Political Quotes

“let me touch on the point the gentlewoman just made about faith. All of us were told different things and were given dictates by our faith. But one very universal view across all denominations that we know is this idea that you do not start sacrifices with the most vulnerable of our people. You do not ask the weakest of our people to be the first to give. You try to bring some moral foundation of equity to all that you do. Those are notions that ring across every denomination, and indeed nondenominations that still have ethical values in this world. What is striking about this budget reconciliation is that it is the first major government document that I have seen that says, let us ask the first people to sacrifice to be what Matthew would call ``the least of these.'' Let us ask the first people to sacrifice to be the weakest of our people. This is something that is fundamentally wrong and, again, it is at the heart of this debate. A lot of us in this Chamber would be open to a discussion about fiscal discipline. We would be open to a discussion about budget cuts. We would be open to a discussion about shared responsibility, but only if it ran across all lines. This is as powerful a point as I think we can make in the next several days. We are not asking our children to sacrifice. We are not asking the children of the people who go to our fund-raisers to sacrifice.…”