Kent Conrad: “the Senator held up a chart about the growth of the debt. The exact same chart applies to the President's…”

“the Senator held up a chart about the growth of the debt. The exact same chart applies to the President's budget--precisely the same. In fact, his is worse in terms of additional debt burden put on the American people by the President's budget compared to ours. The Senator also raised the point, as did the ranking member earlier, of why we have not addressed in this 5-year budget resolution the long-term entitlement challenges that we face as a nation, the shortfall between what we are spending and what we are raising, and the entitlement obligations this country has made but has not funded. Let me say I have never believed that the long-term entitlement challenges that are 10, 15, 20-year problems are going to be resolved in a 5-year budget resolution. That is why I joined with the ranking member of the committee on something where we do agree, which is an approach to address these long-term imbalances by creating a working group of 16 Members--8 Democrats, 8 Republicans--given the responsibility to come up with a plan to deal with our long-term challenges, and only if 12 of the 16 could agree would legislation advance.”