Political Quotes

“Mr. President, last week, three events conjoined to elevate the subject of the U.S. debt crisis in this country and should energize us in the Senate and our colleagues in the House to redouble our efforts to find a solution to this serious problem. I wish to briefly mention those three events and then talk about the problem from my perspective, some of the potential solutions, and put an item in the Congressional Record for my colleagues' review. The first of what occurred was a new report by the Congressional Budget Office which was a new projection about U.S. debt as a percentage of our economy. One of the things they said was that our debt could almost double by the year 2035--far larger than they thought it would be as a percent of our economy or the GDP--and they said it is going to exceed 100 percent by the year 2021. Actually, it could get to that point sooner than that. It is approaching 100 percent right now. Greece is a little bit over 100 percent. Countries that get to that 100-percent level of public debt as a percent of GDP have a very hard time ever recovering. As a result, the time is now for the U.S. Government to act on our huge and growing debt. Secondly, we had reports by the Labor Department, the Commerce Department, and others that confirm what we already know about the state of our economy and the state of joblessness in this country. Applications for unemployment benefits rose. It was the biggest jump in a month. We are over 9 percent unemployment now.…”