John Spratt: “The gentlewoman has touched upon major impacts. One of our problems is the President's budget is lacking in detail as to…”

“The gentlewoman has touched upon major impacts. One of our problems is the President's budget is lacking in detail as to all of the program, project and activity cuts that they would actually propose in the years after 2006. It is hard to tell. We have a chart here that shows what we know about the reduction in what is called nondefense domestic discretionary spending. And we can see here that we expect a reduction below purchasing power of about $180 billion over a 5-year period of time. That is education. That is veterans health care. That is highways. That is the government as we know it. Everything that people tend to identify the government with is included in these accounts. They have only come all together to $350 billion. So you can, of course, out of $350 billion achieve some cost reduction, but there is only so much that can be achieved there. And keep in mind, this is not the source of the problem. These accounts have not increased in the last 3 years, but this is where the administration is going to squeeze as much as they possibly can, but there will never be enough in these accounts to eradicate a deficit of $427 billion next year. Nevertheless, there will be deep pits, student loans, Pell grants, all of these things that matter to American families, kitchen-table issues.”