Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we are going to have a vote a little bit later this afternoon to proceed to a bill which I do not happen to think is a very good bill, but I am going to vote to proceed to it, because the majority leader has made clear we will have the opportunity to offer amendments. I know some of my colleagues specifically wish to offer amendments to get to the heart of the subject that should be most on our minds today, which is reducing wasteful Washington spending, to get our fiscal house in order. In order to provide that opportunity, we should, in my view, proceed to that legislation so we can offer those amendments. We should be laser-like focused on the deficit, the debt, the spending of the Congress, and what we can do to get a handle on that spending, so that we do not mortgage our children's future. It starts, of course, with a budget. A few weeks ago, the President submitted his budget to Congress, but it seems to me the message that budget sends is one of more spending, bigger government, and one that trumps America's well-founded concerns about this huge debt we are piling up and how it jeopardizes our Nation's future. Under this budget, the debt held by the public will double by the end of this President's term in 2012 and then triple by 2019, to an astonishing $7.3 billion. Think about that for a moment. In all of our history, from 1789, from George Washington through George W. Bush, we accumulated roughly $5 billion of debt.…”