Political Quotes

“I want to thank my colleague from California for his leadership on the infrastructure issue. I think the problem that we see here in Washington is that the discussion is focused on the wrong thing. When you have a recession--an economic contraction--what your objective needs to be in terms of public policy is growth, growth in the economy. What we are experiencing now is anemic growth. For example, our growth rate is about 2 percent or less. That current rate of growth is not enough to sustain the current level of employment. In other words, if we don't grow this economy, our unemployment rate will necessarily go up. We talk about debt and deficit in this Chamber, but if we remember, less than 12 years ago, we had a budgetary surplus of $258 billion, meaning that we were taking in $258 billion more in each year than we were spending. How was that possible? {time} 2030 It was made possible by having created 22 million private sector jobs in the previous 8 years. What was the policy then? The policy was to invest in the American economy, to invest in the American people, in education, scientific research and infrastructure. So I think the lessons from our most recent past are very instructive today as to what we should be doing in Washington to promote growth. The gentleman from California spoke of a plan that I was working on, and that is a $1.2 trillion investment in rebuilding the roads and bridges of America.…”