John Spratt: “I wanted to address a very grave matter that affects our country, and that is the status of our budget. It is hard to…”

“I wanted to address a very grave matter that affects our country, and that is the status of our budget. It is hard to believe that just 2 years ago when we began the budget process as we do now this country looked forward to a surplus of $5.6 trillion. That was the projection of the Office of Management and Budget of the Bush administration in January of 2001. We have come a long, long way since January of 2002, since that fiscal year was concluded. In the last fiscal year of the first Bush administration, there was a deficit of $290 billion. That was the deficit that President Clinton found on the doorstep waiting for him when he came to the White House on January 20, 1993. On February 17 he sent us a budget that would deal with that deficit, and over the next 8 years every year, every year, the bottom line of the budget got better, better to the point that in 1999 for the first time in 30 years, we balanced the budget. In the year 2000, we had a surplus of $236 billion. So from 1992 until the year 2000, we took the budget from $290 billion in the red, in deficit, to $236 billion in surplus, a phenomenal record. President Bush the Second came to office, and we gave him an advantage that no President in recent times has ever enjoyed, a balanced budget, a budget that had a surplus the first year he was in office of 126, $127 billion. Today, 2 years later, this is what has happened.…”