Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. President. I rise this evening to speak on the nomination of Congressman Mick Mulvaney to be the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. I am going to start by talking in a minute about some of the critical roles that the Office of Management and Budget plays. Before I do that, I want to go back for a moment to some of the comments of my friend who just preceded me on the floor. Going back 8 years ago, I remember that in the last 6 months of 2008, we lost 2.5 million jobs in this country--2.5 million jobs in 6 months. In the first 6 months of 2009, we lost 2.5 million more new jobs. That is 5 million jobs in 12 months. Since the beginning of 2010, we have added 16 million jobs in this country. The unemployment rate in this country jumped as high as 10 percent by the end of 2009, and by the beginning of this year the unemployment rate was cut in half. During the first fiscal year of this last administration, the Obama-Biden administration, the deficit, the budget they inherited for that fiscal year ballooned to $1.4 trillion. I am an old State treasurer, Congressman, Governor, and now Senator. That's a lot of money. We have had in terms of GDP probably higher deficits than that during World War II, but that is a lot of money. During the last administration, the debt, deficit as we knew it, dropped by about two-thirds, maybe a little more than two-thirds. Do we have a balanced budget coming into this year? No. Is it better than $1.4 trillion?…”