Roy Cooper: “I speak tonight as a cochair of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscally conservative Democrats, and I speak tonight…”

“I speak tonight as a cochair of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscally conservative Democrats, and I speak tonight with some disappointment because I am one in this Chamber who knows how hard it is to put together a budget. It is a tough job that the majority has. I am sorry that my friends who are moderate Republicans sold out so cheap. And I am even sorrier that my friends who are part of the Republican Study Committee did not get more of what they wished. But it is tough to put together a budget. In all this blizzard of words and numbers we have been hearing about tonight, there is one central principle that should guide the Members here, at least the ones who are listening and not already at the big Republican fund-raiser tonight, and that one central principle that should guide our deliberations is the principle that not only I hold dear, but Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, one of the great financial minds in this country, said was the single most important reform that this House could undertake. And what is that? It is called pay as you go. We had it in this country from 1990, under the first President Bush, all the way through the second President Bush. We had it for 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, and then the Republican majority let it expire. But Alan Greenspan said it was the single most important thing we could do to regain our fiscal balance, our fiscal sanity.…”