Steven Holt: “There should be outrage throughout the country because of what is happening here. A year ago, we were arguing about how…”

“There should be outrage throughout the country because of what is happening here. A year ago, we were arguing about how rapidly we could pay down the debt. Now, we will be, and our descendants will be, saddled with the debt and the interest that goes with that. The other side will say that this is because of the economic downturn and cyclic factors; and, indeed, there are some things that happened that perhaps were not fully foreseeable. The economic downturn was worse than people imagined, the war on terrorism has descended on us now, and we have obligations. But when we had the budget before us last year, some of us said: build a cushion into the budget for this kind of unforeseen thing. So some of what happened was beyond our control, but some of it was very much the work of the leadership and the leadership of the Committee on the Budget for putting in place a tax cut that put us on this path so that we cannot at the current rate pay down the debt.”