Mr. INHOFE. I suggest to the Senator from Pennsylvania, your father sounds like he was a student of history and he looked at what this country is all about. It reminds me that if we remember in our history, when de Tocqueville came here, he came over to study our business system. He was so impressed with the great wealth this Nation had accumulated that he wrote a book. The last paragraph says that once the people of this country find out they can vote themselves money out of the public trust, this system will fail.
We are so close to that point, and yet, this great discovery that was reflected in the election of November shows me that people are saying that we are almost there and we cannot afford to let it continue.
The one thing that the three of us have in common is we are all freshmen, we are new here. I think maybe that is why we are a little bit more exercised on this. We remember the mandate very well. That is all I heard during not just the election, but I have had 77 town meetings since the election. The first thing coming out of the chute is the budget. `I do not care what you do, do something to stop the deficit.' That is what we are committed to doing.
Mr. THOMAS. The Senator mentioned something about de Tocqueville . Earlier in his book he said, as he looked at the new democracy and he looked at the new system of people governing themselves, which at that time was a new experiment, he said that the strength of this country was people doing for themselves and helping each other on a local community basis. That is very true. Now we move more and more--and the budget has to do with the direction we take in Government, certainly. When we decide to have less Government which is less costly, we do that as a philosophy, and most everybody subscribes to that. This is the labor that goes with it to cause that to happen. You know, it is all tied together, and we cannot be responsible morally and fiscally, unless we do something about this imbalance that has gone on for 25 years.
Mr. INHOFE. We also have to realize--I do not want to take us off the track of the budget, but de Tocqueville was also concerned about some of the social problems he saw forecast in this country. He said,
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America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
So a lot of people in our history, going all the way back to Washington, talked about and addressed public debt, and Jefferson was also outspoken on this. I think we are here in a political revolution in this country, and I think it is an exciting thing. The President will have to be very persuasive.
Mr. THOMAS. Does Senator Santorum have a de Tocqueville quote, also?
Mr. SANTORUM. No, I do not, but I do have an editorial from one of my papers, in the Lancaster Intelligencer, which said that the difference between the Republican budget and the President's budget, and they were very supportive of the President's budget, is that the President's budget is compassionate. The President's budget is compassionate because it does not tear apart all these programs that are here in place in Washington.
I would suggest to them that compassion--if compassion is measured by a group of people in Washington willing to take people's hard-earned money and give it to people that they see fit to give it to, if that is the measure of compassion I can tell you it is very easy for me. It is no skin off my back to vote money from somebody else and give it to somebody else.
Some people say that is compassion. If I go to someone who is working 16-hour days, 6 days a week, and I tax him more money and give it to somebody else who may not be working as hard or may have a problem, whatever the case may be--I am sort of removed from this. It is not hurting me. I am not taking any money from me here. I am taking it from somebody else and giving it to somebody else. Where is that compassion?
The word compassion, if you look at the derivation of the word compassion, it means `with suffering.' I am not suffering with anybody. I am not suffering with anybody.