John Spratt: “There are lots of ways to present it, and you have got some ingenious devices there on the table. I found this…”

“There are lots of ways to present it, and you have got some ingenious devices there on the table. I found this back-of-the- envelope summary of how much we have increased the debt ceiling of the United States, the legal limit to which this government can borrow, which is set by statute, over the years that George Bush has been President of the United States. When the Bush administration first came to the Congress back in 2001, with their proposal to do 1 trillion, 800 billion in tax cuts over a 10-year period of time, they told us we could do these tax cuts and still we won't be back here to ask for an increase in the debt ceiling, the legal lending borrowing limit, until 2008. The next year, June 2002, hat in hand, they were back here at the Congress saying we missed it. We overestimated the surplus. The tax cuts have taken effect. We need a $450 billion increase in the debt ceiling of the United States. {time} 1815 That was June of 2002. Within a year, May, 2003, they were back, and they were asking this time for a phenomenal sum of money, a $984 billion increase in the debt ceiling of the United States. If you go back to 1981, just before I first came to Congress, when Mr. Reagan became President of the United States, the entire debt of the United States was less than $984 billion. In 1 year, they needed to raise the debt ceiling by that amount to accommodate the budgets of the Bush administration. Well, that was May of 2003.…”