On the recordDecember 13, 2011
I have listened with a great deal of interest to my good friend and colleague, and I do care a great deal for him. He has been budget chairman for quite a while. Frankly, he has been a lone voice over on that side, trying to get all of us to live within our means. I have great respect for him for at least trying. But we call budgets line-by-line discussions of just exactly what are the inflows and outgoes as determined by the Budget Committees. He hasn't been able to pass a budget mainly because he can't get his side together to do it. It is a disgrace not for him but because our colleagues will not do it. Nobody wants to do that because if they truly had a budget, that would mean we would have to get spending under control. We can't just keep doing it by adding taxes. We have a low rate of income coming in right now mainly because spending is completely out of whack. I listened to my colleague very carefully. I have to say he made a tremendous case for the constitutional balanced budget amendment because he kept going on and on about all the problems we have. He didn't mention we have been spending 25 percent of the GDP. Usually, that is around 20 percent. So 25 percent is a whopping amount of money. Our former CBO Director said: I guess the new normal will be somewhere around 23 percent. We have been spending around 20 percent, while the revenues are around 18 percent. Now they are spending 25 percent of our GDP.…
