Gilbert Gutknecht: “I was just going to say that I was smiling because when my colleague was talking, it reminded me of talking about taxes…”

“I was just going to say that I was smiling because when my colleague was talking, it reminded me of talking about taxes and spending and balancing the budget and what we need to do in terms of tax relief. There is a farmer I was talking about balancing the budget with, an old farmer in my district one day. And he said: You know, he said, the problem is not that we do not send enough money into Washington. He said the problem is Congress spends it faster than we can send it in. And if we stop and think about it, he encapsulated the big part of the problem we have had for the last 40 years. In fact, some would say, well, you know, we just need to raise taxes. Well, if tax increases had been the solution to our deficit problems, I submit that we would have had a huge surplus already. I know when we first started this debate when we offered the Contract With America, there were people who said, well, you cannot balance the budget and provide tax relief; I mean that cannot be done. And you certainly cannot do it while you are saving the Medicare system. And what we are proving, I think, today and tomorrow is, yes, you can.”