Political Quotes

“Mr. President, after weeks of budgetary wrangling and a government shutdown that had the country on edge, last week marked the beginning of the bicameral budget conference. I commend my colleagues who are meeting on the issue and are trying to reconcile the goals of wildly different budget outlines. That is no easy task. I think we all know that. However, we all know that shoveling more IOUs into our $17 trillion debt is simply unsustainable. No matter on which side of the aisle we sit, I hope we can all agree that America's present fiscal trajectory is untenable and that our Nation's future depends on turning these economic issues around. There is no secret formula. At a minimum, Congress should abide by the budget control framework which has produced some of the most meaningful discretionary spending reductions in decades. Beyond that, we have to slow the rising costs of entitlement programs in order to achieve significant long-term deficit reduction. Sadly, some seem fixated on spending beyond the BCA's cap for next year. Some of our colleagues have suggested that the spending discipline we achieved with the sequester should be replaced with revenue increases. Now, we all know that sequestration is a blunt instrument for reducing spending, but this desire to replace it by driving up taxes is based on an incorrect assessment. Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. In 2013 the government spent some $3.5 trillion.…”