John Spratt: “I would like to open up by saying when the President sent us his budget this year the Office of Management and Budget…”

“I would like to open up by saying when the President sent us his budget this year the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, acknowledged that the surplus of the $5.6 trillion which we all hailed 2 years ago is gone. It has vanished. In fact, OMB now says there never was such a surplus when they, the Office of Management and Budget, adjust the surplus to account for the economy as they see it now. The 10-year surplus is no longer $5.6 trillion. It is $2.4 trillion. And all of that $2.4 trillion has been committed, or I should say overcommitted, by policy action to the tune of $129 billion. That is what we would incur if we did not do anything else, mostly due to the tax cuts passed in June of 2001. So any additional tax cuts and any additional spending beyond current services will go straight to the bottom line. There is no surplus anymore to mitigate or cushion or offset that deficit. It goes straight to the bottom line and adds dollar to dollar to the deficit. The arithmetic is simple. Knowing that, the President of the United States nevertheless proposes $2 trillion in additional policy actions, legislative actions here, mostly, once again, in new tax cuts that will add $2 trillion to our national debt over the next 10 years.”