Gilbert Gutknecht: “we heard a lot about it in the last campaign about these draconian cuts. The truth of matter is, we have made some…”

“we heard a lot about it in the last campaign about these draconian cuts. The truth of matter is, we have made some reductions. We eliminated 279 programs here. We replaced the welfare state with the opportunity society. We have had serious, real welfare reform. There have been some serious changes but there have not been the draconian cuts that some of our colleagues on the left have said. Some of the Members who ultimately believe that Washington knows best, their end of that debate is losing. The American people no longer believe that. They believe that the decisions are best left to families and to communities and to States, and that is what we are trying to do, is to send more of the authority, the responsibility and the resources back so they will have more accountability for that money. And as a result we have a stronger economy. There is more consumer confidence. They understand that Washington is limiting the growth of entitlements, that we are cutting some of those duplicative programs, that we are trying to streamline Government and as a result there is more confidence. They see the deficit coming down because revenues to the Federal Government are going up. I hate to steal your numbers here but I love this number so much. If we compare what happened in the past when Congress would take in a dollar, it would spend $1.22.…”