Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to speak in favor of the balanced budget amendment. Let me offer a thought or two as I get started today. I had the privilege at one point in my political life to serve as the Governor of a great State, the State of Nebraska. I served in that capacity for 6 years. In that capacity, as in virtually every other State, we had a provision in our constitution, and it was not a gimmick at all. It was a very serious statement. It said, in a very straightforward way: Thou shalt have a balanced budget. It was as simple and as straightforward as that. The other interesting thing about my State of Nebraska is that in addition to having that constitutional provision--and keep in mind, part of my oath of office, as Governor, was to uphold that constitution--but part of that was a requirement, a mandate, that we could not borrow money. In fact, I think the limitation, if I am not mistaken, was $50,000 or $100,000. I would say to people back home, when I was Governor, that probably was a pretty handsome sum of money more than a century ago when that constitution was passed, but, in effect, today what that meant was that when we got down to the business of balancing our budget, as required by the constitution, I did not have the ability as Governor to issue bonded indebtedness to go out and borrow against the full faith and credit of my State to balance that budget.…”