Joe Scarborough: “The Constitution says that this body, the people's House, as the Speaker says, this body that is closest to the people…”

“The Constitution says that this body, the people's House, as the Speaker says, this body that is closest to the people has the checkbook. And so we have to stop pointing our fingers at the Senate, we have to stop pointing our fingers at the White House, and we need to recognize that we have the checkbook, that all spending originates here, all bills that have anything to do with spending originate here, and so we have the ultimate responsibility. We have got to take personal responsibility for that instead of turning and whining about how the Senate moderates everything or how the White House is addicted to spending. Whether that is true or not is completely irrelevant. We have the checkbook in our hand. If we have a checkbook in our hand and our children come up and say they want to spend money on Nintendo games or they want to spend money on a trip this summer, they want to go to Disney World, if we do not have the money, we have the checkbook in our hand, and if we go ahead and write a bad check to our children just because we are afraid of the consequences, then we have no moral courage and do not have the moral fiber that we have to have to make the tough decisions.”