On the recordFebruary 10, 2016
Mr. Mulvaney and I have been having a running conversation about how we put together a budget for this coming year. One of the discussions that we have been trying to calculate is, okay, they blew up some of the spending caps last year. It is what it is. But if they had paid for that increased spending with reforms in entitlements, that is something that goes on and on and on and multiplies out into the future. Actually, it does a little bit to help our future and save the entitlements. It has sort of a multiplier effect because it lives in perpetuity. It is fascinating, because some of us are trying to pitch that idea of give us a few things that we know actually have a multiplier effect in the future as a way to start to deal with these numbers. I put this chart up. This is last year. We are going to do this real quickly. I will have it on the Web site, and I will ask both of you if you are willing to do it, too. You are at your town hall. You have a group walking into your office demanding more money. You have got to understand that happens all day long. Every 15 minutes, there is another meeting of another group that wants more money. I will get groups that will come in and say: We want more money. If you would just get rid of foreign aid, we will be just fine. Then you pull this board out and say, Okay, you see the little red line there? That is every dime of the State Department's budget.…
