Political Quotes

“this is a rather remarkable moment. On each side, Republicans and Democrats are standing to describe a problem that literally jeopardizes not just the future of our children and our grandchildren, but it jeopardizes our security; that is, our runaway spending and our deficit. If I might, let me put this in perspective. As a former Governor of Nebraska, I used to tell my cabinet, when we were struggling through budget issues, that this is not magic, it is math. That is the reality of what we are dealing with here. We simply have a problem that is so gigantic, it can only be solved in a bipartisan way. Let me offer a couple of statistics to back up that statement. If you look at the entire Federal budget, this is what you see. If you add Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the interest we pay on our debt, that is 64 cents of every dollar we spend annually. Let me repeat those programs: Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the interest we pay on our debt. Everybody will acknowledge the importance of those programs. Let's compare that to the revenues coming in this year. The revenues coming in don't even cover the full cost of those programs. So if anyone is out there suggesting that a little nip and a little tuck and a tweak here and a tweak there is going to solve this problem, it just fundamentally won't.”