John Spratt: “Well, if the gentleman will recall, in the late 1980s, we came to this conclusion that we had to have Presidential…”

“Well, if the gentleman will recall, in the late 1980s, we came to this conclusion that we had to have Presidential leadership as well as congressional leadership solidly behind us. And so we sponsored resolutions several years in a row which called for a budget summit. We finally passed such a resolution, convened a summit, they met at Andrews Air Force Base something like 60 different days, and once again they succeeded. They capped discretionary spending; they devised the PAYGO rule. They reduced entitlements, rates of growth, did all of the things you needed to do. The results were obscured by the fact that we had a recession. But the Clinton administration built upon the successes and upon the processes of the Bush administration, the Bush budget that moved us from a $290 billion deficit, to a $236 billion surplus. That was built on that foundation.”