James M. Jeffords: “I am pleased to be here to speak in favor of the centrist budget request. I remember so many years ago when I was in the…”

“I am pleased to be here to speak in favor of the centrist budget request. I remember so many years ago when I was in the House when we had a similar problem with the inability to get together on a budget. A number of us in the middle decided we would put together the answer to the budget. We worked very hard on it. We did a good job. We then went to the votes. There were three choices. There was the liberal, there was the conservative, and there was the middle. The liberal budget went down by a fair number of votes. The conservative budget went down by a fair number of votes. We thought, Wow, we're right in the middle here. We're going to get all the votes. We got fewer than anybody. My point is, perhaps I know we are not going to win tonight, but I bet the budget we end up with in the final analysis is going to be very close to what we are proposing here tonight. Let me talk a little bit about what the major problems are. First of all, we have accomplished quite a bit this year. We recognize there is a problem. For the first time in my memory in this Congress for over 23 years, there is a consensus that we have to have a balanced budget. The President agrees we have to have a balanced budget. The House and Senate do. But how do you get there? You do not get there by any easy way. There is no easy way to a balanced budget. You have to tackle the toughest aspects of it. One of those, which I spoke about at some length on Friday, is health care.”