Political Quotes

“I thank the Chair. This amendment would prohibit $150,000 from being spent on the construction of a child's playground. Now I am the father of five children. I understand the importance of having a place for kids to play. Believe me, kids need to let loose and expend some energy somewhere. But Federal spending has been let loose, far too loose, so loose that we have this year a $1.4 trillion deficit. We are borrowing 42 cents on every dollar that we spend. When we are doing this, we can't just all of a sudden say we are going to build playgrounds anywhere as a model for economic development or anything else. We can't continue to spend money this way. This is one of the smaller earmarks. We have to start somewhere. I would urge those of you who want to oppose this amendment to go home to your constituents and say, I wanted to put you $150,000 more in debt because I thought it was important that we spend money; the Federal Government, mind you. Municipal governments, State governments, if they want to spend money on playgrounds that's great. But why is the Federal Government doing it here? Why are we doing it when in May of 2010 the national debt hit $13 trillion. It's now 13.2. According to The Washington Post, that works out to be more than $40,000 in debt for every U.S. resident; $40,000 of debt for every U.S. resident. Then we are saying, ``Well, this is just small. We can't save this money; we can't go at the deficit this way.”