John Spratt: “Mr. Speaker, this is the last lap in a long race. I came here in 1983, and we were just beginning to recognize and…”

“Mr. Speaker, this is the last lap in a long race. I came here in 1983, and we were just beginning to recognize and struggle with the long-term implications of the deficit then. There was Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, there was a budget summit in 1990, there was a Deficit Reduction Act in 1993. And in every one of those cases, which I supported deficit reduction, the best that we could say, the best that we could reach for was a partial effort. We did not even pretend in any of those cases to have a solution in the short term for the deficit we face down the road. Today we are able to say credibly to the country and to our colleagues in the Congress, we are within reach of a balanced budget. Within the next 5 years, we can get it done, because today in truth we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and acted before us in 1990. It cost us some of the people who supported what we did then. The results were largely eclipsed by a recession, but it was significant. Among other things, we put on the statute book to this country two rules: the pay-go rule, which essentially says, if we want to expand or liberalize entitlements, we either have to pay for it or identify commensurate spending cuts elsewhere in another entitlement program; and the discretionary spending caps, which have worked. They have not been breached since 1991.”