Gilbert Gutknecht: “Mr. Chairman, I want to agree, in part, with what the gentleman from Wisconsin just said. He said that there is not…”

“Mr. Chairman, I want to agree, in part, with what the gentleman from Wisconsin just said. He said that there is not enough money to do all of the things that we want to do. That is exactly right, and that is why we have a budget, and that is why the family has a budget. What we are saying tonight is you cannot allow the Federal budget to continue to grow at twice the rate of the average family budget. You have to make some choices. Now, we had a Committee on the Budget meeting today and we talked about what has happened to the Federal budget in the last 12 months. A lot of what has happened to the budget is the result of what happened on September 11. Revenues are about $234 billion less than we expected. Now, let us be honest. About 14 percent of that is because of the tax cuts that we passed. Frankly, I think if we had that vote again, every one of us who voted for those tax cuts would vote for them again. It was exactly the right thing to do and, as it turns out, with the economy slowing down, I think it was a brilliant thing to do. So we are not going to back off on the tax relief. Let me tell my colleagues something. I was visiting with a farmer friend of mine a few years ago, and we were sitting on bales of hay. He said something pretty profound. He said, the problem with you guys in Washington is not that we do not send enough money into Washington; he said, the problem is you spend it faster than we can send it in.”