John Spratt: “In 1990, when the first President Bush was in office, we prevailed upon him to sit down and negotiate with us a 5-year…”

“In 1990, when the first President Bush was in office, we prevailed upon him to sit down and negotiate with us a 5-year budget, a so-called budget summit deficit reduction plan. The negotiations went on for 4, 5, 6 months at Andrews Air Force Base; and they culminated in a budget agreement which, frankly, only about 60 Republicans voted for the first time it hit the House floor, failed then because there was no support there for it. It was modified and passed by the House mainly with Democratic votes. It was eclipsed by the recession. It was an important piece of work because it established a ceiling for discretionary spending, that is the money we appropriate every year in 13 different appropriation bills. It also took on the Medicare entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid; and it addressed revenues. It increased revenues; and, of course, that caused Mr. Bush a lot of trouble in his own party. In 1993 when Mr. Clinton came to the White House, because the results of that had been aggravated by recession, it was not evident; but he proposed a second 5-year plan that would have taken us until about 197. That plan was designed to cut the deficit by a bit more than half. Once again, it extended a ceiling on discretionary spending. It actually cut the rate of growth in some of the health care entitlements, and it raised revenues. The revenue increases went largely to upper tax bracket taxpayers.”