Christopher Shays: “I did not think that the last speaker, a colleague who used to be for controlling the growth in spending, would be…”

“I did not think that the last speaker, a colleague who used to be for controlling the growth in spending, would be advocating spending so much. When we were in the Committee on the Budget voting out this bill, my Democratic colleagues came out with a total of $982 billion of new spending over the next 10 years. That is far more than the amount of the tax cut. It would not have helped reduce the deficit. It was simply more government spending. Only in Washington when we spend more money do people call it a cut. The total budget is going to go up 3 percent. Medicare is going to go up 7.9 percent. Veterans spending is going to go up 6.9 percent, but they called it a cut. They call a $3.97 billion increase a cut when it is actually an increase of 6.9 percent. I believe that during the time I was on the Committee on the Budget we had some clear delineation. We wanted to cut taxes. Our Democratic colleagues did not want a cut in taxes; they wanted to spend more. We never had a debate with President Clinton in which he thought we were spending too much. It was always that we needed to spend more, and that is the dialogue that is happening now.”