Phil Gingrey: “this amendment reduces the necessary expenses of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture by $50,050, a simple 1…”

“this amendment reduces the necessary expenses of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture by $50,050, a simple 1 percent; a 1 percent reduction in the expenses of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture. Mr. Chairman, the amendment is not aimed necessarily at the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, but it aims to make a simple 1 percent reduction in order to shrink the Federal deficit. Why is that necessary? Well, we should be paying for increased spending by reducing other Federal spending, that's the 1 percent I'm calling for, rather than raising taxes or putting the burden on our Medicare seniors, as we do in this proposed SCHIP reauthorization and expansion, Mr. Chairman. And as we all know, the Democratic majority, the Energy and Commerce Committee bill, which will be combined with the bill out of the Ways and Means Committee we will be dealing with in the next day or two on this floor, calls for a $50 billion increase over the next 5 years. Now, that's on top of the base program which, in the aggregate, was a $25 billion program over the last 5 years. We're not going to increase that by 10 percent, by 20 percent, by 50 percent, or even by 100 percent. We're increasing it even more than that, going from $25 billion, Mr. Chairman, to $75 billion. So, that's why I'm standing before the body today and saying, look, this is a small cut; this is a little bit of money.…”