Marsha Blackburn: “I appreciate the recognition. I want to begin by saying I think the committee has done an amazing job with consistently…”

“I appreciate the recognition. I want to begin by saying I think the committee has done an amazing job with consistently making reductions in what they are spending. It is appropriate that we do that because we are $19.3 trillion in debt. My amendment is a very simple reduction in spending. It is a penny out of a dollar--1 percent--across the board. I know it is not popular. I know everybody says it goes too far. But this will save us $321 million--of course, not a lot when you look at the total budget, but it is very appropriate that we begin to take these steps. I think it is so interesting talking about Ronald Reagan and how he approached things. He would always say: Let's take a little bit, a few steps at a time and begin to get behind some of this and get our economy and get our government back in shape, right-size it. That is exactly what he did, and it paid off for our country with economic growth, making certain that our economy was growing, and that our revenues were growing. Indeed, Mr. Chairman, since that time, we have seen our country doesn't have a revenue problem. What we have is a spending problem. What we have is a priority problem. What we fail to do time and time again is to realize that the taxpayers tell us they are overtaxed, our government is overspent, and they want us to consistently make as many spending reductions as we possibly can. So I come, once again, to the floor with this 1 percent across-the- board spending cut.…”