Tim Ryan: “As you were talking about, the Democrats have a history of balancing budgets in this Chamber. In 1993, without one…”

“As you were talking about, the Democrats have a history of balancing budgets in this Chamber. In 1993, without one Republican vote, the Democrats balanced the budget and it was signed into law by President Clinton, led to great surpluses, the greatest expansion in the history of the country and created over 20 million jobs. Now, the Democrats have tried, while we have been down here, to try to get our friends on the Republican aisle to show some fiscal discipline, to show a little bit of fiscal restraint. And we have tried. There is a provision here called PAYGO, pay-as-you-go. If you spend money, you have got to pay for it. If you cut revenues, you have got to pay for it. If you increase spending in a certain program, you have got to pay for it. Pay-as-you-go. Now, over the last few years, Democrats have tried to reinstate PAYGO which led to all these surpluses in the nineties, and then our friends on the Republican side got rid of this a few years back. But over the last few years, we have tried to put these PAYGO rules in. Let me give you three third-party validators, not Tim Ryan, not Kendrick Meek, this is in the Congressional Record. March 30, 2004. Republicans voted by a vote of 209-209, ties lose, to reject a motion offered by Representative Mike Thompson, Democrat from California, to instruct the budget conferees to put the pay-as-you-go requirements in the 2006 budget resolution. That is 2004, vote number 97, if you would like to check it out, Mr. Speaker.…”