John Spratt: “it may be 5:15 in the morning, but that is not our fault. We would liked to have done this in the light of day with a…”

“it may be 5:15 in the morning, but that is not our fault. We would liked to have done this in the light of day with a little more time to look at this package. Here is what we have got just 1 hour ago. When we unpacked the package to see what was in it, we had the Speaker's press release, which told us earlier in the evening that, by golly, you would come up with $41.6 billion in total spending reductions. We got this package, and, finally, looking through 700 pages, we finally got a summary of the action taken, and they came to $39.7 billion. It was $1.9 billion less than the Speaker had claimed earlier. Even for government work, that is not very close. Here is the Speaker's press release. We discern that this difference came from the fact that between the Speaker's press release and the release of this voluminous document here called the budget resolution, or the budget reconciliation bill, there was a deal made with the medical equipment manufacturers and suppliers with respect to Medicare reimbursement, a deal that costs your total package $1.9 billion. If I am not right, I would like to be corrected, which leads us to ask, if you could adjust for them to the tune of $1.9 billion, couldn't we have gone back and looked at student loans and moderated the cuts being inflicted on them?…”