Political Quotes

“Madam President, I have been on the Senate floor several times now during the last few weeks to discuss our grave economic condition, the need to reduce Washington's out-of-control spending, and, most importantly, the urgent need to start taking action before time runs out. If there is any remaining doubt in anyone's mind that the U.S. economy is facing a historic and unprecedented fiscal crisis, consider a few of the recent news reports since I last spoke on the floor, which was not that many days ago. Reports came out saying that the national unemployment rate increased to 9.1 percent, with over 22 million Americans unemployed or underemployed. This is not how we rebound from a recession, historically. There is something more going on here than the normal downturns and upturns of the economic cycle. This is something of historic proportion. Since I last spoke on this floor, two more rating agencies--Moody's and Fitch--have issued serious warnings that they may downgrade America's AAA debt rating. This comes after S&P already lowered its outlook of the U.S. economy to negative. Just last week, on its cover, USA TODAY published the frightening headline ``U.S. owes $62 trillion; unfunded obligations amount to $534,000 per household.'' Those are unfunded obligations. We have funded obligations we currently owe in addition to that, and some put those even higher.…”