Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank him for his extraordinary leadership on this important issue, an issue of importance to our country, to our economic stability, to our fiscal soundness, and to our children and our grandchildren. This is an issue, pay-as-you-go, who could oppose this great idea? It has a provenance in the Democratic Party that goes back over 30 years, but it has been in practice in a bipartisan way over time. To my progressive friends, I say that Congressman George Miller of California introduced a resolution in 1982 at the Democratic convention, mid term convention in Philadelphia, calling for pay-as-you-go. It was passed and adopted as part of the Democratic platform, a measure for fiscal soundness, recognizing that even those of us who see a role in government, a limited role in government and investments in our children's future know that it must be paid for or else we are heaping debt onto our children. That was in '82. It wasn't until later, with a Republican President, President Bush, and a Democratic Congress, that PAYGO was implemented. Then later, under a Democratic President, President Clinton, and a Republican Congress, PAYGO was implemented. All of those times it brought down the deficit and, in the case of President Clinton, it led to a path, a trajectory of $5.6 trillion in surplus.”