Political Quotes

“Mr. President, let me speak today about two recent CBO reports and what they portend for the economy and for policy that we might want to make in the Congress. CBO, of course, is the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and from time to time it looks at economic conditions and presents studies or issues reports about the state of our economy based upon legislation the Congress has adopted. There are two recent reports that I think suggest some very dire news for this country unless we in the Congress are willing to take some action. The first was a couple of weeks ago, and it dealt with the so- called fiscal cliff, the problem that will occur with the combination of two things automatically happening unless Congress and the President act. The first is the automatic across-the-board cuts or sequestration that will affect both defense and nondefense spending to the tune of $109 billion next year, something which the Secretary of Defense has said would be ``devastating'' and ``catastrophic'' for our national security. That is the first problem. The Congressional Budget office said the combination of the sequestration with the second item, which is the automatic tax increase, which is a $4.5 trillion tax increase that begins on January 1, the combination of those two will put this country back into recession. CBO projected the growth rate next year to be only about one-half of 1 percent.…”