George Voinovich: “I think perhaps the Senator is misinterpreting the amendment. Fundamentally what this says is we are going to use these…”

“I think perhaps the Senator is misinterpreting the amendment. Fundamentally what this says is we are going to use these numbers to get down, in 10 years, to an on-budget surplus like we had in 1999 and 2000. You are right, the amount of reduction in this amendment allows for a higher debt, but the fact is, all this says is you can raise a point of order if it exceeds this amount. I am not suggesting we reach this amount. All I am saying is, understanding the way things work around this Senate as I have observed during the last 5 years, we just go straight down and we have this opportunity to raise a point of order if the amount of money exceeds the numbers we have in our proposed amendment. It is a very simple way of achieving what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have talked about for a great period of time. The purpose of it is to allow us to raise a point of order. It takes 60 votes to waive that point of order in terms of spending.”