John Spratt: “Mr. Chairman, I think it bears remembering that 8 short years ago the budget of this government was $236 billion in…”

“Mr. Chairman, I think it bears remembering that 8 short years ago the budget of this government was $236 billion in surplus. Since 2001, we have experienced, on the watch of this administration, the largest deficits, nominal deficits, in American history, and an accumulation of debt that's enough to blow the mind. The debt of this country was $5.7 trillion when Mr. Bush came to office. When he leaves office, it will be $10 trillion. So that explains why we are skeptical, if you will, and even more skeptical and dubious when we look at the substitute resolution that has been brought to the floor, about which the leader barely spoke until he got to the very end of his presentation a few minutes ago. To find the real numbers in this resolution, the leader said that this is addressed to deal with a spending problem, not a revenue problem. So as we look through the spending side of the resolution, we have to go all the way to an obscure account called function 920 Allowances to find where the real action is. Now, this function is typically an allowance function where we have things we haven't decided how to assign yet and put into allowances because we know it is a catch-all account until some decision is made as to how to treat it. Typically, therefore, you find smaller amounts in this account; but in this particular case, in this particular resolution, $817 billion in additional cuts are called for.”