John Spratt Year Quotations

Just a few short years ago in the year 2000, the last full fiscal year of the Clinton administration, this country was running a surplus of $236 billion.

We developed during the 1990s a series of budget process rules that helped us bring to heel these deficits, diminishing every year and moving the budget so into surplus.

Domestic discretionary spending on education and health care and the environment has been growing at 2 to 3 percent a year. He says we have to rein it in, but he ignores the spending category that is the big spike in the budget.

Even after the economy is back on its feet and grows -- upon their assumption of the rate of 3.2 percent a year -- even then, we still have a negative bottom line after you back out Social Security and Medicare, as we think he should,