Kent Conrad: “let me take on the spending argument because I have heard it over and over, and it is the biggest canard offered on this…”

“let me take on the spending argument because I have heard it over and over, and it is the biggest canard offered on this floor. We have heard before that on our side we offered $500 billion of amendments on the supplemental. We did not. They have taken 1-year amendments that were offered singly and accumulated them and made them 10-year amendments. We offered $32 billion of amendments separately. They were not offered as a package. Interestingly enough, what our Republican colleagues did is they went into conference committee--which they excluded us from--and they added $60 billion in spending. Who are the big spenders? Let's set the record straight. On the budget resolution, we did offer a series of amendments to do things such as fund the war, which wasn't in the budget, and to fund homeland security, which was inadequately funded in the budget. But we offset every one of those amendments. We paid for them, and the overall budget we offered was $1.2 trillion less in debt than the President's budget plan. Let's talk about who is serious about fiscal responsibility. Who offered the serious plans to reduce the growth of deficits and debt? I say to my friends, they told America 2 years ago they had a plan to pay off virtually all of the debt by 2008. Do you know what we see now? We have adopted their plan and, instead of paying off the debt, it is going to be $5.2 trillion of publicly held debt by 2008. The gross debt of the U.S.…”