Jim Kolbe: “Mr. Speaker, this is an election year. Unfortunately, most of the time, the real loser in an election year is the truth.…”

“Mr. Speaker, this is an election year. Unfortunately, most of the time, the real loser in an election year is the truth. Mr. Speaker, I have seen the Democrat presidential nominee and the vice presidential nominee travel all over this country taking credit for balancing the budget, taking credit for paying down the debt, taking credit for welfare reform, taking credit for locking up the Social Security surplus and the Medicare surplus. Yet, the truth of the matter is, when Bill Clinton had a Democrat Congress, they passed budgets that had deficits as far as the eye could see. In fact, their budget they passed, the last one they passed in 1994, said that last year we would have over a $200 billion deficit. Yet now we have surpluses. In fact, they would lead us to believe that the shutdown of the Government in 1995 was because the Republican Congress was intransigent. If we really look at the record, the shutdown in 1995 came when the President shut down the Government because he did not want a balanced budget. That is what that fight was all about. On welfare reform, the President of the United States and most of his people in the House and the Senate voted against welfare reform.”