Gilbert Gutknecht: “Unfortunately, it is time to mark the end of an era, and that era lasted only 2 years. On January 23, 1996, just 2 short…”

“Unfortunately, it is time to mark the end of an era, and that era lasted only 2 years. On January 23, 1996, just 2 short years ago, the President declared in his State of the Union address that "the era of big government is over." Now it appears that that era is over. When we came to Washington just a few years ago, we were looking at a $250 billion deficit as far as the eye could see. We set to work to eliminate programs to reform the entitlements; and, as a result, we are looking at the first balanced budget in a generation. Last August, we had an agreement with the President. We set very tough spending caps for the next 5 years. That is represented here by this blue line. The red line shows what the President is supporting this year in his budget. He is talking about spending over $100 billion more than we agreed to last August, and he is also talking about raising taxes and fees by over $100 billion. Unfortunately, it sounds like the era of big government is not over, but the era of talking about the era of big government is really over.”