Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Virginia for all your work as the prime sponsor of that resolution for a balanced budget amendment and certainly want to work with you to do everything I can to get that passed. You know, when we look at, I think as you mentioned, discretionary spending, nondefense discretionary spending now stands, I think, about $536 billion, up nearly 24 percent since the Bush Administration's last full budget in fiscal year 2008, which was $433.6 billion. So we have a $1.4 trillion deficit right now. And the President is expected to address a joint session of Congress tomorrow night, and I think he's going to present two plans, from what I understand, to bring down the deficit. The first is he's going to freeze one-sixth of the budget that will be domestic discretionary nondefense spending, but only one-sixth of the budget; and over 10 years, the estimated savings, should that section of the budget not be allowed to increase, would be about--is estimated to be, by the administration, $250 billion. But when we look at the extraordinary increases that this administration's done, I think we're looking at nondefense discretionary spending went up 10.3 percent in fiscal year 2009, 12.3 percent as projected this year, when inflation is at an all-time low. And I think that the other program that I believe that he's going to be presenting to the Congress is some sort of a Presidential bipartisan commission, controlled by his party, to lower the deficit.…”