"if our constituents knew, across the spectrum of this great country, that this was the near-term biggest national security and economic challenge facing our country, they would step up to the plate an..."
"What we wanted was to improve the process."
"Ladies and gentlemen, it was an entirely different situation. Forget the fact that Republicans and Democrats were working better together, we were not in the fiscal hole we are in now."
"if you are going to fix a $2 trillion deficit and indeed quit digging this hole deeper, you can't do it on discretionary spending."
"Our fiscal situation is dire because of bad decisions made here over many years and it can only be corrected here."
"This fiscal commission is going to force us. It is going to bypass leadership, it is going to get to the floor and actually be able to be voted on."
"A bipartisan fiscal commission will not be easy for any single person on this side of the aisle or this side of the aisle to vote for."
"when you are this deep in the hole, you better consider every available option on the table or else you are never going to fix the problem."
"The strength of a commission is to bridge partisan divides."
"The ultimate bipartisan commission in this Nation is called the Congress, and this Congress, as imperfect as it is, is where these decisions must be made."
"I can only characterize this new commission proposal as the proverbial definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
"We have not fixed the problem. We knew that baby boomers were going to start retiring at a very rapid rate in 2008."
"if you can't do something like that, then what, pray tell, can you do to fix the bigger problem?"
"A commission may be the best shot we have to help us get back on track."
"I am so proud of you."
"This whole discussion about the budget process, this whole discussion about the debt commission, this whole discussion about the fiscal condition of our country..."
"we just have to have some ability to be able to constrain Congress from moving past the moment to some future milestone and give it the force of law today"
"the challenge with Congress is that we create commissions and we create task forces and we look at problem sets, and we develop potential solutions, and then there is no real mechanism to give them th..."
