Political Quotes

“I quoted a fellow from Great Britain, Dennis Healey, who used to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Dennis Healey used to talk about the theory of holes. The theory of holes is pretty simple. It says, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. In 1990, we as a country were in a pretty big hole with respect to our budget deficit. Some people in the House and the Senate, the White House, Democrats and Republicans, decided to stop digging. What they decided to do was to adopt a commonsense approach to budgeting, which we call 'pay as you go.' The idea is if Senator Coleman... were to come to the Senate and propose new spending, he would have to come up with an offset, either cut spending some place else or raise revenue to offset it. For about 12 years, it was the law of the land. During those 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, we actually were able to reduce the deficit and for the first time in 30 years we actually balanced the Federal budget for several years in the late 1990s and the beginning of this decade. That law lapsed in 2002. We voted in the Senate that it should be reinstated.”