Roy Cooper: “I'm happy to support this budget. One of the reasons is the extraordinary leadership of the chairman of the House Budget…”

“I'm happy to support this budget. One of the reasons is the extraordinary leadership of the chairman of the House Budget Committee, John Spratt from South Carolina. A true gentleman, a man of wisdom, he has done the difficult work of pulling a very diverse caucus together, and we appreciate his listening to Blue Dog concerns. We are proud of our role as Blue Dogs as having pulled the Democratic Caucus towards the middle. That's a good thing and help make the Democratic Party the party of fiscal responsibility in America. People who know me know that I am not a very partisan person. I admire greatly the ranking member, Mr. Ryan. I think he has done a great job in his conference of pulling the many diverse elements together. It is a tough job. My primary concern is actually the long-term, reforming entitlement programs. Sadly, there's very little of that in either of the budgets. There needs to be a lot more. I'm championing a bill right now called H.R. 3654, the Cooper-Wolf bill, and I appreciate very much Chairman Spratt allowing us to have hearings on that measure. I'm hoping those hearings will allow this Congress to focus attention on the need to have an expert bipartisan commission that will advise the new President, because problems of this dimension will take Presidential leadership to help work on making sure that Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid are solvent for the next generation. So I'm excited about the prospect of those hearings.”