Rick Allen: “I wanted to make just a couple of comments about the budget. I have not been here for the whole debate, but I wanted to…”

“I wanted to make just a couple of comments about the budget. I have not been here for the whole debate, but I wanted to say that those of us last year who said over and over again as the President rushed this enormous tax cut through the Senate and through the House, we said this is a reckless proposition. It is an irresponsible proposition because it leaves no room for error, no room for error. They were making the assumption, in fact, the gentleman may have a chart available there that shows how the tax cut basically over the next 5 years would simply eat up, and that is the chart I was referring to, would eat up all of the non-Social Security, non-Medicare surplus. That really is what did the damage. And though certainly other factors have come into play since then, that you need to spend more money to defeat the terrorist network, the decline in the economy, it was that miscalculation that really was the more serious mistake. I do not know whether others have mentioned it, but right now as a result of a downturn in the economy, virtually every State in this country is facing a State budget shortfall and all of the stimulus packages which came before the House and the Senate late last year, all of them would have made the predicament of our State governments much worse. In my home State of Maine, it does not matter what the proposal was, we have been faced with a $250 million shortfall over the next 2 years.”