Sherrod Brown: “yes, we have been here before. I hear the Senator from Iowa, whom I greatly respect, say we have been here before and…”

“yes, we have been here before. I hear the Senator from Iowa, whom I greatly respect, say we have been here before and have done this over and over. In the last 2 hours, we have made the same mistake, or about to make the same mistake, that we have made in the last 6 years. About 7 groundhog days ago, if you will, we went from a budget surplus to huge budget deficits, as Senator Conrad pointed out. Do you know why? Because we are in the middle of a war that Senator Byrd spoke so eloquently against time and again on this Senate floor, a war that has cost us $500 billion and counting, and we have done tax cuts over and over. Every groundhog day we do another tax cut. So tonight, in the space of 2 hours, we are going to encapsulate that in one evening. We did $70 billion for a war nobody is willing to pay for. Let our grandchildren pay for that one. And then we are doing more tax cuts, hundreds of billions of dollars we are not paying for, so let our grandchildren take care of it. We have been here before, and it is about time we vote 'yes' on this and do the right thing, so instead of these going from a budget surplus 7 groundhog days to hundreds of billions of dollars in budget deficits, instead we have an opportunity, as Senator Conrad said, to do the right thing to begin to pay for things as we go so that our grandchildren will not continue to be burdened with our profligacy and our irresponsibility. I yield the floor.”