John Delaney: “I want to thank my good friend, the gentlewoman from New York, for yielding me time to talk about my colleagues', the…”

“I want to thank my good friend, the gentlewoman from New York, for yielding me time to talk about my colleagues', the Republicans', budget, which is something I oppose. I oppose it for a number of policy reasons, but I thought I would spend my time today talking about what I view is a more fundamental, analytical flaw in the budget, and that relates to the overall goal of the budget. Because if you have the wrong goal, you often make a series of bad decisions to support that goal. So I think it is important that we talk about what the goal of the budget is and what the goal of the budget should be. The goal of the Republican budget is to have zero deficits within 10 years. In my opinion, that is the goal because it sounds good. We have all heard the line that we should not spend more money than we take in. {time} 1300 That sounds really good, but it ignores to many extents the basic math of budgets. It is also an unrealistic goal, and it is also an unnecessary goal. And as a result of pursuing an unrealistic and unnecessary goal, a series of very bad decisions are embedded in the budget, which is why I want to talk about the goal. It is an unrealistic goal when you look at the condition of the Federal budget at this moment in time.…”