Gilbert Gutknecht: “I want to go over again, and I do understand that there will be cuts as a result of this 1.9 percent reduction, but if…”

“I want to go over again, and I do understand that there will be cuts as a result of this 1.9 percent reduction, but if we look down the path, sooner or later we are going to have to pay the price for this. If we cannot make $4.1 billion worth of cuts this year, how are we going to make $47 billion worth of cuts in a couple of years? The answer is we probably are not. Let me just say this. Again, this 1.9 percent reduction will not affect mandatory spending on veterans benefits, including compensation of veterans, pensions for veterans, veterans insurance and indemnities, readjustment in education benefits and burial benefits. This amount will affect none of those. It affects domestic discretionary spending. If we could adopt this simple little amendment that is less than 2 cents on every dollar, we can recover the fumble this House made a few weeks ago when we reneged on the promise we made last year. Mr. Chairman, my grandmother said, "If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got." Unfortunately, this Congress is starting to do what previous Congresses have always done.”