Patricia Schroeder: “I would just like to talk a bit about some of the things that are in some of the newspapers today about the difficulties…”

“I would just like to talk a bit about some of the things that are in some of the newspapers today about the difficulties this House is facing as it forces itself to deal with the budget issue. For the last 4 years, we had the budget done on time. That was before April 15. This year, for all the magic done and all the things that got going, guess what, we do not have a budget, and everybody is saying ``Just do it. Where's the budget?'' I think the budget happens to be the most important thing, and we should have done that first, before we did all the giveaways and all the tax cuts and all the other goodies, but the goodies have been given out, and now it is time to take the medicine. The first issue that I thought was so interesting was the Hill newspaper, which said, guess what, The Republicans are having trouble with their own appointed head of the Congressional Budget Office. Luckily, the Congressional Budget Office is there. When the Democrats appointed the head of the Budget Office, we had trouble. Mr. Reischauer pointed out that we had underestimated the cost of the health care proposals that were out there. Thank goodness he did that, because I think he brought real reality. Now they are very angry because the new head that they appointed is telling them their Medicare stuff does not add up, that they have put in all sorts of little amendments, and they want to tinker a little bit with it, and it is going to be a whole lot more costly than they thought.”