Political Quotes

“We adopted the philosophy in the State of Nebraska that we wanted to be job creators. We wanted to have that low unemployment. So we recognized it is not government that is going to create the jobs. After all, people don't want a bigger, grander, greater State government--or Federal Government, for that matter. Our responsibility was to create the right climate so a small business had an opportunity to grow and expand; that a large employer, looking across the United States for a great place to locate, would know they had an opportunity to grow and expand a business in the State of Nebraska. So we fought tooth and nail. Let me give a current example. If we dial the clock back to about November of last year, our current Governor, David Heineman, was faced with a great challenge. He had about $1 billion he had to somehow make up to balance the budget over a 2-year cycle. For a State such as Nebraska, that is a powerful amount of money. In Washington, where we talk about trillion-dollar programs, such as the stimulus, et cetera, that may not sound like much. But it is a huge amount of money to our State. I suppose our Governor could have said: Well, if we just hit the taxpayer here more, and hit the taxpayer there more, then all of this will balance out. But he adopted very much the opposite view--which is exactly what I expected of Governor Heineman. He said: We are going to balance the budget, and we are going to do it without raising taxes.…”