May 17, 2001 Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, in response to the Senator from New Mexico, I don't think the choices he has presented are the full choices before the American people and before the Congress. The Senator from New Mexico refers to the choice of either giving the tax cut back to the American people or the money being spent here. I don't think those are the choices. Those are two of the choices. There is a third choice. The third choice is to pay down more of the people's debt. When we refer to the people's money, that is exactly right. This is the people's money. I think everybody here is acutely aware of that. We have, fundamentally, three choices. One is tax cuts, and certainly that ought to be part of what we do. The second choice is spending. I think most people on both sides of the aisle say we need to increase spending on education and national defense. The third choice is how much do we use to pay down our debt. The President says we should only pay down $3 trillion of the $3.4 trillion publicly held debt we currently have. There is another debt that the President is not dealing with and that we are not dealing with. That is the gross debt of the United States. That is the combination of the publicly held debt and the debt owed to the trust funds of the United States. The gross debt of the United States is not going down; it is going up. As we sit here today facing a debt of $5.6 trillion, at the end of the 10-year-period the gross debt of the United States will be $6.7 trillion. We are not paying off the national debt around here, not by a long shot. The national debt is increasing. Interestingly, it is increasing by about the amount of the tax cut we are providing.