Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I wanted to do a little bit of an update, and I apologize for the three or four people who actually pay attention to the math. They will have seen some of this. Nevertheless, I have a point I want to try to make tonight. I am going to work on this over the next couple of weeks because I have to find a way to do this better because, apparently, I am not breaking through. I tease a lot that this is a math-free zone, but I brought the boards to walk through the economic studies that basically show you can tax the rich and get about 1\1/2\ percent of GDP if you tax everything. Over here, when we are talking about doing cuts, we could probably get a point of GDP when you consider that, Mr. Speaker, all nondiscretionary might be 2\1/2\ to 3 percent of GDP. So the understanding thing is to say: What we are talking about is cutting on our side; they are taxing on that side. You might get 3 percent of the economy. Since this fiscal year, so we are a little over one quarter in this fiscal year, I think if you add up everything, Mr. Speaker, we are borrowing about 9.6 percent of the economy. In the last 365 days, we borrowed 8.4 percent of the entire GDP. Does anyone see a math problem? This is my frustration. The border is incredibly important, and getting these budget bills done is incredibly important, but the house is burning down around us.…”