John Spratt: “Here is one reason that we have not produced a plan. It is because the plan that we are confronted with, the budget…”

“Here is one reason that we have not produced a plan. It is because the plan that we are confronted with, the budget, so-called, before us, is not a real budget. As I said earlier, it is a tip of an iceberg. Here are just a few of the things that it does not include. It uses OMB scoring, and therefore it picks up $225 billion because OMB estimates the cost of Medicare by that much less than CBO. It fails to fully fund discretionary spending at the level of inflation, that is all, current policy, and picks up another couple of hundred billion dollars. We do not think that is realistic. If we had to put up a plan that would be comparable on an apples to apples basis, we would have to adopt these and many other devices in this budget which we think would be a bad precedent. That is why we declined to do it. There will be a Democratic plan. Senator Conrad is producing one as we talk. Let me just say once again with respect to the war, when the votes come on the defense appropriations bill and on the other appropriations bill with homeland security and national security, Democrats' names will be the board because we back the President and we support those appropriated items.”