Political Quotes

“It is ironic; this reminds me of our church. Every now and then our minister is going full steam and preaching to our congregation. He says: I know I am preaching to the choir, but even choirs need to be preached to. In this case, the folks, ironically, on the floor--Senator Warner, Senator Collins, Senator Sessions, and I think myself and Dr. Coburn-- there are probably no Democrats and Republicans more committed to figuring out how do we get better results for less money in everything we do. So even the choir needs to be preached to. We just had a pretty good sermon. I have a couple of posters here I want to share. I think they might be of some interest and value in this discussion. I like to think of spending, as we are trying to rein it in and get it under control, in three elements. One of those is entitlement spending, which now is over 50 percent of what we spend in the Federal Government. It is growing. We have something called discretionary spending, which includes defense, and the domestic programs which are not entitlements, not Medicare, not Medicaid, not Social Security. Then you have got interest on the debt. That is pretty much it. That is pretty much it. If you look at, again, entitlement spending, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other things that we are entitled to, it is over 50 percent and growing. As it turns out, the part of our budget that is being squeezed is the discretionary spending.…”