Jim Nussle: “It is a frustration of mine, and it is the reason why I put the budget out that I did this year. When we got to surplus…”

“It is a frustration of mine, and it is the reason why I put the budget out that I did this year. When we got to surplus, and we have seen the chart, when we got to balancing and began going into surplus, particularly into discretionary spending, all of us around here very cheerfully started getting into a bidding war. We could do a little better than you in education, you could do a little better than us in health care. We went on and on and on. Look at the charts in any of those categories. Once 1998 happened, as my friend knows, we could not say no to anything. It was very difficult to try to control that. That is just the discretionary side, which, as the gentleman knows, is only one-quarter of the budget. On the mandatory side, think of the last time in a partisan or bipartisan way that we tried to take on an entitlement and even tried to control spending. My friend has quite a bit of control or interest in agriculture, as do I. I sit on a committee that has jurisdiction over Medicare and welfare. We did it in welfare and had some real success. I just want us to start looking at that process again. That is the reason in this budget I challenge the committees.”