Scott Garrett: “the real issue here is who pays and who is hurt? Americans at home are looking for fiscal responsibility from this…”

“the real issue here is who pays and who is hurt? Americans at home are looking for fiscal responsibility from this House. Whether they are taxpayers, workers, whether they are people that are relying on essential services from this government, they are looking for this House to provide them with some degree of fiscal responsibility. As I said just last night, we come into this budget process knowing that we are in dire financial straits with a $521 billion budget deficit, which simply means, as I said before, we are spending out $521 billion more than we are taking in. And how does this Blue Dog budget address that? Well, they certainly do not address it by trying to rein in spending because look at the spending side of the equation. They are actually saying that even though they are in a hole, they want to stop digging. They are not stopping digging at all. They are still digging. They are spending more. They are spending upwards of $2 billion more in the 2005 budget. So where is it on the other side that they want to get to the balanced budget that they speak of? They do it by raising taxes to the tune of $10 billion in the 2005 budget alone. Back in my State of New Jersey, $10 billion when I was in State government, that would pay for almost half of our entire State budget for the year. They go even further. They want to raise taxes by almost $200 billion over the life of this budget. So it comes back to the question again, who pays, who is hurt?”