Political Quotes

“I rise briefly to state my support for the amendment offered by my distinguished friend and fellow member of the Committee on Finance and simply to inform the Senate that the figures he gave amounting to $17.9 billion over a 10-year period have been formally provided to the Committee on Finance by the Joint Committee on Taxation. These are the final arbiters of our calculations in tax matters. So we are talking about real revenue which we can get simply by passing legislation, which we have already passed, and all of which has been proposed by the President's budget at one point or another. Characteristically, Senator Graham has had the good sense to advance an elemental but important proposition: this bill ought to be paid for. As Senator Graham argued a short while ago, it would be a shame if the first bill passed by the Senate in the 106th Congress were to commence a reversal of the fiscal discipline that produced the first Federal budget surplus in three decades. Perhaps memory is beginning to fail us. Thankfully, this Senator can still recall standing on this floor in 1993, during debate on the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of that year. It was not easy getting that great deficit reduction measure enacted, but it was the right thing to do. Its cumulative deficit reduction effect was some $1.2 trillion over five years--twice what we expected when it was enacted.”