Katie Porter: “for 40 years the minority party controlled the House of Representatives, and most of that time the Senate as well. For…”

“for 40 years the minority party controlled the House of Representatives, and most of that time the Senate as well. For all of those years, for 30 of those years, at least, they ran one deficit after another, some of them approaching $300 billion a year. In the 5 years that the majority party has controlled the House of Representatives and the Senate, we have reduced the deficits to zero. We now run surpluses, and we are engaged in arguments as to how that money should best be spent. I believe very strongly we should commit to doubling the funding for the National Institutes of Health over 5 years, and we have provided 15 percent for the last 2 years. We intend and will do our best to provide an additional 15 percent this year to get us to that ultimate doubling in the 5-year period on a compounding basis. It is fascinating to me that the minority wants to make an issue of that. We agree on it. The only difference is we are having to operate within the constraints of a budget resolution, and it is very easy to criticize when there are no constraints whatsoever.”