Benjamin Gilman: “I think our goals are all similar, having a balanced budget. We are pleased to hear the President in his State of the…”

“I think our goals are all similar, having a balanced budget. We are pleased to hear the President in his State of the Union Message adopt the call for a balanced budget and challenge the Congress to make certain we have a balanced budget. None of us wants to put the Government in default. We want to have a good debt measure. We want to have a good balanced budget adopted before we leave the Congress for any recess period. But we do need cooperation. People are willing to negotiate across the table. Too often in the process it has been finger pointing and one party or another walking out of the negotiating area. I think the American public wants to see us get down to work, develop a balanced budget, and develop a clean debt ceiling measure, and I think most of us in the House would like to see that happen. But that means good intentions by all parties and the willingness to stop the finger pointing, and an intense desire to bring these problems to a halt by finding a proper solution.”