[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6173]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




PRESIDENT OBAMA LOOKS TO BRING HONESTY AND ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE BUDGET 
                                PROCESS

  (Ms. WATSON asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, last week President Obama continued to bring 
real change to Washington by announcing his plan to bring honesty and 
accountability to the budget process.
  For the last 8 years, the Bush administration and Washington 
Republicans masked the true costs of their budget by refusing to 
include funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and refusing to 
include any funding for natural disasters, even though we all knew they 
would happen. These accounting gimmicks were used to make deficit 
projections look smaller than they actually were.
  These tricks will soon be a thing of the past, as President Obama 
wants the American people to have facts so they can hold us all 
accountable. That's the way government should work, and thanks to 
President Obama's commitment to honesty in government, it will be 
instituted as part of his budget outline later this week.
  Mr. Speaker, for years, congressional Democrats criticized the Bush 
administration for using these gimmicks, and so we commend President 
Obama for this very welcome change.

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