Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman not only for yielding some time but also for his glowing remarks about a great community and one of the 10 most livable cities in all of America that I had the privilege of presiding over for about 12 years as mayor, a city that continues to enjoy tremendous economic development and influence in the State of Arkansas. And let me just say this, using that as a context for my remarks, that I think the model that the community that I had the privilege of presiding over for 12 years is the model that Washington needs. It's a model that balances its budget. When I inherited that city in 1999 as its mayor, it did not have a balanced budget. The government was in the way. The discriminate developer did not want to develop in that community because there were too many regulations, too many reasons why they could go elsewhere and have better margins. Well, we changed all that, and now the city is flourishing in a remarkable sort of way. And I want to steal something from a colleague of mine from Mississippi that was said yesterday out on the Triangle in a media event. He said: All across America we're sitting down with legal pads, and we're drawing that line down the middle and we're discussing the amount of income that we have. This is what's happening to families around the country, what kind of income we have and what kind of expenses we have.…”