Charles W. Stenholm: “I truly have enjoyed attempting to work with him and several others on his side of the aisle who have attempted to be…”

“I truly have enjoyed attempting to work with him and several others on his side of the aisle who have attempted to be consistent. The bill today is not consistent. That is my problem. You cannot be on the floor one week arguing for gigantic tax cuts and then the next week coming in for saying debt reduction. You cannot do that in an honest sense. You can do it in a political sense, and I realize that is what we are doing today. I happen to have been here during the Reagan-Bush years. Only one of those 12 years did the Congress, the big-spending liberal Congress that we have heard so many times referred to, only one time in those 12 years did the Congress ever spend more than Presidents Reagan and Bush asked us to spend. I say that to say, let us stop the finger pointing. There is enough blame. I give credit to my colleagues on the other side for those things which they have attempted to do. But I have a healthy disagreement with the budget priorities they have brought.”