Kent Conrad: “I say to my colleague, for whom I have great respect, the chairman of the committee, we have a very real difference. We…”

“I say to my colleague, for whom I have great respect, the chairman of the committee, we have a very real difference. We are highlighting that difference. That is a healthy thing. It is a debate. Let me respond to something the Senator said. I have the same chart, a little different colors, that looks at the spending and revenue lines of the Federal Government going back to 1980. The red line is the spending line. The green line is the revenue line. This is as a percentage of GDP. What you see is that during the Clinton years, the spending came down as a share of GDP each and every year. The revenue went up. The result was, we stopped deficit spending. We stopped running up the debt. In fact, we were paying down the debt. Then President Bush came into office. The spending went up. They make the assertion that we are the big spenders, but the fact is, during the Clinton years, spending went down each and every year as a share of gross domestic product. During the Bush years, spending has gone up virtually every year. On the revenue side of the equation, when President Bush came in, the revenue side of the equation collapsed. The Senator says it collapsed because of economic slowdown, because of the Internet bubble. Yes, in part it did. But he never mentions the tax cuts. Hello? The tax cuts accounted for half of this drop. The result was discretionary spending went up. Why did discretionary spending go up? For defense, homeland security, and rebuilding New York.…”