Steny Hoyer: “the previous speaker, the sponsor of this amendment and most of the folks who are supporting this voted for a budget…”

“the previous speaker, the sponsor of this amendment and most of the folks who are supporting this voted for a budget that cut less from the national debt and took more time to get to balance than did the Democratic alternative which they voted against. I serve on the Committee on Appropriations. We have 13 separate appropriation bills. Every Republican chairman as he has reported his bill to the full committee has said, we do not have enough resources to fund the priorities that we have within our responsibility. Every one of the Republican chairmen has said that. This is not a case where the Committee on Budget has given the Committee on Appropriations so much money it does not know what to do with it. We cut $3 billion under the President's proposal for education, and 2.7 million children will not be served because of the budget that we passed. Now, the fact of the matter is, the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce) talks about bringing down the deficit. I am for that. I voted for the Balanced Budget Amendment; I voted for the 1997 agreement. I have been a fiscal conservative in the sense that we need to bring down spending. I voted for the 1993 bill, which, in my opinion, has made the most contribution to really bringing down the debt, not nickel and diming by this project or that project, but by hundreds of billions of dollars. That took courage. That is the way we ought to go, not, as the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr.…”