Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, listening to this debate, it is not hard to understand why things in this body don't ever get done. Here is the deal. There are a lot of truths that are being spoken here. We do have a debt that is completely out of control. There is no question about it. The gentleman from Arkansas, the gentleman from North Carolina, and the gentleman from Utah are exactly right: $23 trillion we are leaving to our children and our grandchildren. It is outrageous. But my friend from Oregon is also accurate in that we are charging a fee for a purpose that is being diverted. It is not right. Mr. Speaker, if I ran a not-for-profit and decided that I was going to collect funds from the public, and I said I was collecting them for the purpose of providing healthcare to someone who needed it, and I decided to take those funds and spend them somewhere else, there is a word for that in the private sector. It is called embezzling, and people go to jail for it. In Congress, we call it budgeting, and it is wrong. Let me go back and just summarize this. Absolutely, we need to have a balanced budget. I would support it every single day. I support Members of Congress not being paid until we have one. This needs to be in the budget caps. But this has been a discussion that has been going on for years and years and years. As my friend from Oregon indicated, having a paper balance of $9 billion or $10 billion--and it is not like we don't have a need.…”