David Minge: “Maybe before the gentlewoman gets into any of the specifics there, we could just give some of the numbers actually on…”

“Maybe before the gentlewoman gets into any of the specifics there, we could just give some of the numbers actually on this debt reduction. The Blue Dog proposal which we have been talking about over 5 years would reduce the national debt by $85 billion. Given the size of the debt, that is just a small nibble. But compare that with the bottom line here. The Republican proposal with the tax cuts that they are including, modest actually by comparison to ones that they have proposed over these last few months, and if they are going to do the prescription drug correction that they have promised they are going to do, would leave us about one-tenth of that amount. In the middle is the proposal coming from the Democratic Caucus, which is, as you can see, fiscally more conservative than the Republican proposal. Let us take a 10-year projection. Here we are beginning to see larger sums. Approximately 10 percent of the debt would be paid down, maybe 9 percent under the Blue Dog proposal. Under the Republican proposal actually we would go to more red ink.”