Political Quotes

“Mr. President, underneath the ground level of the buildings on Capitol Hill is a subway system. It connects on the Senate side the major buildings where Senators and staff and committees have their offices with this glorious Capitol Building. If you get on the subway over at the Dirksen Office Building to come over to the Capitol, it is a very brief journey. I do not think it lasts for an entire minute. In less than 1 minute you move from the Dirksen Office Building over to the Capitol Building. This morning, I took that journey, leaving the meeting of the deficit commission to come over to the Senate floor, and in less than 1 minute I emerged from the world of reality to a surreal world in the Senate. Let me explain. For the last 10 months, because of President Obama's Executive order, we have had a bipartisan deficit commission that has asked some of the hardest questions I have ever faced as an elected official: How can we come to grips with the debt of this country? What can we do to reduce spending and increase revenue so our children do not end up inheriting an unconscionable, unsustainable debt? It has been a hard meeting to discuss changes in the law and changes in spending. The goal was to cut $4 trillion out of the deficit in the next 10 years. It sounds simple, doesn't it, with a government this size and an economy this size, but it is not. When you get down to it, hard choices have to be made.…”