Political Quotes

“Mr. President, returning to the Senate is in many ways like having a chance to relive part of one's life; yet doing so with the benefit of experience, experience that I gained in serving in this body before and also from service in the private sector. It allows one to see things differently than before. While I can discuss with my colleagues many things that remain the same in the Senate, there is also much that has changed in our country that requires change in this institution. It is what has changed that has brought me back to the Senate. The more I witnessed what was happening to our country, the more I realized that I, like many others across the country, needed to reengage in some way or another in the task of returning our country to its basic values and time-tested principles, not the least of which is returning our Federal Government to one that ensures a healthy fiscal nation whose finances and policies promote job opportunities for its citizens. I could not get comfortable with the fact that my generation might be the first to leave a country to our children that is in worse fiscal shape and with less opportunity than the one we had the privilege of inheriting. When I first came to Congress in 1981, one of the first votes I had to deal with was to raise the national debt limit to just over the $1 trillion mark. It was a tough one. Think of that. For nearly 200 years, as our country prospered and grew financially, we spent ourselves into $1 trillion worth of debt.…”