John Cornyn: “this amendment is one that I offered during the Budget Committee's deliberations. Unfortunately, the majority did not…”

“this amendment is one that I offered during the Budget Committee's deliberations. Unfortunately, the majority did not support this important amendment that reduces our Nation's debt, the bill that we will pass on to our children and grandchildren. My amendment reduces the debt by instructing the Senate Finance Committee to find approximately $34 billion in savings over the next 5 years, and this is out of almost a $3 trillion budget. Two years ago, Congress made some progress in getting a handle on mandatory, or entitlement, spending by passing the Deficit Reduction Act, using the reconciliation process, I believe, for the first time since about 1997. The Deficit Reduction Act reduced the rate of growth in spending. I will say that again because it is important. It reduced the rate of growth of spending--it did not represent an actual cut in the way most Americans would think about a cut--by nearly $100 billion over the next decade. It was a very good first step in getting our fiscal house in order but, clearly, more needs to be done. Today, the Federal budget is already heavily weighted toward entitlement spending, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which takes up some two-thirds of all Federal spending, which is literally on autopilot because it grows at roughly 8 percent a year.”