mr. chairman , i yield myself the balance of my time . 
mr. chairman , we are coming to the end of the debate on the final amendment in the way of a substitute . 
i want to congratulate the gentleman from south carolina ( mr. spratt ) xz4003860 and the democrats for coming forward with a substitute . 
it is never an easy thing to write a budget , as we all know . 
but i appreciate the fact that so many of our colleagues came forward with a budget . 
the prime argument that is being made here today is , first of all , that the republicans seem to have caused the deficit , number one , and , number two , that the only way to get out of the deficit is to listen to the democrats and increase taxes and increase spending . 
so let me just take those because that is basically what the argument is . 
first of all , with regard to the deficit . 
now , maybe my memory is just fading but i am trying to remember back to before the world changed on september 10 of 2001 , and we were running a surplus . 
we had more money in the treasury , in the federal treasury than we were paying out , but we also discovered something that next morning . 
on september 11 of 2001 we discovered that we were running some deficits that we did not know about because the balance sheet did not give us much perspective on it . 
we were running a deficit in homeland security . 
we were not protecting the country . 
we were running a deficit in national defense . 
we were not able to project our strength around the world and protect freedom . 
we had a deep recession that we needed to climb out of that got a gut punch that morning and it lasted for quite a while longer . 
so we made some very deliberate decisions that next day and days after . 
in a bipartisan way we said , it is time to reduce taxes , stimulate the economy . 
it is time to protect the country , do whatever it takes . 
it is time to fund our national defense . 
it is time to protect our borders . 
it is time to do all of these things and let us not ask the question today how we are going to pay for it . 
let us do it . 
and we did it . 
and you voted for every one of those bills , every single one . 
do not shake your head . 
i will show you the votes . 
you voted for every single one of those bills to protect the country . 
you protected the country with every single one of your votes . 
so instead of coming down here today and blaming the republicans for partisan purposes , why do you not remember the history you know , that it is osama bin laden that had as much to do with this deficit as anybody in this country . 
and instead of trying to get political points , you ought to just relax and try and figure out a way to get out of it . 
so this is how we decided to get out of it . 
we said , let us control spending . 
let us stimulate the economy . 
and look at what has happened as a result of that . 
not only did the tax cuts not get us into that deficit , but because of the work that we have done , we are climbing out of it , because we are protecting the country , because we are stimulating the economy and are creating jobs . 
because of all of that we have the opportunity in this budget to reduce the deficit and build on the progress we had from last year . 
last year we cut the deficit 20 percent , 20 percent in one year with a growing economy and controlling spending . 
and so we are starting on a glidepath , reducing that deficit every year . 
the deficit was not caused overnight . 
it is going to take some time to get it down and we have a plan to accomplish that . 
now , i also want to put this deficit in some perspective . 
you have got to compare the deficit to something . 
you can not just say $ 500 billion is a lot of money or $ 200 billion is a lot of money . 
of course it is a lot of money . 
but compared to what is it a lot of money ? 
compared to our economy is the measure that every single economist says you have got to compare it to . 
and as you look at the deficit as it is compared to our economy , you can see here that this year we are at 3.6 percent of our economy . 
if we stick to this belt tightening that is responsible over time , we will be able to get down to 1 percent of the economy . 
and why is that important ? 
well , first of all let me show you deficits in the past . 
this is not even the biggest deficit we have ever run . 
this is not the biggest deficit . 
look back in 1946 after world war ii , we were running a deficit that was 7 percent of our economy . 
let us look to the year i first came to congress . 
it was 3.9 percent of the economy back in 1990 when the gentleman from texas ( mr. edwards ) xz4001180 and i came to congress . 
let us look back to the early eighties when we complained . 
it was 5 percent . 
we are talking about an economy that is chugging along and growing . 
we are talking about a deficit plan that gets us below the rate of growth that we need to get to in order to have a responsible budget , and we need to pass this plan and get on with business . 
we do not need tax increases and we do not need more spending . 
vote down the spratt substitute . 
