John Spratt: “Well, the chart that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) is holding tells an awful lot. Every year during the…”

“Well, the chart that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) is holding tells an awful lot. Every year during the Clinton administration, due to those three budget agreements, which the gentleman just described, the bottom line of the budget got better and better to the point where we finally had the budget in surplus for the first time in 30 years. Every year since the Bush administration came to office in 2001, the bottom line has gotten worse to the point where today we have record deficits, three in a row, record deficits: 378 last year, 412 in the year 2004, it looks like 350 this year. There have been changes made in the margins, but nothing as dramatic and emphatic as what we did in 1993 and 1997, and that is why you do not see any real results of any substance on the bottom line.”