Political Quotes

“I rise to speak about the fiscal crisis facing our country and specifically the dire financial situation of Medicare, which is a program that matters so much to tens of millions of senior Americans but also adds so much to our national debt. I wish to talk about some ideas I have about how we might effectively deal with this problem in Medicare, particularly, without doing away with the Medicare Program because I believe in it. If I can start on a broader level, briefly. It is hard to find anybody in Congress in any party who does not acknowledge that our Federal Government is hurtling toward the edge of a financial cliff. We are now running deficits in this year of over $1 trillion. That means we are spending $1 trillion more than we are taking in so we have to borrow that money, and at some point we are going to reach a level of borrowing that is unsustainable. It will send our economy hurtling down, will bring us into another great recession, will compromise our ability to provide the security and services to the people of our country that it is our responsibility to provide. To avoid that horrific result, we have to show some responsibility and work across party lines to get some things done. None of this is easy. Almost everybody will say we have a terrible financial problem in the Government, debt, deficit, but when you get to the solutions, there has been an outbreak of what I call Federal Government NIMBYism.…”