J. Exon: “I drive home the point that the President is looking at this realistically and should not be put down for that effort.…”

“I drive home the point that the President is looking at this realistically and should not be put down for that effort. One more thing, and then I will yield to my friend from Illinois. The chairman of the committee complains about how steep the cuts in domestic discretionary programs are in the President's budget. Yes, it is true the President does achieve substantial savings from discretionary spending, but the President still maintains these domestic investments at a rate of $60 billion higher than the Republican budget in the year 2002. If the chairman believes that the President's cuts are steep, then the chairman would also have to agree that the cuts that he is endorsing in his particular budget are absolutely fatal. The difference between the two budgets is that the Republican budget also cuts taxes so much more. The $122 billion that the chairman mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg. The real iceberg is much larger than that. The chairman of the House Budget Committee, John Kasich, promises $180 billion in tax breaks. The chairman promised, 'We would have our own tax cut that we originally said we would have--that there will be a capital gains tax, that there will be a full child tax credit * * * and there will be a host of other tax relief measures.' Who is kidding whom? I simply say that to keep honest, we have to be reasonable.”