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Rep. Jason Chaffetz

Madam Speaker, the numbers are in. Once again, the Federal Government is going to achieve an annual deficit of more than $1 trillion.

Now, how much is $1 trillion? Because we throw around that number far too often. If you spend $1 million a day every day, it would take you almost 3,000 years to get to $1 trillion, and our Federal Government is approaching $16 trillion in debt. We're spending more than $733 million a day as just interest on the debt.

We have to change the trajectory. We can no longer borrow and spend the kind of money that we are. Please, ladies and gentlemen, we have to have systemic changes; and one of those things that we're going to talk about today is putting a freeze on pay.

We have to understand that there are a lot of good Federal employees out there doing great, great work, but your Federal Government has more than 450,000 people earning a base pay of at least $100,000. These are going to have to change.