Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today, we are gathered once again to kick the can down the road. We are gathered to continue spending money, not individually in appropriations bills and not with any real accountability for the money that is being spent but just to keep spending. But at the rate we are spending the money, we have accumulated a $34 trillion debt. We are accumulating debt at about $1 trillion every 3 months. If you look at how we spend the money, about two-thirds of the money is spent on mandatory programs, and there are no votes on mandatory programs. They are on autopilot, growing at about 5 to 6 percent a year, but they consume two-thirds of the spending. So when we come before you and they say, ``We are going to vote on a budget; we are going to vote on spending,'' we are actually voting on only about 28 percent of the budget. That is called discretionary spending. About half of that is military, and half of it is nonmilitary. Amongst that, they have this great agreement they came to. In the military, they decided we are going to increase the military by 3 percent. So this big chunk over here that is mandatory--we are not going to vote on it--is going up about 5 or 6 percent. Then we are going to vote on discretionary, but half of that is going up at 3 percent. So, really, we are looking at about 14 percent of the budget and saying: Oh, we are going to try to do something. You can eliminate the 14 percent of the budget, and it doesn't do anything to the debt.…”