Kent Conrad: “in many ways the chairman has made my case, because the hard reality here is this bill does virtually nothing to address…”

“in many ways the chairman has made my case, because the hard reality here is this bill does virtually nothing to address the deficit and debt crisis we face as a Nation. This bill has $40 billion of cuts over 5 years. The first year the cut is $5 billion in a budget of $2.5 trillion. According to the math I learned growing up in Bismarck, ND, that is reducing the spending by 1/500 of the budget. Of course this is only chapter 1 of reconciliation. Chapter 2 is going to cut taxes, either, according to the Senate version, $70 billion, or the House version, $95 billion. In the House version in the first year they would cut the spending $5 billion and cut taxes $21 billion. Guess what. The deficit is not reduced. The deficit is increased. The deficit is increased, not reduced by this package of reconciliation. But it is not just the first year or the 5 years; the thing nobody is paying any attention to is the growth of the debt. Last year the deficit was $319 billion, but that is not how much the debt increased. The debt increased by $551 billion. Under this budget plan over the next 5 years, the debt of this country is going up $600 or $700 billion a year, each and every year. We are going from a total debt in this country of $7.9 trillion at the end of last year to a projection, by those who are the advocates of this plan, of $11.3 trillion 5 years from now. Is anybody paying attention?…”