Mark Neumann: “As we talk about this, and I mentioned it earlier in the hour, I do think it is very, very important to keep this in…”

“As we talk about this, and I mentioned it earlier in the hour, I do think it is very, very important to keep this in perspective. When we came here three years ago, when all of a sudden it was a different group of people in control the House of Representatives, we had to first stop the bleeding. We had a deficit of $200 billion a year, plus they were stealing the money out of the Social Security trust fund. We had to stop the bleeding before we could go and look at the next step and start getting into some of these older problems that had to be dealt with. It is only because we have stopped the bleeding that we have gotten to a balanced budget, we have slowed the growth rate of Washington spending. It is only because we have slowed that bleeding, so-to-speak, or at least dramatically slowed it down, that we are able to now go to the next level and start solving some of the internal injuries, if you like, in this thing. You first have to get spending under control to get to a point where you can take a look at the next level here, and that is what has been accomplished in three years.”