Byron Dorgan: “as we begin to debate the budget sent to us by President Bush, there will be a lot of discussion in the Chamber about…”

“as we begin to debate the budget sent to us by President Bush, there will be a lot of discussion in the Chamber about spending restraints, about being conservative, and so on. The budget sent to us by President Bush proposes the highest budget deficit in the history of our country. I will be going to a hearing later this morning on the proposal to spend $82 billion more on Iraq and Afghanistan. That is not in the budget. It is an emergency request. The President's proposed budget, with a deficit well over $400 billion in history, is short by somewhere around $80 billion that will be spent on an emergency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it also uses the Social Security trust fund, which could not be used for other purposes. So the real budget deficit is around $650 billion, which is a very serious problem. Our fiscal policy is off track, and we need to get it on track.”