Todd Tiahrt: “this country and this legislative body and the administration have been struggling to achieve a balanced budget. The…”

“this country and this legislative body and the administration have been struggling to achieve a balanced budget. The people really do not understand this problem, and, frankly, I do not either. The working Americans balance their checking accounts monthly. I cannot think of a business in Kansas, where I am the Fourth District Congressman, or a nonprofit organization or an individual that has not balanced their budget over the last 26 years, nowhere except right here in the Federal Government. This Congress has also been striving to be a House of the people, bringing common sense from the common people back to Government. But we have had many obstacles in achieving that. The administration has submitted multiple budgets that did not balance. The President personally lobbied against the balanced budget amendment, which passed in the House and failed by only one vote in the U.S. Senate, and the President, in his last budget, which was scored as a balanced budget by the CBO, has 95 percent of the savings in the last 2 years, which would be after his administration, assuming that he would be successful next November. Perhaps the most confusing, though, is how the President condones actions that are directly in opposition to achieving a balanced budget. I am speaking of the waste and the abuse and the potentially fraudulent activity that have been occurring in the Department of Commerce and the Department of Energy.”