Bipartisanship part III: House GOP, Dem call on ‘supercommittee’ to ‘go big’

“If the supercommittee would go big and increase the cut to $4 trillion over 10 years, we are still only cutting the federal budget by 9.1 percent. Mr. Speaker, we can do better, and we must do better. We cannot continue to spend our nation’s future away.”

Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), a blue dog Democrat, agreed that the government needs to cut more dramatically.

“He’s right, we’re spending way too much,” Schrader said after Ribble spoke. Schrader said the government cannot continue to spend $3.6 trillion while only taking in $2.2 trillion.

“We’re borrowing almost 40 percent of what we spend. You can’t do that in your household, folks, you can’t do that in your small business, and we shouldn’t be doing that and can’t do that as the greatest nation on Earth,” he said.

Ribble and Schrader spoke just before the House adjourned, and they followed an earlier bipartisan set of comments from several Republicans and Democrats who supported a bill to increase energy exploration and use royalties from that exploration to fund infrastructure spending.