John Spratt: “there has been a lot of reference today to the Clinton budget act in 1993. It was preceded by the Bush budget summit in…”

“there has been a lot of reference today to the Clinton budget act in 1993. It was preceded by the Bush budget summit in 1990. On that occasion, when that budget summit agreement, which laid the first level of foundation for the successes we have now seen in the budget, in 1990, when it first came to the floor, only 47 Republicans voted for it, even though their President was a signatory to it and helped negotiate it. Three years later, because of recession, the deficit had not gone down. It was $290 billion, a record high, and headed up on September 30, 1992. That was the level of the deficit when Bill Clinton came to office on January 20, 1993. On his desk lay an economic report to the President, George Bush, that said over the next 5 years the deficit would hover in that range and exceed $300 billion by 1998. Well, we got to 1998 and got to 2000, and we did not have those horrendous deficits; and there is a reason, because in 1993 we came over here and stepped up to the problem. There was some features to the package that we passed in 1993 I did not like, they were unpopular to vote for; but, nevertheless, they account for the fact that we now do not have huge deficits, but we have enormous surpluses. Indeed, CBO last reported that we could expect a surplus this year of $219 billion, a swing from $290 billion in deficit, in the red in 1992, to $219 billion this September 30. That is nothing short of phenomenal.”