Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, Mr. Biggs from Arizona, for yielding. This is such an important topic that we are talking about, national debt. I remember when I came to Congress in 2013, Admiral Mullen said that the biggest threat to America is our national debt. Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State at the time, said she agreed with that. One of the few times I have agreed with Mrs. Clinton. But national debt today is $22 trillion. When I came into Congress, it was $14.5 trillion. When President Reagan left office, it was about $2.5 trillion. It doesn't matter who is in the White House. Our debt is going up until this body, Congress, addresses our debt. If you do a pie chart of our debt, 71 percent of our debt is mandatory spending, 29 percent is discretionary. Discretionary was described to me as the money we have left over at the end of the month after we pay all of our bills. That is discretionary. The interesting thing is, in 1964, those numbers were reversed. Mandatory spending was 29 percent, discretionary was 71 percent. So we were a cash-rich Nation. We could do things. We could do a space program. We could do the infrastructure bills that we did that this Nation needed. Today, that is flipped around to where 71 percent of every dollar this government takes in is already spent. We don't vote on that in Congress. Those are things that happen without us. The only things we vote and we shut the government down on is that 29 percent.…”