Don Nickles: “The budget is a difficult challenge. To write a budget for the United States of America, the largest government in the…”

“The budget is a difficult challenge. To write a budget for the United States of America, the largest government in the world, the largest economy in the world, is not easy. President Bush has written a budget. We produced a budget out of the Budget Committee. I hear a lot of complaints about how bad the President's budget is or how bad the resolution on which we will be voting on the floor is, but I have not seen alternatives. I would urge people, show me your alternative. Show me how much money you would spend, how much money you would tax. That is basically what a budget outline is: how much money we are going to spend and how much money we are going to tax. What is our objective? How are we going to achieve it? We use assumptions. A lot of times the assumptions are wrong. I have heard a lot of complaints: Well, President Bush missed the assumptions big time. In 2001, we projected enormous surpluses, and now we have enormous deficits--trillions of dollars of difference.”