Gilbert Gutknecht: “All I am saying is, we will lead by example, regardless of what the White House may do. That has been the example all…”

“All I am saying is, we will lead by example, regardless of what the White House may do. That has been the example all the way through. When we said you have to reform welfare, we sent them a bill. They vetoed it. We sent a second bill, they vetoed it again. The third time, public opinion and the pressure of the polls forced the President to sign the bill. As a result, we had welfare reform. As a result of that, we have got 50 percent fewer people on welfare today than we had just 4 years ago, 5 years ago. That is an amazing accomplishment. But back to the story of waste. It bothers me when people with a straight face can say that there is not 1 percent worth of waste in the Federal bureaucracy. Try explaining that to any farmer in America. They are tightening their belts to the tune of 10 percent, 15 percent, maybe 20 percent over what they were receiving just a few years ago for their crops, and so the idea that they cannot trim spending 1 percent really outside of the beltway is not even a funny joke. So I want to thank the gentleman for what he is doing, and I want to encourage the gentleman to continue to press this case in looking for ways that we can eliminate the waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal budget. At the end of the day it is easy to forget in Washington, it is not our money. We are spending other people's money. They work very hard.…”