John W. Olver: “Now, as the gentleman from Georgia has explained it, I, of course, had thought that without instruction the amendment…”

“Now, as the gentleman from Georgia has explained it, I, of course, had thought that without instruction the amendment would end up being an across-the-board amendment. But what in fact has happened here is that the gentleman's amendment, without instruction, allows the executive to decide exactly where those $276 million would be cut. Now, I would consider that a total abrogation of our responsibility for budgeting in article I of the Constitution, where we have taken an oath of office to the Constitution, and where our responsibility is to define where the budgeting for the country will go. So I think that's, in fact, a far worse thing than it would be if it were a strictly across-the-board kind of budget, senseless as though that would be. I often find it necessary to be a little bit repetitious. I just want to go back to something that I had pointed out, and that is, that at the end of the Carter administration, when President Carter left office in January of 1981, the debt of this country was $1 trillion. Twelve years later, after 8 years of President Reagan and four of President Bush, father, the debt of the country was $4.3 trillion, more than four times as large in 12 years, but $3.3 trillion increase. In 8 years of President Clinton, the debt was increased by an additional $1.2 trillion to $5.5 trillion.”