John Spratt
John Spratt
John McKee Spratt, Jr.is an American politician who was the U.S. Representative for South Carolina's 5th congressional district from 1983 to 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Spratt was the dean of the South Carolina congressional delegation, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on the Budget, and the second ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services, where he served on three subcommittees: Oversight and Investigations, Strategic Forces, and Air and Land Forces. In addition...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth1 November 1942
CountryUnited States of America
Since the Pentagon underestimated the number of troops required after the end of hostilities, we were not prepared to prevent looting or to guard hundreds of weapons dumps spread throughout the country.
What we've done is design a package that is front-loaded and fast-acting deliberately.
The deficit in 2006 is almost certain to increase, because the bulk of spending for Katrina and Rita will occur in 2006, ... What's worse is that when the Congressional Budget Office factors the Bush agenda into the budget, CBO sees the deficit doubling to $640 billion in 2015.
It's hard to get a clear picture of exactly where we stand. We've made progress with the training of Iraqi security forces, but it's taken a lot longer to get there than we anticipated.
The young in this country, and you fellows are young by my reckoning, have a right to be concerned about the course that our government, the Federal Government, is taking under President Bush.
There were no hearings, there was no testimony,
This is a watershed budget. It will set a course for us for years to come.
Don't begin to think we're going to reach common ground,
With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison.
We're ready to work with the Bush administration, ... But we're also ready to work against any budget that returns us to never-ending deficits and a mountain of debt.
We would take a little bit of money out of a huge increase in ballistic missile defense and put it in a place where it will do a lot of good, namely, in targeted pay increases to our enlisted personnel, particularly our NCOs and our junior warrant officers.
Without the Guard and Reserve, our active duty troops could hardly deploy.
What we've got now is a situation where none of this is easily possible,
We are pushing the envelope. We are using our troops pretty much to their maximum utility.