Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, we have to fully appreciate what we are about today. The fact is that we will never eliminate the deficit if we give some programs exalted, protective status in the budget process requiring those less fortunate to shoulder heavier cuts than they currently do and making them compete with one another while those exalted programs simply are beyond reach. But that is what we will do. We are effectively going to take $30 billion a year out of the nondefense discretionary pot and just put it beyond reach. Some would say, well, it goes into a trust fund; it is off budget. It is not off budget. It goes into that amorphous great big blue section on this chart that I have used before. It is a pie chart of the 1996 Federal budget. It becomes part of the uncontrollable portion of the pie, entitlements, which are in blue, plus interest on the debt. Two-thirds of the budget is uncontrollable. One-third of the budget is discretionary. Half of that is defense, the other half is the nondefense cost of running Government.”