John Campbell: “I have to say the course of this budget debate is somewhat perplexing. My friends on the other side of the aisle here…”

“I have to say the course of this budget debate is somewhat perplexing. My friends on the other side of the aisle here, the Democrats, are consistently railing about the deficit and the evils of the deficit and how bad the deficit is and how big the deficit is, and I confess that I concur. I have problems with this deficit and that we ought to be reducing this deficit. But it seems like their solution to reducing the deficit is to spend more money. My friends, this is like saying that we have a boat and our boat is sinking, and the way to fix the boat is to punch holes in the bottom of it. Spending more money does not reduce the deficit. You don't need to be a CPA to know that. You only need second grade math to know that. Spending more money does not reduce the deficit. In the Budget Committee the vast majority of the amendments to the budget offered by the Democrat side were amendments that spent more money. Now, to be fair, they do propose to close the deficit by raising taxes, and that is their argument and their proposal. But they claim that the tax rate cuts, and I want to point out that they were tax rate cuts, that happened in 2003 have increased the deficit.…”