Political Quotes

“the president-elect spoke to the stimulus package today. The Finance Committee had an informal meeting today to discuss the proposition. Its outlines are still quite vague. There is no specificity to what precisely will go into the stimulus package, but there are some general concepts emerging. So what I wanted to do today, very briefly, is to outline what I think would be some sensible tests to evaluate what is being proposed, and what it may reveal is that some ideas would not meet these tests and should not be part of a stimulus package. Others would meet the tests and would help to resolve the economic crisis that faces America today. I think the context we put this in is one in which we have already had some bailouts, and Americans are a little suspicious that some of the money we have committed to these bailouts is going to help--the $200 billion bailout to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the $150 billion bailout of AIG, the insurance company, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, the recent $17.4 billion auto bailout, and, by the way, the announcement yesterday was that for the first time in the history of the world the budget deficit of a country--namely, the United States of America--will top $1 trillion. That is over 8 percent of our gross domestic product. A friend of mine reminded me today--I think it is an interesting bit of trivia--$1 trillion is more money than all the cash in circulation in the world today of the United States of America.”