Political Quotes

“one of the very lucky things we have around here is the opportunity to listen to some very intelligent people giving us their ideas on a lot of important subjects. Recently, I have had the pleasure of listening to Chairman Alan Greenspan, who spoke before the Budget Committee a couple weeks ago. Yesterday, we had our budget director, David Walker, speaking to the Centrist Coalition and also had an opportunity to listen to Larry Lindsey, the President's economic adviser, who used to serve on the Federal Reserve. I have learned a good number of things from them that I think are very important for the discussions we have about the budget and how we deal with the tax surplus that is confronting our country. As previous speakers have said, we are no longer in a cold-war world; we are no longer trying to get out of the budget deficit problem. I think a couple things need to be clarified about some remarks I heard earlier. No. 1, it was not the tax increase of 1993 that got us out of the budget deficit situation. I served on the Budget Committee during those, what I would say were very frustrating years--1993, 1994, 1995. We went back and checked. Do you know something very interesting? In spite of the fact that President Clinton and the then-majority Democrats passed the largest tax increase in history, it did not do anything to lessen the deficits.”