John Spratt: “this could be a bipartisan bill. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) has taken the bill that the President sent us…”

“this could be a bipartisan bill. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) has taken the bill that the President sent us, which is a classic case of overreaching, and improved it very much and I commend him for that. But it is not good enough; it is not worthy of passage, in my opinion. If it really was to be a bipartisan bill, if that is what you wanted, why did I get shut out in the Rules Committee? I came forward with two substitutes, one germane, one nongermane, with various individual amendments, all of them serious substantive things. Sure, we could disagree about them, but I didn't get to the opportunity under the Rules Committee's provision to come here and offer those on the floor of the House. I think in wrapping up, it is worth showing these charts to everybody again to show the path we are on, which is this path right here: a deficit this year of $300 billion to $350 billion, more than $400 billion last year; intractable, structural deficits. And, as you will see from the costs plotted by CBO, the numbers only get worse here that show the deficit sinking to almost $500 billion in 10 years. The consequence of that? First of all, the debt ceiling, the legal limit to which we can borrow, we have seen an increase in the debt ceiling in the United States since President Bush came to office under your watch of $3.668 trillion. That is the increase in 5 fiscal years of the debt ceiling of the United States.…”