Martin Sabo: “I am going to vote for this amendment, but it has nothing to do with truth in budgeting and all the other rhetoric I…”

“I am going to vote for this amendment, but it has nothing to do with truth in budgeting and all the other rhetoric I hear on how we put budgets or appropriation bills together. Every appropriation bill that comes to the floor shows last year's appropriation, this year's appropriation, and normally, the President's request, no baseline. When we consider what has happened historically to budgets, we do look, and one measurement is what has happened to actual changes in dollars in programs from year to year. We also look at what has happened in appropriations and spending in relationship to inflation. We also at other times look at the relationship of expenditures to the gross national product. They are all legitimate analyses of what is happening to the Federal budget. Somehow my Republican friends seem to think that we should never consider the impact of inflation on Federal spending. Any family that looks at their budget, if their salary is frozen for a number of years, and the cost of food goes up, the cost of clothing goes up, the cost of gasoline goes up, it is obvious that they have fewer dollars to purchase fewer goods and services. The same is true of the Federal Government. We measure them in a variety of ways, and my friends on the other side like particularly to use inflated baseline when we talk about defense. The truth is that defense budget authority peaked in 1985. Adjusted for inflation, it has been cut by 35 percent.”