John Spratt: “it is easy to criticize the contents of this reconciliation bill because it hurts children, single-parent families…”

“it is easy to criticize the contents of this reconciliation bill because it hurts children, single-parent families, students struggling to finance their college education, and many others who are the most vulnerable among us. But I rise today to criticize the process because this a process known as reconciliation; and the purpose of reconciliation is that as you come to the end of a budget season, we use this to change mandatory spending and change revenues so that you reconcile the actual budget to what otherwise would occur. Ordinarily in the past, reconciliation has led to deficit reduction. That is the purpose. That is the reason it is a priority process in the budget process. In the budget summit agreement of 1990, we saved $482 billion in budget reconciliation; in 1993, we saved $433 billion in reconciliation; in the balanced budget agreement of 1997, we saved $118 billion. So what do we save today when you put together this spending-cut bill, $39 billion in reconciled spending cuts, with the tax bill that will follow it, the reconciliation tax bill? You add $17 billion to the deficit over that period of time. There is no deficit reduction. Worse still, if you look back at all of the taxes we passed in this budget cycle this previous year leading up to fiscal year 2006, starting with the transportation bill and including the energy bill and including a 1-year patch, $31 billion, in the Alternative Minimum Tax, the total tax reduction comes to $122 billion.…”