John Spratt: “this budget resolution was not produced until late last night; and this morning, we found it on our doorsteps. Some…”

“this budget resolution was not produced until late last night; and this morning, we found it on our doorsteps. Some Members who have had only a cursory opportunity to look it over may think, well, they have touched it up here, tuned it up here. This resolution runs better than the last vehicle that left the House. But before my colleagues buy it, let me suggest we look under the hood. It is true that, in this resolution, they have mitigated the unrealistic reduction in nondefense spending that they assumed in the last one, but it is only at the margin. This resolution still requires $121.5 billion real reduction in nondefense discretionary spending. This is not just another number among hundreds of numbers in the documents before us that we can hit or miss with impunity. This whole budget turns on this unrealistic assumption. If we do not attain it, if we do not cut nondefense discretionary spending by 9.8 percent, on average, over the next 5 years, there is no surplus. There is no debt reduction. The budget is in danger of being in deficit again. This chart right here in technicolor tells us why. For the last 5 years, if we look on the far side of the chart, we will see that, even though we had a deficit during much of that period of time, and even though we had spending caps on discretionary spending, under Republican dominion here in the House and the Senate, nondefense discretionary spending still grew by 2.5 percent above the rate of inflation.”