John Spratt: “when the President sent his budget up this year, OMB sent with it a message in which they said that the surplus of $5.6…”

“when the President sent his budget up this year, OMB sent with it a message in which they said that the surplus of $5.6 trillion, which they projected just 2 years ago, was a mistake; that now, from 2002 through 2011, they revised downward that surplus from $5.6 trillion to $2.4 trillion. They made an egregious mistake. We warned our colleagues then not to bet the budget on a blue sky estimate, but they did not take our warning. Now you can blame that on 9/11, you can blame that on this sluggish economy, you can blame it on lots of things, but tonight the buck stops here. The blame rests right there in the well of this House and these meters where you push your card. Because tonight, when you vote for a trillion dollars in tax relief, it goes straight to the bottom line. There is nothing to offset it. It creates a deficit this year which will be a record deficit in the fiscal history of this country, $425 billion, and the deficit stays ratcheted in that range for as far out as we forecast. Those are the consequences of the policy choices you make tonight. You cannot blame it on 9/11. You cannot blame it on the economy. It will be attributed to what you do tonight, unless some economic miracle happens as a result.”