Gilbert Gutknecht: “I think there is another point that needs to be made. We are working on a chart in my office that demonstrates what a…”

“I think there is another point that needs to be made. We are working on a chart in my office that demonstrates what a big part of the problem has been. The history has been for about a 20-year period for every dollar that Congress would take in, it would spend about $1.22. In fact many people made the point, I think it is a good one, that the problem was not that the Government was not taking in enough money. In fact one farmer in my district said it so well. He said the problem is not that we are not sending enough money into Washington. The problem is that Washington spends it faster than we can send it in. And that has been the problem, the problem has always been on the spending side because many of those fixed programs involve some kind of, quote, revenue enhancement or tax increase; and for every dollar that tax revenues were supposed to go up, Congress just spent another $1.22, $1.23 of that. And that is the history of this place. I think we want to talk about what is happening now.”