Christopher Shays: “We rescinded certain expenditures. In fact what we did do, if I could be a little more precise, we actually cut $20…”

“We rescinded certain expenditures. In fact what we did do, if I could be a little more precise, we actually cut $20 billion from that budget, but then added $11 billion back that the President requested and would have been in the budget if we had not even made the $20 billion. We had a net savings of $9 billion. But then we had the debate in 1996 and the shutdown of Government. We had the shutdown of Government in part because when we gave the President certain budgets, he vetoed it. We ended up with zero and a disagreement on how much we should spend. Ultimately we have now a full agreement with the President on the 1996 budget, the budget we are in now, and which will end the end of this September. The thing that we need to point out is the President wanted to spend $7 billion more than we spend in 1995, and we ended spending $23 billion less. We ended up making a savings ultimately to his plan of $30 billion, $23 billion of actual reductions in this year less than we are spending, less than we spent last year.”