Roy Cooper: “Mr. Speaker, this is a sad night for this House. The budget of the United States of America should be a blueprint for…”

“Mr. Speaker, this is a sad night for this House. The budget of the United States of America should be a blueprint for our Nation, but this budget only extends 1 year. We used to make 10-year budgets, and then our friends on the other side of the aisle got more modest in their expectations. It was reduced to 5 years because they were afraid for the American people to see what lay in the 5 years beyond. Now, they are apparently afraid for the American people to see what lies beyond 1 year. We should be preparing for the future. We should be living within our means. And for all the good things that have been said about this budget, it hides the largest budget deficit in American history. Now, if that were temporary, that would be one thing. But what we are looking at are permanent structural deficits that will burden this economy and burden our children and grandchildren for generations. They are doing irreparable harm to our Nation. There were some good reasons for a temporary deficit, but not for a permanent structural deficit. My Republican colleagues on the other side of the aisle are good people, but they have been misled by ideology into abandoning principles like pay-as-you-go, which helped rescue our Nation before from a sea of debt. They have abandoned the principle of fiscal responsibility that used to be the lodestar for the Republican Party.”