Kent Conrad: “Rarely have I seen in my time in the Senate--I have been here 17 years--rarely have I seen somebody come out with a more…”

“Rarely have I seen in my time in the Senate--I have been here 17 years--rarely have I seen somebody come out with a more fabricated chart than the one presented by the Senator from Pennsylvania. It is false in its detail. It is false in its assertion. It is a complete fabrication. For him to come and say our amendments on the budget resolution were not offset is absolutely false, and the record shows it as clearly as it can be shown. On the appropriations bills, to assert we offered $500 billion of amendments is just false. It is not true. We authored, if you totaled them, $37 billion of amendments. But you cannot total them. They were offered one after another. We would offer an amendment. It would be defeated. Then we would take that same money and offer a different amendment. That is the fact of the matter. But what is most interesting is, if you did total them, we were completely outstripped by what the Republicans did when they went into the conference committee between the House and the Senate to work out the differences and they came back and increased spending $63 billion. Now, let's talk about who has responsibility here for the explosion of the debt, because that record is very clear. Our friends on the other side are in total control. They control the House. They control the Senate. They have since 2001. They control the White House. This is what has happened to the debt under their stewardship and under their leadership. The debt has exploded.”