Chuck Grassley: “I am sorry that I went over time, but I will make this last point. The President in December vetoed the Balanced Budget…”

“I am sorry that I went over time, but I will make this last point. The President in December vetoed the Balanced Budget Act of 1995. This 1,800-page bill that we sent to the President was the product of about 8 months of work by the Senate and the House. It was the product of 13 different committees. Every committee had to change the programs that are under its jurisdiction to fit into the effort. That effort was the policy to balance the budget. Our bill did that. So, once in awhile, I like to reconsider our now vetoed Balanced Budget Act of 1995, because I have been working with other people in the Congress for a long time and we said that we could balance the budget. But, quite frankly, until last year we never delivered on that promise. We tend to overpromise in Congress which can be wrong. We should be careful not to overpromise. We should perform in office commensurate with the rhetoric of our campaign. We had promised to balance the budget over so many years in the 1970's and 1980's and early 1990's--the last time we had a balanced budget was in 1969--but we did not succeed, and yet we had promised it. That is why some people are so cynical about some of us in public office.”