Political Quotes

“I just wanted to inform my colleagues that about a week ago, Congressman Chris Shays, of Connecticut, and I hosted a program called Debtbusters with a group of 200 of our constituents. We invited people to come together to sit down in groups and try to balance the Federal budget in 5 years. This is an exercise designed by the Concord Coalition, and it is the first time such an event has been done on a bipartisan basis. I highly recommend it to my colleagues. It is a fascinating exercise to watch people act as Members of Congress over a period of 2 or 3 hours, faced with the choices that many of us have to make here in Washington as we work toward a balanced budget by the year 2002. It was a tremendously worthwhile exercise. I want to commend the Concord Coalition for organizing it, for putting together the questionnaire. It was not perfect. Anyone who writes questions and makes choices obviously is going to bring some bias to it. But overall I found it to be rather fair and interesting. I would also like to commend the citizens of Connecticut, specifically the citizens of Stamford and the surrounding area, for taking the time out of their weekends to come together and work in such a constructive spirit.”