Rob Portman: “the last speaker said it is just like 1995. It is just like 1995. We have, again, on the other side folks saying we are…”

“the last speaker said it is just like 1995. It is just like 1995. We have, again, on the other side folks saying we are cutting spending to give tax cuts to the rich. Neither is true. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) may not like the idea of eliminating the marriage penalty but that is something that actually will benefit middle income families, and he may not like the idea of not spending as much as we would otherwise would have spent, but that does not make it a cut. The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) specifically talked about the Medicare numbers. Those numbers apply to the entire budget. We are talking about spending a little less than we would otherwise have spent. This is where we are. Last year we all got together and we passed a balanced budget agreement to balance the budget over five years. The American people, through their hard work and productivity, did it quicker than that, but there was a lot of pain, a lot of agony. We gave. The Democrats gave. The Clinton administration and the House Democrats and Senate Democrats gave, and we ended up with this common ground balanced budget agreement. It is only natural that this year we Republicans would come back and we would say, okay, we gave a little, now we are going to get back to our fundamentals. We are going to roll up our sleeves and we are going to spend a little bit less than the $9.1 trillion that was agreed to.”