Political Quotes

“I said that I thought there was a difference in the direction of these proposals. I said the budget debate ought to be about the direction of this country, it ought to be about our different philosophies. In the various proposals we see here today we can see those differences clearly delineated. The President, in his State of the Union Address, told us three times that the era of big government was over. Yet, the budget proposal that he has made and the other alternatives that we have before us from the Democratic side of the aisle do not reflect that the era of big government is over. I want to focus on the issue of entitlement changes, because this is where we know we have to make changes if we are ever really going to balance the budget, if we are ever really going to change the direction of government. Many of our entitlement programs are not working the way they should. They are not delivering health care, they are not delivering services to people in poverty the way they should. We need to make changes to that and we think we can make those changes by giving their management back to the States, back to local governments. Yet the alternative budget provisions and the Clinton budget make none of these changes.”