[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 8805]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            BUDGET GIMMICKS

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, the President has disparaged budget gimmicks 
and declared ``a return to honest budgeting.'' Yet his plan then goes 
on to claim $1.5 billion in war ``savings'' that are nothing more than 
an illusion, just the kind of gimmick he has disparaged.
  The President's budget claims $1.6 trillion in ``savings'' and $1.5 
trillion in ``deficit reduction'' by claiming the already determined 
drawdown in troops as a reduction in spending. Put another way, the 
administration budget assumes an elevated path of war spending that was 
never going to be followed, and then claims savings through a reduction 
that was going to occur anyway.
  This war games budget gimmick ends up representing three-quarter of 
their so-called savings.
  The President isn't making any attempt to reduce spending. He has 
constructed an unrealistically high future spending projection, and 
then claimed as savings the difference between this fictional budget 
world and reality.
  We need to get spending under control, not budget gimmicks.

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