Political Quotes

“We are back. Tonight, I understand, the Presiding Officer and I will be sitting together at the State of the Union event, which I am pleased to do. It is always a historic and seminal moment in our legislative process when the President of the United States talks about and lays out his plans for the future. From watching this morning on television and from reading some of the accounts of what is thought will be said tonight--I don't know what is going to be said yet--one of the overriding themes is going to be that of fairness. I think that is an important point for us to focus on in a second, particularly with regard to our spending, our debt, and our deficit, about what is fair to the American people. Last night--and I brought some notes--I did a telephone townhall meeting back to Georgia. We had thousands of people listening in on the call. I was able to take 17 questions in the course of an hour and one of the questions was from Fred in Barnesville, GA. Fred is a small businessperson. He asked this question: Senator, you were a small businessman; I am a small businessman. We had to operate within a budget. Why is it the U.S. Government doesn't have a budget? I think today is the 1,000th day we have been operating without a budget. That was a fair question. So if we want to talk about fairness for a minute, my contribution to fairness is going to be: What is fair to the American people, the American businessman, the American employer, the American employee?…”