John Spratt: “Well, I said what we should be doing is saving, paying down our debt, not building up our debt. Now, some may discover…”

“Well, I said what we should be doing is saving, paying down our debt, not building up our debt. Now, some may discover that, some might say, when did the United States Government ever pay down any debt? Well, in case you do not know it, in 1993, when President Clinton came to office, the deficit was right there, $290 billion, a record deficit under the last President Bush, $290 billion in 1992. That was the deficit situation President Clinton inherited. We passed in this House, in the mid-spring of 1993, a deficit reduction act that the President sent to us. We passed that bill by one vote here in the House and by one vote in the Senate. As a consequence, every year after that for the next 8 years, the bottom line of the budget got better and better and better to the point where in the year 2000 we had a surplus of $236 billion. All of that happened on the watch and under the administration of the Clinton administration because of two major multi-year budgets that we adopted in those years, hard votes, probably cost the Democrats control of the House, but we did the right thing and there was a payoff, a budget and surplus by an unprecedented $236 billion in the year 2000. As Yogi Berra likes to say, If you do not believe it, you can look it up. It is a matter of national record. Well, what has happened since then? This is when President Bush came to office. He inherited a surplus.”