John Spratt
John Spratt
John McKee Spratt, Jr.is an American politician who was the U.S. Representative for South Carolina's 5th congressional district from 1983 to 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Spratt was the dean of the South Carolina congressional delegation, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on the Budget, and the second ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services, where he served on three subcommittees: Oversight and Investigations, Strategic Forces, and Air and Land Forces. In addition...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth1 November 1942
CountryUnited States of America
With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison.
Since the Pentagon underestimated the number of troops required after the end of hostilities, we were not prepared to prevent looting or to guard hundreds of weapons dumps spread throughout the country.
We're ready to work with the Bush administration, ... But we're also ready to work against any budget that returns us to never-ending deficits and a mountain of debt.
We would take a little bit of money out of a huge increase in ballistic missile defense and put it in a place where it will do a lot of good, namely, in targeted pay increases to our enlisted personnel, particularly our NCOs and our junior warrant officers.
What we've got now is a situation where none of this is easily possible,
We are pushing the envelope. We are using our troops pretty much to their maximum utility.
We can set aside a surplus to save Social Security or Medicare, or we can pass the burden of the baby boomers retirement off on to our children,
The president blames the disappearance of the surplus on excessive spending, but all of the extra spending since he came to office is spending that he either initiated or approved,
Without the Guard and Reserve, our active duty troops could hardly deploy.
tax cuts so large they left no room for error.
It's daunting to consider where we were five years ago, as we sat here on a surplus of $236 billion.
What we are effectively doing, I say this to the young people of America whom my colleagues represent, is leaving our children and grandchildren the tab for fighting a war, letting them pay for the lion's share of it by simply adding it to the national debt.
This war so far has cost us $125 billion and counting, because largely we decided to do it on our own, with only the United Kingdom as a paying, fully participating partner.
could easily add $50 to $100 billion more.