Todd Rokita: “I thank the chairman for his hard work. I thank all of my Budget Committee colleagues for their hard work. Mr. Chairman…”

“I thank the chairman for his hard work. I thank all of my Budget Committee colleagues for their hard work. Mr. Chairman, it has been hard work--it continues to be--to have this honest conversation with the American people. The whole goal here is to allow the opportunity for Americans to build better lives for themselves and their families, not for the Federal Government to attempt to provide that better life because, Mr. Chairman, after 50 years of the War on Poverty, for example, we know that the Federal Government can't do the job. There is a lot of rhetoric out there. Certainly, Mr. Chairman, for the committee, it is not positive and not right either. It is just plain wrong. We talk about hard work. You know what is hard work? Getting the competing priorities and a continuing usurpation of our limited moneys in terms of our mandatory spending and getting a budget to balance in 10 years. Yet again, this Budget Committee and this House of Representatives has a plan to do it and, unlike you have heard, to do it honestly. What is not hard work, quite frankly, Mr. Chairman, what is easier to do is to never balance, and this chart shows that. The President's budget never balances, ever. Of course, Mr. Chairman, you know that you can't start paying down the $18 trillion of debt that we have with another $100 trillion on the way until you first count the balance. We do that in a responsible, honest way. We don't try to do it in a year.…”