Political Quotes

“Can I just make another point before you turn it over to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan)? A lot of people here, in the majority, do a lot of complaining about spending. The irony is, they did all the spending. At the end of 2000 we had a budgetary surplus of $258 billion. They took that surplus and financed two wars that took $1.2 trillion out of the American economy. They financed a drug prescription program, unpaid for, that will cost us $1 trillion over 10 years. And they financed two tax cuts that didn't produce the kind of growth they were said to produce. In fact, after those tax cuts were enacted, disproportionately for the wealthy, we had the worst period of economic growth in the past 75 years. The Clinton administration produced 22 million private sector jobs. We had 4 percent annual economic growth, sustained over an 8-year period. That produces budgetary surpluses and reduces the debt. So that's the lesson that we should embrace, not the measures that the Republicans are proposing, because historically it hasn't produced the kind of growth that they promised that it would produce.”