Kent Conrad: “Here it is. This chart shows graphically precisely, according to their numbers--not my numbers; these are their…”

“Here it is. This chart shows graphically precisely, according to their numbers--not my numbers; these are their numbers-- what they say their budget will do. It says they are going to increase the debt every year by $600 billion. They say they are going to cut the deficit in half over 5 years, but the debt goes up each and every year by over $600 billion. If that isn't doubletalk, I don't know what is. They say the deficit is going down, but the debt is going up. It is their own calculations. They are building a wall of debt that is unprecedented, and they are doing it right before the baby boomers begin to retire, and we all know what that means. They are going to present a future Congress and a future President with the most extraordinarily difficult choices that any Congress or any President has faced in this country's history because this is a complete lack of fiscal responsibility--deficits on top of deficits on top of debt, up, up, and away, no end in sight, and all of it at the worst possible time, before the baby boomers retire. I say to my Republican colleagues: Any Republican colleague who votes for this budget ought to make a pledge here tonight that they will never again claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility, that they will never again claim to be fiscally conservative, because this is a borrow-and-spend budget of historic proportion.…”