Political Quotes

“Madam President, in the name of reducing our national debt, this amendment offered by the Senator from Oklahoma seeks to freeze discretionary spending at fiscal year 2008 levels for the next 10 years. While I understand and support the need to restrain discretionary spending as a part of the solution to our debt problem, this draconian approach is most certainly not the way to accomplish that task. As I have said before, it is a fact that the growth in the debt has resulted primarily from unchecked mandatory spending and massive tax cuts for the rich. This amendment, as have several offered from the other side of the aisle, fails to respond to either of those two problems. For this reason alone, my colleagues should not support it. We need a comprehensive solution to the national debt, one that addresses spending, mandatory programs, and revenues. Any honest budget analyst can tell you we will never achieve a balanced budget just by freezing discretionary spending. We could eliminate all discretionary spending increases for defense, other security spending, and non- defense and still not balance the budget. Again, I remind my colleagues if we cut discretionary spending without reaching an agreement on mandatory spending and taxes we will find it very hard to get those who do not want to address revenues to compromise. For exactly that reason, the administration has just announced that it will create a Deficit Reduction Commission to help us get our financial house in order.…”