[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 23 (Tuesday, February 23, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H737-H738]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         WORK TO SOLVE PROBLEMS RATHER THAN TO REWRITE HISTORY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Posey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POSEY. Mr. Speaker, I am a little bit tired of hearing ``we 
inherited.'' We were on the floor today, and we were trying to have 
some dialogue about jobs and about the economy, and all I heard from 
the other side of the aisle all-day long was, You guys are the Party of 
No. You guys don't have any ideas. You guys yadda, yadda, yadda. You 
guys put us in debt.

[[Page H738]]

  I left the floor after that a little bit dismayed. When I got to 
committee, what did I hear in committee the whole time? You guys are 
the Party of No. You guys left us all this debt. You guys ``this'' and 
you guys ``that.'' It's a little bit hard to take. You turn your cheek 
the other way seven times, and then it's seven more times.
  Sooner or later, somebody ought to set the record straight because, 
if my colleagues here can be so misinformed--and I'm a freshman. I mean 
I'm new here, but I know that final budgets do not come from the White 
House. They come from Congress. The party that has controlled Congress 
since January 2007 has been the Democratic Party. I mean it's not 
rocket science. It's a fact of life.

  You know, one more time, just a brief civics lesson for anybody who 
doesn't understand that. I hope there's nobody in this Chamber who 
doesn't understand that.
  Final budgets, binding budgets, do not come from the White House. 
They come from Congress. The party that has controlled Congress since 
January 2007 has been the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget 
process for fiscal year 2008, 2009, as well as 2010 and 2011.
  In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which 
caused them to compromise on spending when Bush, somewhat belatedly, 
got tough on spending increases.
  For fiscal year 2009, though, the Democratic-controlled House and 
Senate bypassed the President entirely, passing continuing resolutions 
to keep the government running until Barack Obama could take office. At 
that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 
fiscal year 2009 budget. Where was Barack Obama during this time? He 
was a member of that very Congress that passed all of the massive 
spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill, as the President, to 
complete fiscal year 2009.
  Let's remember what the deficit looked like during that period. If 
the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was in 2007, the last of the 
Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in 5 years, and the 
fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After the Democrats in 
Congress took control of spending--and that includes then-Senator Obama 
who voted for the budgets--if the President inherited anything, he 
inherited it from himself.
  In a nutshell, what my colleagues across the aisle are saying is that 
they inherited a deficit that they voted for, and then they voted to 
expand that deficit four-fold since January 20.
  As Paul Harvey would say, ``That's the rest of the story.'' Now can 
we get together working to solve the problems instead of trying to 
rewrite history?

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