Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Rhode Island. So people understand this debate, we have a deficit problem--serious. We borrow 40 cents from other countries for every $1 we spend. We cannot sustain that. Our economy may be the strongest in the world, but it is being called into question every day. Look what is happening on the streets of Athens, Greece, and in Portugal and in Ireland because they went too far, they crossed the point beyond which their creditors would not go. They were so deeply in debt that their creditors basically said: We are not going to loan you any more money unless you change dramatically the way you run your country. That is the pain that is going through these countries today. We want to avoid that pain in the United States. To do it, we have to address the deficit honestly. We have to take a look at this debt we have and deal with it in honest terms. Most people have forgotten the fact that 10 years ago--10 years ago-- we were running a surplus in the Federal budget. The last 3 years of the Clinton administration were surplus years, and now we are in the deepest debt we have ever been as a nation. We are generating about $1.4 trillion of additional debt every year. How did we reach this point? Well, there are a lot of explanations. When you fight two wars and do not pay for them, it adds to the national debt. When you pass programs and do not pay for them, it adds to the debt.…”