John Spratt: “I think it is in order just to take a minute to say we have every reason to be celebrating our success. Three times in…”

“I think it is in order just to take a minute to say we have every reason to be celebrating our success. Three times in the 1990s we stood up to the problem of the deficit which had plagued fiscally the 1980s: In 1990, when we passed the Bush Budget Summit Agreement; in 1993, Democrats only, just our side of the aisle, one vote would have made the difference, we put on the board the votes to pass the Clinton Deficit Reduction Act. And then, in 1997, we came around to finish the job. As it turned out, the deficit was already down below $25 billion that year. But we wiped that out and went on to put the Government on a fiscally even keel for the next 5 years. And now we are enjoying the fruits of that and we ought to celebrate it. Last year, for the first time in 30 years, we had a surplus of $70 billion. This year, when we closed the books on fiscal year 1999, we had a surplus of $125 billion.”