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ask.heather@mail.house.gov

In Washington DC
442 Cannon House
Office Building
Washington, DC
20515
202-225-6316 Phone
202-225-4975 Fax
In Albuquerque
20 First Plaza NW
Suite 603
Albuquerque, NM
87102
505-346-6781 Phone
505-346-6723 Fax

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Congresswoman Heather Wilson, First Congressional District of New Mexico


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Saving and Investing for Our Future with a Balanced Budget March 28, 2000
 
Dear Friends,

Last Thursday, we were grinding through one of our marathon Commerce subcommittee meetings while the full House debated the 2001 budget resolution on the floor. Every hour or so the bells would ring and we would leave the committee room to go to the floor for a vote on one or more budget amendments. Then back to the committee room with recharged coffee cups.

My anti-spam bill passed out of subcommittee unanimously in three minutes. Of course, it took 43 drafts to get that consensus. (Yup. You read it right. Forty-three. Tell your kids the next time they complain about doing a second draft of that term paper.) And it`s a good bill on a tough subject -- 1st amendment rights, Internet privacy, fast changing technology.

We then spent eight hours on two other bills. . . . Lots of coffee. But by 30 minutes after midnight on Friday morning we were ready to vote on the budget.

The budget is just a blueprint for the 13 spending bills we will pass later this year. Like any set of plans, it will get tweaked here and there, but it is a good start. This is what it does.

We will balance the budget without touching the Social Security surplus. We did that for the first time in since Lyndon Johnson was President 1999; we are on track to do that in the current fiscal year and we are determined to do it again in 2001.

We will pay off $1 trillion of public debt over the next five years and eliminate the entire $3.6 trillion public debt by 2013.

We set aside $40 billion over the next five years to strengthen Medicare and add a prescription drug benefit for the poorest Americans and those with high annual drug costs.

We plan to make taxes fairer and lower for families by building in $150 billion in tax relief over the next five years. That is room enough to eliminate the marriage penalty, give relief to small businesses, increase IRA contributions to $5000 a year from $2000 a year, expand education savings accounts and phase out the estate tax.

We will continue to restore our nation`s defense with a 6 percent increase over last year and $1 billion more that the President`s request.

And -- a cause near to my heart -- we will continue to increase federal funding for education. Elementary and secondary education will get a 9.4% increase this year and more than $20 billion over the next 5 years. We will prioritize funding for special education and give states and local communities greater flexibility to use federal funds.

It`s not perfect, but I think it sets us on the right course.

There are still programs that don`t work well that need to be reformed or eliminated, waste that needs to be cut, bureaucracy that needs to be streamlined. That`s the hard work of governing. We do it mostly in the committee rooms. I`ll be back at it this week . . . and I don`t care how much coffee or how many drafts it takes. I`ll be there.

Wish you were here,

Heather
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