Rep. Alan Nunnelee of Mississippi, who cast a vote for the GOP House's Cut, Cap, and Balance Act Tuesday, knows how painful it can be to balance a budget.
After he lost his job 16 years ago in a corporate merger, he and his wife got out a sheet of notebook paper and wrote down a list of how much money they had coming in and how they were going to spend it. Nunnelee told Townhall he wouldn't be being honest unless he admitted a few tears were probably shed as the couple made difficult decisions on what stayed and went.
"There's no question in my mind there are families going through that exercise tonight," Nunnelee said, saying people had every right to expect their government to make the same hard decisions.
Nunnelee said enacting the Cap, Cut, and Balance Act will "put our nation on [the] path of fiscal responsibility" and cites the $111 billion cuts in spending in the upcoming 2012 fiscal year provided for in the act.