Charles W. Stenholm: “The Blue Dog budget this year proposed to spend no more than President Bush recommended that the Congress spend, and we…”

“The Blue Dog budget this year proposed to spend no more than President Bush recommended that the Congress spend, and we intend to stick with that. When my colleague talks about spending and he talks about revising history, in the 8 years prior to the last 3 rac{1}{2}, spending went up 3.4 percent per year on the average. In the last 3 rac{1}{2} years, spending has gone up 10.4 percent. The gentleman keeps asking for specifics from the minority side. Last time I checked, the minority does not even get recognized for amendments so that we can do some of things that we talked about doing. We were denied having even a vote on some of our budgets over the last 3 rac{1}{2} years. The gentleman keeps talking about specifics and rhetoric. His rhetoric does not match the specifics. We are going to prove unequivocally sometime in the next 2 or 3 months that the economic game plan we are under is not working because we are going to have to vote to increase the credit card limit of the United States of America for the third time in 3 years, this time through $8 trillion.”