Gilbert Gutknecht: “I believe that in the last election cycle the people of the United States sent a pretty clear message. I think they…”

“I believe that in the last election cycle the people of the United States sent a pretty clear message. I think they wanted us to go to Washington to put the Federal Government on a diet, to balance their budget and to make the Federal Government live within its means, and I want to congratulate the Committee on Appropriations and the chairman of the Interior Subcommittee for all the work they have done in terms of trying to bring the Federal budget under balance, and I congratulate them, for example, in this bill, by reducing spending by $482 million over last year. Overall I think this is a good bill, but I think we have to refocus on the big picture, and what we did a few weeks ago when we passed the budget resolution conference report is we in fact said that we are going to increase spending by about $4.1 billion over what we had agreed to spend in last year's budget resolution; $4.1 billion. What we are offering today is an amendment which will reduce spending 1.9 percent across the board, and I intend to offer this amendment on all of the appropriation bills from this point forward, not because they are bad bills, but if we can actually recover that 1.9 percent, we can get back to the budget targets that we set for ourselves a year ago. We cannot, Mr. Chairman and Members, in good conscience increase the debt load on our children. That has to stop.”