Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I like to tell the story about a Senate Finance Committee hearing about 2 years ago when we had a bunch of very smart people who came in to talk to us about this: What are we going to do about reducing the deficit? We continue to reduce the deficit. We peaked out at $1.4 trillion about 6 or 7 years ago. We are down to about $400 billion now; it is still way to high. But the hearing was designed to ask: What are some things we can do to further reduce our budget deficit? One of our witnesses was a fellow who used to be Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Blinder. At the time he testified 2 years ago, he was back at Princeton teaching economics. As a witness before our committee on reducing Federal budgets, he said: The 800-pound gorilla in the room on health care, on deficit reduction, is health care costs. That is what he said. That is the biggest one--Medicare, Medicaid, the VA system, and so forth. He said that is where the money lies; that is where we have to focus. When it came time to ask questions of our witnesses, I asked Dr. Blinder: You mentioned that health care is the 800-pound gorilla in the room on deficit reduction. What do you think we ought to do? He sat there for a while, he sat there for a while, and he sat there for a while. Finally, he said these words: I am not an expert on health care. I am not a health economist, but if I were in your shoes, here is what I would do. I would find what works and do more of that. That is all he said.…”