On the recordJune 4, 2024
Of course I do. We have fought bitterly. I mean, even if you just look at the last few years here since the pandemic, the pandemic was unexpected, decisions were made, and in hindsight we obviously made some wrong choices. Be that as it may, it was expensive. People were out of work. The government forced them out of work, forced them to close their businesses. It was only right, since the government had the authority and the power to do that, to make them as whole as possible. Now, we can debate that as long as we want to, but subsequent to the end of the pandemic, it should have been reasonable for the people in this room on either side of the aisle to say: Well, let's just reset back to prepandemic. Believe it or not, at that time, if we had just gone back to that number, the budget would have balanced.
Source
govinfo.gov
