John Spratt: “Mr. Chairman, once again what we are trying to do here is to cut through all the rhetoric, go through all of these…”

“Mr. Chairman, once again what we are trying to do here is to cut through all the rhetoric, go through all of these complicated rules, sometimes convoluted rules, and come up with two basic rules, two pragmatic rules that have proven themselves over a period of 10 years to work and work well. Indeed, they were part of the success we enjoyed in the 1990s when we moved the budget from a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in the year 2000. First of all, we would impose a statutory cap on discretionary spending at a level that we think is realistic. And what do we mean by that? We take current services, basically treading water, with inflationary adjustment, and we add to it the Bush defense budget. But we want to make a point here, and that is this is the totality of domestic nonhomeland discretionary spending in the budget. This is one-sixth of the budget. Wipe it all out, you do not have an FBI, you do not have a court system, you do not have a Park Service, you do not have highways; but you still have a deficit, notwithstanding the fact you have wiped the whole thing out.”