Orrin Hatch: “the debt limit alone, under the current administration, had been increased by over $5 trillion. That is simply…”

“the debt limit alone, under the current administration, had been increased by over $5 trillion. That is simply unsustainable. Not to worry, I have recently been told. We have made massive progress toward promising deficit reduction. I hear this even though we have not seen any significant actual reduction. I have been hearing bold claims by my friends on the other side of the aisle about having attained trillions in budget ``savings'' and deficit reduction in just the past couple of years alone. They have gone so far as to say that we have had $2.4 trillion of deficit reduction legislated in the past 2 years. Of course, the deficit reduction has not been realized. It represents promises and plans that even Democrats seek to undo. It is amazing to me that they make these claims. I have heard bold claims that we have somehow legislated deficit reduction totaling as much as $3.6 trillion from my friends on the other side. I have heard that deficit reduction that has been promised can be broken down to an 80-to-20 ratio of spending cuts to tax hikes. While I often applaud creativity, I have to say these deficit reduction claims and the ratio of spending reductions to tax hikes is more than creative. It is more like Enron accounting, and if you were running a company in the private sector and made such claims, you would probably end up in jail. Let me make a few brief comments on the Democrats' Enron accounting of deficit reduction.…”