Joe Cunningham: “I think there are some key issues. First of all, we would want the numbers to balance at the agreed amount of time…”

“I think there are some key issues. First of all, we would want the numbers to balance at the agreed amount of time, which is 7 years. Second, we do not want to increase taxes to do that. The American public and the economy is stagnant at about 3 and 4 percent. Remember that the President in his 1993 budget increased taxes $270 billion. He promised a middle-class tax cut and increased middle-class taxes. He increased the gas tax. He increased the tax on Social Security earners, and increased or at least had even a retroactive tax. The President in this budget increases taxes, Mr. Speaker. We disagree with that. We would also like Members on the other side of the aisle to agree with us that it is a realistic budget. When the President in the 104th Congress gave us three separate balanced budgets that did not increase the balanced budget in time, but yet when his fourth one scored by CBO came up, 70 percent of the cuts took place in year 7. It is not realistic. This budget that the President has given us, 98 percent of the cuts take place in years 6 and 7, when he would not even be here. That is not realistic. We are asking for a realistic budget without tax increases on the American public, legitimate savings to save the programs.”