Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon to speak about our budget and how the choices we will make over the next few days will reflect our values and priorities. As someone who has acted as a countywide elected official writing balanced budgets, I have long viewed them as not just a collection of numbers and programs but also really a statement about our basic values and a reflection of what we hold dear. We can say we believe in this or that, but at the end of the day, our budgets tell the true story. Over the last 2 years in this body, following the hard work and leadership of Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Barbara Mikulski, the previous chairs of Budget and Appropriations Committees, we have taken important strides to stabilize our government's finances, invest in our middle class, and protect the most vulnerable among us. After a few really hard years, our economy has begun to heal and grow again. We are now in the longest period of uninterrupted private sector job growth in our Nation's history--a period in which our businesses have created 12 million new jobs. Today, our national unemployment rate stands at 5.5 percent, and the deficit has fallen nearly two-thirds since the depths of the great recession. At a time when the economies around the world are slowing down, ours remains, relatively speaking, a global bright spot. We need to continue on this path. We need to invest in this growth.…”