Political Quotes

“I am happy to be the first to take the distinguished majority leader up on his offer and be here on the Senate floor to talk about this very important matter. I plan on voting no on this proposal. It is a very important matter. It is in many ways the greatest challenge we face as a nation. So I don't come to this decision lightly, but I do come to it firmly for three primary reasons. First of all, this bill, this so-called solution, doesn't fundamentally change our spending and debt picture. It just plays around the margins. It doesn't make any big change whatsoever. To put it differently, I don't want to default under any circumstances, but I don't want a downgrade of our credit rating either. From everything the markets and the credit rating agencies-- Moody's and Standard & Poor's--have said for months, this would result in a downgrade. This would result in higher interest rates--first for the government and then for all of us--on our home mortgages, on our car payments, and everything else. Why? Because, again, it doesn't fundamentally change our spending and debt picture. It only cuts $7 billion in the first year and $3 billion in the second year, a total in the first 2 years of $10 billion. That is basically a minuscule rounding error in terms of the size of the Federal budget. Over the next 10 years, we continue to mount up $7 trillion worth of new debt.…”