Judd Gregg: “We are trying, as the Senate and as a Congress, to wrap up the business for the Government this year. A major part of…”

“We are trying, as the Senate and as a Congress, to wrap up the business for the Government this year. A major part of that effort is to complete the budget process. Included in the budget were two directions to the Congress, which were voted in by a majority of the Congress--regrettably, very few people from the other side of the aisle supported it--and one of the directions was, for the first time in 8 years, to attempt to bring under control the rate of growth of entitlement spending. Anybody who looks reasonably at the Federal Government--and let's take an independent view here and the view specifically of Chairman Greenspan, who recently gave a speech in London where he pointed out that the biggest concern he has from the standpoint of fiscal policy was the burgeoning costs of the Federal Government which were being driven by entitlement spending, and which would explode as the baby boom generation began to retire in 2008 and become an untenable burden for the children of the baby boom generation and their children as they have to pay the taxes or costs of supporting that retired generation which is so large. This bill, in what I consider to be the first act of fiscal responsibility of significance in the last 8 years, moved legislation that said the Congress, for the first time in 8 years, will address the issue of entitlements. Now, the savings being projected in the bill were not that dramatic and they continue to be not that dramatic.…”