*President's 2012 Budget

Frankly, we're going through an exercise right now where we are cutting vital programs which will build our country, educate our children and care for our families. We need to cut spending. We need to reduce the deficit. We need to bring spending down, but, frankly, the process going on now is not well thought out. There were no hearings on it, no exposure to the public's ability to come in and say the quality of these cuts that we're considering. So, I think that we need to focus, as we Democrats have been focusing on, educating our children. We cut pell grants in the Republicans' proposal. We need to invest in research and, frankly, an awful lot of the business community that watches this program understands investing as opposed to spending on nonproductive matters. We ought to cut the latter and invest in the former.

We need to cut spending but make critical investments that allow our nation to out-innovate and out-build our competitors throughout the world, and Republicans fail that test.

Our nation is in deep fiscal trouble, and cutting spending is part of the solution. But we can’t cut spending in a reckless, short-sighted way that mortgages our country’s economic future.

If our country continues on a course of fiscal irresponsibility, and continues to pile debt on our children, we will all feel the consequences, no matter our party. It is vital that our two parties work together to put our fiscal house in order. So when I tell the House how disappointed I am in Republicans’ spending bill for the rest of the fiscal year, I’m coming from a perspective of real worry about our debt—a defining challenge that must be met seriously and thoughtfully. Sadly, that’s not the seriousness we see in Republicans’ spending bill for the rest of this fiscal year.

In 1993, we looked the fiscal situation of our country in the eye. We had sustained $1.4 trillion of deficit spending under President Reagan and $1.1 trillion of deficit spending under President Bush. We put legislation on the floor and said that we need to meet our fiscal responsibilities. Not a single Republican voted for that legislation. But over the next eight years, we had a net surplus in this country—the only time in the lifetime of anyone in this body that it’s happened. Unfortunately, the last administration ran up $3.8 trillion in deficits. And we inherited an economy that was in substantial freefall. We adopted legislation that tried to stabilize the economy, and the good news is that the economy has stabilized. But we still haven’t gotten to where we want to be—far too many Americans remain out of work.

The Republican Spending Bill does not make the tough choices between necessary cuts and smart investments in our future so that we can out-educate our competitors. The Republicans have put forward an irresponsible proposal that arbitrarily cuts:

This week, the House is considering the Republican Spending Bill, a short-sighted and irresponsible proposal that arbitrarily cuts critical investments that grow the economy and create. Democrats agree with Republicans that spending cuts are necessary, but their plan does not make the tough and careful choices needed to cut spending while investing in our future.

Today begins the war over E2I2.The great budget battle of Bill Clinton's presidency was waged around a set of initials also inspired by the "Star Wars" character R2D2. Clinton's lieutenants jauntily encapsulated his fight against Republican cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment as a defense of M2E2.