Steny Hoyer: “Mr. Chairman, I want to rise to make an observation with respect to what is happening in the Congress and in the United…”

“Mr. Chairman, I want to rise to make an observation with respect to what is happening in the Congress and in the United States of America regarding how we spend our money and how we make decisions on spending our money. The chart to my right shows that in 1962, 70 percent of the Federal budget was so-called discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is decisions that we make about where we want to invest our money to make our country stronger and more viable as a Nation, to make people more secure and more able to compete. That has now dropped down to less than 36 percent. Half of that is for our national defense. I am one of those Democrats that supports the national defense, and I have done so since 1981 when I first came here. We added $12 billion to defense this year when it passed this House. Why did we do so? We did so on the premise that to freeze defense was in fact a cut. In fact, I think that rationale was correct. But I am not so sure why that rationale does not apply to the defense of this Nation as it relates to the education of our children and the security of our families.”