The Hill News

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), delivered an opening statement at a Senate Budget Committee hearing.

Senator Domenici and Dr. Rivlin, it is a great pleasure to have you here today and to get your insights on the enormous fiscal challenges confronting our nation.

The candor with which you have addressed these challenges is refreshing. As you know better than most, we are on an unsustainable debt path. The question is not whether we are headed for a crisis, but whether we act in time to prevent it.

Already, millions of Americans are feeling the effect of our crushing debt burden. It drags on our economy like an anchorâ€"slowing growth, investment, and job creation. We were told a massive surge in federal spending would lead to a robust recovery. But after three years of trillion-dollar-plus deficits, we have a smaller fraction of Americans participating in the labor force than at any point in the last twenty-five years. Opening the floodgates of federa! l spending didn’t create a rising tide of prosperity, but has instead sunk our economy deeper into debt.

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