On the recordMarch 9, 2011
I used to be a Governor. I sometimes say I used to be somebody. As Governor, you had to propose budgets, you had to balance budgets, and you had to work with the legislature. I followed Mike Castle, and he followed Pete DuPont. We focused very hard on fiscal responsibility. During the 8 years I was Governor, we had eight balanced budgets in a row. For 7 years, we cut taxes. A couple of years, we actually paid down some debt. We ended up with a triple-A credit rating for the first time in the history of the State of Delaware. So I feel as though I know something about this issue. So do a number of my colleagues. We are having a lot of debate, as we should, over what our spending plans are going to be in this continuing resolution to fund the government for another 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 months. That is well and good and important. We need to get started and demonstrate that we are able to reduce this deficit and reduce our debt. We need to keep in mind that while what we do in the next 6 months is important, what is really important is what we do in the next 6 years and beyond that. We had a commission put together that a bunch of us supported. We created the deficit reduction commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. They gave us a pretty good roadmap of how to get to a more fiscally responsible place in the next few years, cutting some $4 trillion out of the budget deficit.
