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. John Spratt Read Quote
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. John Spratt Read Quote
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. John Spratt Read Quote
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. John Spratt Read Quote
And it raises a fundamental question: How long can we move the world in one direction while we move in another direction, and do we want to backslide into an era that we finally emerged from where we had a nuclear weapon for every tactical mission? John Spratt Read Quote
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. John Spratt Read Quote
I am not disputing the need for this money. What I am disputing and calling attention to is the fact that we are taking the tab for defense in our time against terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere and shoving this tab off onto our children. John Spratt Read Quote
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. John Spratt Read Quote
Our country, the United States of America, may be the world’s largest economy and the world’s only superpower, but we stretch ourselves dangerously thin by taking on commitments like Iraq with only a motley band of allies to share the burden. John Spratt Read Quote
