Christopher Shays: “I voted for it because I was willing to even vote for a tax increase where there was a slight tax increase to balance…”

“I voted for it because I was willing to even vote for a tax increase where there was a slight tax increase to balance the budget. But I used those numbers that were done not by the Congressional Budget Office, but by the Office of Management and Budget, and they were basically the President's numbers. They were basically Dick Darman's numbers, the head of the budget office, and they simply turned out to be extraordinarily unrealistic. I vowed that I would never ever again be unmindful of how the numbers were calculated, and that is why we want the President to be willing to use basically conservative numbers, certainly not numbers that just estimate ourselves out of the problem. Our first task is to balance our Federal budget, and get our financial house in order. We cannot do it just looking at appropriations. I think my colleague in the chair would recognize that we have been squeezing what we call discretionary spending.”