Political Quotes

“I would like to reflect on what I consider a reality. It seems to me that we have managed to do it again. We have put off taking the medicine necessary to correct the accumulated deficits that we have been running because we have again refused to impose a balanced budget mandate in our Constitution. Let me just reflect a little bit on how this body seems to work with unsolvable problems. We all remember the extended debate on base closures, the fact that we could never agree whose base would be closed. So we finally consented to bring about the creation of a commission staffed by knowledgeable people who would independently evaluate priorities of base closures. The Commission would examine all relevant evidence presented by the individual military services and then make specific recommendations on a package. Congress would then be given the opportunity to vote up or down on that package. We saw what happened to that Commission yesterday. We voted unanimously to extend the Commission because it has worked. It worked simply because the other alternatives did not work. I am kind of a bottom-line person, Mr. President. It seems to me that we have attempted to address our deficits by statute in the past. You remember back in 1985, we had Gramm-Rudman I. And it was our conviction that this would bring about control of runaway spending and it would bring about an end to the continued deficits.”