Political Quotes

“I am very much opposed to dealing with our serious fiscal problems using this approach. It has been pointed out in public survey after public survey that there is deep concern about the fiscal policies of the country and the direction in which we are headed. People are worried about whether or not we are going to be able to reduce significantly the size of the national debt and our deficits. I do not think there is any debate about that at all. Madam President, I arrived here in January of 1981. The deficit in that year was about $35 billion, and the national debt was under $1 trillion. That debt had been accumulated over almost 200 years, through a Civil War and two World Wars, the Great Depression, and several smaller depressions. I was, I believe, the second Member of my side of the aisle to support the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction measure at that time. I thought that was an honest and strong effort statutorily to get our arms around what was then a very small problem by comparison today.”