David Obey: “Budgets are not just presentations of numbers. Budgets really reflect and define and exhibit our priorities and our…”

“Budgets are not just presentations of numbers. Budgets really reflect and define and exhibit our priorities and our values. And that is why this bill is such a sad commentary on the nature of this House. When President Bush came into office, thanks to the fiscal discipline demonstrated by the previous administration, we expected to see at least $6 trillion worth of surpluses over the next decade. We were in the best shape that we had been fiscally in more than a generation. So the President decided that we could afford to provide very large tax cuts, and he estimated we would still have billions left over for other purposes, and the House passed those tax cuts. My point is that then something happened that was totally unexpected. We got hit by 9/11 and the economic downturn that followed that. Any person of prudence in my view, having seen such a shocking change, would have been careful about the next step that they took, but this Congress and this White House, alas, was not. So despite the fact that the bottom was falling out of the economy and the bottom was falling out of Government revenues, the White House and this Congress decided they were going to push on with even larger tax cuts.”