John Spratt: “When I came here, we were paying interest on the national debt equal to about $52 billion. In the years I have been here…”

When President Obama was sworn into office at the beginning of this year, the economy was in deep contraction and jobs were being lost at a rate of 741,000 per month.

Shouldn't we stop creating new programs, now agencies, new commissions and new discretionary spending?

If we have entitlements that we already can't pay for, shouldn't we not be adding new entitlements?

I want to welcome everyone to our hearing this morning on The Social Safety Net: Impact of the Recession and of the Recovery Act.