John Spratt: “Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, today we have an opportunity to do something which I cannot see any reason why anybody would…”

“Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, today we have an opportunity to do something which I cannot see any reason why anybody would not do. And that is to make sure that the tax breaks that are put into this bill do not explode in the outyears. The estimates that we have seen on the proposals that have actually been put on the table by Senator Roth and others have deficits of $750 billion in the second 10 years. And if anyone votes against this resolution, they can only do it on one of two bases. One is that they do not care that we are replaying 1981. In 1981 we made decisions in this House, none of us were here, most of us were not, at least, and it took us 15 years to dig ourselves out of it. Now here we are going back in the pit again and doing the same thing again and setting ourselves up unless we instruct our conferees to refuse to put that kind of language in the budget resolution. They must limit the explosion in the outyears. The only other reason that someone would vote against this resolution or this motion by the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt] is if they simply do not expect to be here. I understand there are a lot of Members around here who believe in term limits. Maybe they figure in 6 years they will all be gone, but the very Members who are here today saying we must balance the budget always put it in terms of our children. We have to do it for our children.…”