On the recordJanuary 25, 2011
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I rise in favor of the resolution. I am just happy to be able to have this debate this year. I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that we were campaigning last year during 2010. As freshmen, we never expected to have the ability to come into this Chamber this year and talk about the FY 2011 spending. We thought that that would be long before we had gotten here, and I thank my colleagues from across the way for failing to pass a budget last year so that we have the opportunity to have this debate with this new Congress. For me--and I know, Madam Speaker, for many of my colleagues--the key language in this resolution is 2008 levels or less. It's that 'or less' that, I think, has a lot of the attention of the freshmen. In a world where discretionary spending is up 88 percent in the last 2 years, in a world where we have borrowed $3 trillion in just the last 2 years, in a world, Madam Speaker, where we borrowed more money in one day--we borrowed more money on June 30, 2010, than we borrowed in all of 2006--in that world, those two words 'or less' are what speak to me and so many Members of the freshman class.
