Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We hear a lot of the rhetoric on debt and deficit, and I think it requires a recent review of history. Less than 12 years ago, the United States had a $258 billion budgetary surplus, meaning that we were taking in $258 billion more each year than we were spending. That budget surplus 12 years ago was a direct result of having created 22 million private sector jobs in the previous 8 years, underscoring the fact that the best tax policy is bringing back lost taxpayers to productivity, more people contributing to the Federal Treasury and less people dependent on governmental programs. That $258 billion budgetary surplus was used as justification to enact tax cuts in 2001 and in 2003. Those tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy. The supply side theory, if you ascribe to it, says that if you give large tax cuts to the very wealthy, that money will find its way back into the economy in new business investment and job growth. Eight years later, we had the worst recession in the history of this Nation, and we had the worst job loss in 60 years. This economy is not growing to the extent that it needs to in order to produce employment. It's growing at about 1\1/2\ to 2 percent, which is not enough to sustain the current level of employment today, meaning that without additional growth in this economy, we will have increases in unemployment in this Nation. So what do we need to do? We need to invest in the American economy.…”