On the recordFebruary 18, 2011
I thank the gentlelady for yielding. The gentleman before said, in the base bill, these represent the largest cuts we've ever made. That is true, but we are running the largest deficit we have ever run. We have had the largest debt we have ever had, and what the situation calls for are deeper cuts than are in the underlying bill. If we are really going to get on the right track here, we have got to understand that we have to make unprecedented cuts and realize that what we are doing here is a rounding error compared to what we are going to have to do with entitlement spending, which is going to come. But to ensure that we can make those choices when we deal with entitlements, we've got to go deeper than we are going in this base bill. Again, we are running a deficit of $1.5 trillion this year on a debt of $14 trillion. The $100 billion in the base bill is 1/15th of the entire deficit that we are running--just 1/15th. That's not enough. We have to go further. I support the Jordan amendment. Let's make deeper cuts.
