Political Quotes

“$847 billion is a lot of money to spend on anything in 1 year, even in Washington terms. It is enough money, for instance, to make sure that not a single child goes hungry anywhere in the world ever again. It is enough money to end homelessness in America, provide free preschool and college for every American, build high-speed rail between every American city, and make childcare free for families. Frankly, come up with five problems that plague parts of the world or parts of the country, design a solution, and you could probably solve all five for a year for $847 billion. Here is another number that is big: $80 billion. Now, that is smaller than $847 billion but still a lot of money. For $80 billion, you could build a high-speed railroad from New York to Washington, you could build 4,000 brandnew, state-of-the-art high schools in underserved communities, or you could hire--wait for it--a million public school teachers. Here is why I tell you this. Next week, likely, this body is apparently going to be on a glidepath to pass an $847 billion Defense budget authorization for the current fiscal year. That is an $80 billion increase over last year. That is a 10-percent increase in just 1 year. There has been very little public debate, and there is going to be very little debate on this floor over whether this is a good idea, about whether we should spend $80 billion on this or whether that $80 billion would be spent better on something else.…”