Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today I would like to address some of the recent press chatter that attempts to paint Republicans as closet Keynesians because we oppose the massive defense cuts that are contained in the Budget Control Act--the automatic sequestration or across-the-board cuts that occur unless Congress acts to avoid that before the end of this year. The implication is that if we make economic arguments against these automatic cuts; namely, that they will result in massive job losses, we undercut our arguments against the President's stimulus spending, which is ostensibly created in order to stimulate consumer demand and therefore increase spending, which is supposed to get us out of the economic doldrums we are in. I wish to make two points in response. First, of course, eliminating more than 1 million defense-related jobs, which is what will happen if the automatic sequestration occurs, will obviously hurt the economy. It will obviously result in job losses, and many people will suffer. That is what a George Mason University study said this $492 billion in cuts will contribute to. In fact, the same point was made in a CBO study that was released a couple of weeks ago. How could such massive job losses not do economic harm? A million jobs--jobs in both the private and public sectors--comprise a substantial part of our economy. In fact, just in my State of Arizona, there are about 33,200 private-sector jobs at risk if these automatic defense cuts were to take place.…”