On the recordJanuary 7, 2011
I want to say to my friend, the continuing rhetoric is Washington doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. Americans in every family that I know understand that their revenues directly impact on their spending and vice versa, and if they don't, they have a real problem. If they don't have enough revenue to meet their expenditures, they've got a problem, and if their spending exceeds their revenue, they have a problem. I tell my friend, I understand what you're saying, and I've heard this rhetoric all of my career here in the Congress. When President Reagan was President, we never overrode a Presidential veto of an appropriation bill because it spent too much. If he vetoed it, it spent too much, he never had a veto overridden. Nevertheless, we incurred an additional $1.5 trillion in deficits. Under President George H.W. Bush, we didn't override any veto of his, and we incurred an additional $1 trillion. That was $2.5 trillion plus. Under the Clinton administration, of course, in the economic program as you and I both know that your party universally opposed, we had a surplus, the only President in your lifetime and I think in mine, which is substantially longer, that's had 4 years of surplus.
