Political Quotes

“Mr. President, there was an interesting letter to the editor in the New York Times over the weekend, and it was sent by two Minnesota State representatives. I apologize for not having the names at my fingertips. Democratic and Republican Minnesota State representatives wrote a letter to the editor. It was in response to an article written by David Brooks. Brooks, whom I respect very much, is a conservative and a very thoughtful man and I read him with a lot of interest. Brooks had written about what to do with the State and Federal challenges when it came to budget deficits. What these two Minnesota State representatives said--a Democrat and a Republican--is, we acknowledge in our State and Nation what we face. We face a situation where we have a weak economy, and we face a situation where the debts that are being incurred by our levels of government are going up too fast, having acknowledged that we have to find a solution. I am going to probably not say this as accurately, but I thought they said it so well. They said we have come to the conclusion that we cannot just cut our way out of the problem and we cannot tax our way out of the problem, we have to think our way out of the problem. We cannot lurch from one budget battle to another budget battle without looking at the fact that our challenge is a structural, long-term challenge. It does not relate to the immediate budget but to a lot of things that are happening over a long period of time.…”