[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12336]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    HOPING FOR A SPIRIT OF CONSENSUS

  (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, as we continue to hope that a spirit of 
consensus will come forth to avoid this self-inflicted wound, I think 
it's well to think of a general principle on how we should approach our 
fiscal challenges, and that is that a nation that does not learn from 
its clear, unambiguous mistakes is bound to repeat them. And, in fact, 
the problem with the Republican plan that will be on the floor today is 
that it not only repeats the mistakes that occurred during the Bush 
administration, it enshrines them into permanent law.
  Now, I remember very well where Alan Greenspan came before us years 
ago during the last President's administration and said that we needed 
to have massive cuts for multimillionaires and further cuts for the oil 
industries, because if we didn't do that the United States Government 
would just have too much money in the kitty.
  That didn't work out too well. In fact, because of those giant 
mistakes, it blew a hole in the deficit.
  Do not repeat them. Let's go back and solve this problem the real 
way.

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