JOHN LINDER: “it was fascinating to hear the lady from Connecticut stand up and talk about the A to Z spending plan being phony…”

“it was fascinating to hear the lady from Connecticut stand up and talk about the A to Z spending plan being phony spending cuts. When you really get serious in Congress and make honest-to-goodness cuts from last year's spending, it is called phony? It has a kind of ``Alice-in-Wonderland'' quality about the words. As Humpty Dumpty said, ``When I use words, it means exactly what I want them to mean.'' Over the last decade or so, we have had four different budgets in which serious reductions in spending were promised: 1982, immediate tax increases with spending cuts down the road; Gramm-Rudman, immediate tax increases with spending cuts in the out years; 1990, immediate tax increases with spending cuts in the out years; and the last out year occurred last year when we had the largest tax increase in history with no net spending cuts until the out year. The A to Z plan currently before us, for which we are signing the discharge petition, gives the United States people and this Congress the opportunity to see that we are willing to make enough choices, to make real spending cuts. No wonder it scares the devil out of the left.”