill is all about, rather than letting the left-wing media distort it to the extent that they don't know.

I also hope for something else, Madam Speaker. I am hoping that tomorrow when we vote that we will recognize something else as people in this place: that all too soon we will step from these Chambers one by one and that our time here will be passed, and only those things that we did that truly honored our God and our country and our fellow human beings and the great gift that we've been given in America will really matter at that point. I hope we will realize that we won't have too many votes like this in our career that can make a difference for future generations.

It's been said that the politician looks to the next election; whereas, the statesman looks to the next generation, and that great societies finally come when old men plant trees under whose shade they will never sit. I hope tomorrow that we will embrace this thing called statesmanship and look to the next generation and, quite frankly, Madam Speaker, to look to the next few days and weeks, because what we do is going to send a message to the markets the world over.

If you are an investor and you saw a company that continued to deficit spend and continued to get in debt beyond its means and continued to carelessly spend, would you invest in that company? I think that's what our country has to ask ourselves.

I truly believe that we're going to have a chance tomorrow that may be very unique in our careers, and it's possible that a lot of people are going to succumb to the need to be popular among certain special interest groups. But I will just suggest to them, Madam Speaker, that popularity is history's pocket change. It's courage that is the true currency of history, and we have a chance to be courageous tomorrow. We have a chance to do what's right, to stabilize this country today and tomorrow.

We have a chance to make sure that our future generations walk in the light of freedom. I have a chance, as a father, to do what I believe is truly right for my children and their contemporaries so that they might grow up and walk in the light of freedom, as I have.

[Time: 20:10] If we do this, I believe the people will applaud us in the long run. There may be certain exceptions in the short term. But in the long run they will look back and say that those people who stood up and did what was right that day when they voted on cut, cap, and balance and voted for the balanced budget amendment, they'll look back and see that as a historic turning point in this country. And I want so much to see that happen.

Finally, Madam Speaker, I would just say to you again that all budgets do balance, and the equation before us today is, are we going to balance the budget, or is reality going to balance it in a horrifying way for us? For the sake of my children, for the sake of future generations, and for the sake of all that we love and hold dear in this country, and for the sake of making sure that we are good stewards of the greatest Nation God has ever given to this planet, I hope we do the right thing tomorrow.

I yield the remainder of the time to the gentleman from Indiana.