John Spratt: “We have said that the projected surplus in the year 2001 when the President came to office was an unprecedented $5.6…”

“We have said that the projected surplus in the year 2001 when the President came to office was an unprecedented $5.6 trillion. Under the President's fiscal policies and under the situation of the times, not all of his making, that surplus declined from $5.6 trillion to a deficit today in accordance with his 2005 budget, which will equal over this same period of time 2002, 2011, a cumulative $2.928 trillion deficit. From $5.6 trillion in surplus to $2.9 trillion in deficit. The arithmetic is simple. That is a reversal of $8.5 trillion over a 3-year period of time. We have never seen fiscal discipline come so unraveled, all of the effort in the 1990s to put the budget in balance for the first time in 30 years, to put it in surplus, to bequeath that surplus to President Bush only to have it absolutely wiped out over the next 3 years.”