A recent press release submitted by U.S. Rep. John Spratt's Campaign is as follows:

Congressman John Spratt issued the following statement last week in response to Mick Mulvaney's charges.

“ ‘Affordable Health Care for America’ is a long way from perfect, but it’s also a long way from being final. I voted to send it to the Senate in the hope that a conference will iron out the differences and make the bill better. “Though it is not without problems, ‘Affordable Health Care for America’ is not the ‘monstrosity’ Mick Mulvaney portrays it to be. The bill is not, as he charges, ‘the biggest expansion of government in history.’ Its main proposal is a new marketplace for health insurance. On this exchange, companies can offer health insurance to individuals who would not otherwise have it and to companies with fewer than a hundred employees. Both would benefit from group rates, competitive pricing, and lower administrative costs. The government would set the exchanges up and oversee their operation, but private insurance companies would run the day-to-day business of underwriting insurance. There would be a government-run insurance company, but it would have to play by the same rules as the commercial insurance companies. “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that some 30 million Americans will obtain their insurance through an exchange, and that around 3 million will choose the government plan.

“You can agree with this proposal or not, but you cannot call it ‘the biggest expansion of government in history.’ “As for spending, we stipulated in the budget resolution for this year that health care reform had to be ‘deficit neutral.’ To the extent that health care reform raised spending, spending elsewhere had to be decreased or revenues had to be increased. Through a bit of both, ‘Affordable Health Care for America’ has been kept ‘deficit-neutral.’ “For the greatest distortion, Mick Mulvaney lets the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) do the talking. The NRCC has the audacity to accuse me of running up the budget deficit when, in fact, I was one of four budget principals who worked out the Balanced Budget Agreement of 1997, balancing the budget for the first time in 30 years. We left President Bush an advantage few presidents have ever enjoyed: a budget in surplus by $236 billion. By 2004, his administration had converted that surplus to a deficit of $413 billion.

“The NRCC further accuses me of backing ‘Wall Street bail-outs,’ which is another case of memory lapse. Most of the Wall Street bail-outs, like A.I.G., Citibank, and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) occurred on their watch while President Bush was in office.”