Spratt says budget is 'pay as you go'

WASHINGTON, June 7 (UPI) -- Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt of South Carolina says the Democrat-led budget passed by the U.S. House this week "sticks to the rule of pay-as-you-go."

Delivering the Democrats' weekly radio address, Spratt said the spending plan would balance the budget by 2012.

"The budget the Democrats passed this week charts a new course," Spratt said. "It restrains spending and sticks to the rule of pay-as-you-go, but supports investments in energy, education and infrastructure. And it returns the budget to balance in 2012, with a surplus of $22 billion.

"We use some of that and subsequent surpluses to offset $340 billion in tax reduction for middle-income Americans."

Spratt criticized what he called Republican President George Bush's "blue-sky" tax and spending policies of the past seven years, saying he "insisted we could have it all -- guns, butter and tax cuts, too -- and never mind the deficits, we would actually pay down the debt."

Those practices, the South Carolina congressman said, erased the budget surpluses of the Clinton administration and replaced them with record deficits.

"Our budget begins by undoing the damage done by the president's budget to services that people depend upon," he said, noting it supports funding for education, research and development, science and technology, health, energy and national security.