Gilbert Gutknecht: “under both sets of scoring, and I think that is an accurate point, both the Congressional Budget Office and OMB…”

“under both sets of scoring, and I think that is an accurate point, both the Congressional Budget Office and OMB acknowledge that in the first year, and this is really the only budget that counts for this Congress, is the budget we are going to debate for fiscal year 1998, both would agree that the deficit actually goes up this year, which in the view of some of us is a step in the wrong direction, because we have been moving in the right direction. Partly, and let us give some credit, we want to give credit to the White House and to the economy and other things, but part of it is that the 104th Congress did confront some of those spending issues. Mr. Speaker, we did make some real reductions in discretionary domestic spending, and it is showing some impact. The deficit now is about half of what it was when Congressman Fox and I first came to Washington. As a matter of fact, it is less than half of what it was when we first came to Washington. I would point out this other chart. This again is according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is the official scorekeeper for the House and the Senate, that the deficit will be about $69 billion in the year 2002. To get to the other point that the gentleman from New Jersey made, 98 percent of the deficit reduction comes in the last 2 years of the President's budget plan. That is one of the concerns we have that is entirely too heavily what we call backend-loaded.”