Political Quotes

“I want to do a couple of things, and what I am going to sort of walk through is what we are seeing in the numbers. There is a sense of theater around here that I am trying to break through, so let's see if we can have some fun with some math. For those who were complaining about the caps, the spending reductions in the recent debt ceiling, for those who wanted more over here, for some of our brothers and sisters around this place who didn't think any of it was necessary, I need to break through and help this place get its head around the fact that we actually were allowed to negotiate on 11 percent of the spending. Remember, your government is functionally an insurance company with an army. The vast majority of our spending is on autopilot. It is earned benefits. You earned your Medicare. You earned your Social Security. You worked your 40 quarters. Veterans earned benefits. You get certain things if you fall under a certain income. That is called Medicaid. You get certain things because of treaty agreements, the Tribal populations. Those aren't formula. We don't vote for them. As a matter of fact, it is almost radioactive around here if we tell the truth, that it is the vast majority of spending. So, I am going to do some of this backward. A week ago Friday, two of the lead economists at Bloomberg--they call it Bloomberg Intelligence. You have to sort of go to the Bloomberg Terminal to get this. I subscribe to a couple of things, so I got the top line.…”