David Perdue: “I believe what we are going to talk about over the next hour is one of the most important issues facing our government.…”

“I believe what we are going to talk about over the next hour is one of the most important issues facing our government. We sat here today and listened to a lot of very valid pleas for help from the Federal Government. The reality is, we don't have the money. There are four words I have not heard in the U.S. Senate or Congress, actually, since I have been here over the last year and a half, and those words are ``We cannot afford it.'' The problem is that right now we have a budget crisis. We have a debt crisis. Let me say this: Fixing the budget process will not solve the debt crisis. Let's be very clear about that. But we will not solve the debt crisis unless and until we address the dysfunction in our budget process. The problem is that in the last 42 years, since the Budget Act of 1974, the budget process has only worked four times. This chart explains this fact. We can see the yellow lines show that--and I hope my colleagues can focus on this--only four times in the last 42 years has this budget process that was enacted in 1974 actually functioned at all to fund the Federal Government. One of the major responsibilities of our jobs here in the Senate and the House is to fund the Federal Government, to take care of discretionary needs such as those heard today from Flint, MI, Louisiana, West Virginia, and Maryland. These are valid needs, but every dime we spend in our discretionary spending is borrowed. I will talk more about that a little later.…”