Bob Kerrey: “I, like my other colleagues, want to praise both Senators Chafee and Breaux for keeping this group on task and hope that…”

“I, like my other colleagues, want to praise both Senators Chafee and Breaux for keeping this group on task and hope that this proposal, this bipartisan proposal, equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, will provide a foundation upon which this Congress can act to enact a balanced budget plan sometime yet this year. I will focus my attention on the reforms in this proposal that address the unsustainable growth of entitlements that the distinguished Senator from Maine earlier referenced. There are three pieces to this proposal that will be regarded by many as controversial and by many as impossible to do. This chart is not a birthday cake here to my left, as the Senator from Louisiana joked earlier. This represents the kind of cuts that are going to be required in discretionary spending over the next 7 years. In the agreement just announced last night between the White House and the Congress, rather than cutting or raising taxes, we essentially sold 4.7 billion dollars worth of assets in order to be able to balance the budget--in order to be able to get an agreement, because nobody wanted to cut any deeper. Very few people want to cut deeper in discretionary programs. Next year, we will have to do 28 billion dollars worth of asset sales.”