If we do not act now to strengthen Social Security, the system that so many depend upon today will be unable to meet its promises to tomorrow's retirees, and it will burden our children and grandchildren with exhaustive taxes.

We have so many people retiring that we do not have enough people paying into the system to be able to provide the benefits for those collecting those benefits.

Like my colleagues, I did about 10 to 15 town hall meetings on this issue; and what I found is people came with a sincere interest to learn, a sincere interest to cut through the rhetoric and understand how this Medicare bill impacts them in their daily lives.

Anytime a large, emergency spending bill makes its way through Congress, the potential for mischief is great.

The fact is that one of the earliest lessons I learned in business was that balance sheets and income statements are fiction, cash flow is reality.

Every year the Federal Government wastes billions of dollars as a result of overpayments of government agencies, misuse of government credit cards, abuse of the Federal entitlement programs, and the mismanagement of the Federal bureaucracy.

Madam Speaker, before being elected to Congress, I ran a manufacturing business that did a significant percentage of our sales outside the United States.