Brian Bilbray: “the American people have listened to Democrats and Republicans blame each other about budget crises. I became a Member…”

“the American people have listened to Democrats and Republicans blame each other about budget crises. I became a Member in 1995. I left for 5 years. How things change. The parties change names, but it is the same tactics. The American people want us working together on the budget. This amendment is a minimal effort of just saying to the American people, look, we recognize that even the best operation and the best budget can still be operated on 99 percent of what was projected. It is a minimalist kind of approach to this. If you can't vote for a 1 percent across-the-board cut, go to your town hall meetings, go into your communities and say, well, I really didn't want to do it because of what it symbolized. The fact is that this is the minimum of what we can do to say, look, we are trying to get back in the discipline of doing the right thing by the American taxpayer. And if you can't vote for a 1 percent, how can you expect in the long run to be able to control the Federal budget, and that is exactly what the constituency wants us to do. So I just say dump the Republican and Democrat argument. You get back to the fact that you have a motion that says quite clearly: we will make the effort of a 1 percent reduction across the board. That is a very small, little step towards fiscal responsibility and let's get together, Democrats and Republicans, and do the right thing and support the new Hefley amendment as authored by the gentleman from Georgia.”