Rob Portman: “I am interested to know that Warren Buffett has become the icon of the Democrat Party. I hope he will use all that money…”

“I am interested to know that Warren Buffett has become the icon of the Democrat Party. I hope he will use all that money that he is going to get from this tax bill to invest. I was just informed that he just started a new business in Texas, a retail store, where he is going to employ 100 people. That is what we want him to do with the money. That is the idea. This is all about jobs and savings and investment. We have heard a lot of conversation tonight about how it is going to grow the deficit. When I was first elected after 40 years of Democrat control, our deficit was about 4.7 percent of our budget. This year even if we take the figures of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), which I think are pessimistic because he does not see the growth that comes out of this bill, it will be about 3 percent of our budget. Every economist will tell you, right, left or center, what is important is what is it as a percentage of our economy, how much of our economy is represented by deficit. How do we get out of that? Let us go back to the gentleman from Maryland's history. I was not here when John Kennedy was elected. I did not know him. I was here in 1997 when this House courageously passed the balanced budget agreement. I did see John Kasich down there on the floor talking about the need to keep our spending under control. You know what he did? He said, we are going to try to get to a balanced budget, if we can, by the year 2002.”