Bobby Scott: “I just want to comment on one of things our colleague from Washington, D.C., said about cutting spending as the answer.…”

“I just want to comment on one of things our colleague from Washington, D.C., said about cutting spending as the answer. We had a hearing over on the Senate side a couple of days ago, and one of the witnesses suggested spending as the answer, but had to acknowledge that to get close to balancing, you would have to eliminate Federal funding for health care, Federal funding for transportation, totally eliminate Federal funding for education, and that would only get you back to balancing, not enough to pay off any of the national debt. So if you are not going to do that, you ought to be honest. Also, when you talk about job loss, everybody says, well, you know, it was not our fault, it was not our fault. The fact is, when we were fiscally responsible in the 1990s when President Clinton was vetoing the massive tax cuts, we created jobs. As soon as this budget passed, we started losing jobs. That is what happened. Now you can explain it one way or another. Finally, let me say that we do not often discuss it, but there are national security implications running up a big deficit. When we had to come up with 87 billion more dollars to continue the war in Iraq, we had to borrow the money. How much more money can you borrow? Suppose something else came up? When President Clinton left office, we had a $250 billion surplus, counting the Social Security surplus; and if we needed $87 billion, we could come up with $87 billion.”