Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Van Hollen yielding. We are talking a lot about gimmicks. Even the conservative Financial Times said the Republicans had to resort to smoke and mirrors to make this budget balance. But I want to talk about one of the other tricks that is used. What the Republicans' budget uses is they do something called dynamic scoring, which basically allows you to project all sorts of, probably, at least, speculative growth based on policies that they would anticipate doing. Now, here is a real-world example of that. This weekend is the Kentucky Derby. It would be as if somebody went out and said: I am going to buy a 2-year-old for $2 million. And then that 2-year-old I am sure is going to win the Kentucky Derby, so I am going to use that $3 million purse that that horse is certainly going to win next year, and I am going to plug that into my budget so my budget comes out ahead. Yes, it could happen, but there is no evidence to believe it will happen. That is one of the ways that this budget reaches so-called balance. There are other macroeconomic effects which we ought to consider, however. As we have mentioned several times, this budget would direct the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. The Deloitte professional services firm just did an audit of Kentucky's experience over the last 14 months, 15 months, with the Affordable Care Act. Here is what it said would happen in Kentucky over the next 6 years.…”