Mike Crapo: “I ran on a platform of balancing the Federal budget. This is the debate we had at that time. First, there were those who…”

“I ran on a platform of balancing the Federal budget. This is the debate we had at that time. First, there were those who said you can't balance the Federal budget or, if you could, it would be bad for the management of the Federal budget and we couldn't run the Federal Government very well if we didn't use deficit spending. That argument was debunked when, after about 6 or 7 years of effort starting in about 1994, we did balance the Federal budget. Frankly, we did very well running the Federal Government, paying down the national debt, and making a lot of fiscal progress. The other argument that was made back then when I ran for Congress, and which is still being made and is the argument that is being made today, only in a different way, was we had to have higher taxes and higher spending in order to have a successful society in America.”