On the recordDecember 5, 2012
I appreciate the hour, and I appreciate you being here with us this afternoon. You know, it seems like just yesterday to me that you and I showed up here on Capitol Hill. It was that giant freshman class of 2010, and golly we came to do something. I remember back in freshman orientation, folks hadn't even been sworn in yet and they were already trying to get focused on what the first votes in January 2011 would be about and the constant noise in the room was about how do we make a difference, how do we make it matter. This was a freshman class full of people who didn't come because they wanted a business card that says ``Congressman.'' They didn't come because this was just part of a career path they had been planning since they were kids. They came because they were men and women, moms and dads, small business owners, big business employees, folks from back home who said: golly, the country is in trouble, and if we don't have leadership who's willing to stand up and do the right thing for the right reasons, this country might just go over the edge. There were 99 of us, Mr. Speaker. You remember. It was Republicans and Democrats. Now, there were more of us as Republicans than there were of them, but we came together in those early days to say: What can we do to make a difference? Mr. Speaker, you can't see it here, but I have a chart of our spending as a percent of the share of our economy and tax revenue as a percent of the share of our economy. Now, Mr.…
