Political Quotes

“Madam President, I listened closely to the speech given by the Senator from South Dakota about the deficit. I was thinking as he gave the speech that it was a good one, but I think a little bit of history is warranted at this moment. In the year 2000, 11 years ago, President William Jefferson Clinton was leaving office. We had gone through a period of budget surpluses. We were taking the budget surplus generated each year and buying more longevity in Social Security, as appropriate. It was a very positive situation. The national debt of America when President William Jefferson Clinton left office was $5 trillion. In other words, the accumulated debt of America from George Washington to the end of William Jefferson Clinton was $5 trillion. And as President Clinton left office, he said to President Bush: I want to give you, in the next year, a $120 million surplus in terms of what you can anticipate to happen in the next year. It was a pretty positive situation with a lot of job creation, businesses doing well, homes being built. Now fast forward from 2000 to 2008, 8 years later. Let's take a snapshot. What was the state of the economy? We were facing unemployment at record levels in numbers growing by the month. We no longer had a national debt of $5 trillion. Eight years later after President George Bush, that national debt was $12 trillion, more than doubled in an 8-year period. The obvious question is, what happened?…”