Judd Gregg: “there are some things so ironic around here that you just have to smile. We are just coming off this election--and I…”

“there are some things so ironic around here that you just have to smile. We are just coming off this election--and I congratulate my colleagues on the other side for their success with a significant and dramatic win. But if we listen to the rhetoric from them, and certainly from the pundits who analyzed the election, it was obviously about the war in Iraq, but it was also about fiscal discipline. I don't know how many times I have read from national pundits, from the Washington Post and the New York Times, how the Democratic Party is now the party of fiscal discipline. Yet the first amendment brought to the floor of this Senate--the first amendment--increases the national debt by $4.9 billion. It exceeds the budget by $4.9 billion and claims it is an emergency, on an issue which has already been addressed by this Senate, I think, two, maybe three times, and rejected. Well, maybe the folks out there who voted and thought they were voting for fiscal discipline when they voted to bring in the other party should take a look at this amendment and ask: Where did this come from? Is this a bill of goods I just got sold? The first amendment brought up by the other side of the aisle after they win this significant, important, dramatic victory is to ask for $4.9 billion above the budget, throw it on the debt, increase spending. It is, as I said, ironic. It makes you wonder. I wonder where we are headed under this new regime.”