Political Quotes

“I rise today to give some opening remarks with respect to the resolution on the balanced budget that is now before us. I suspect during the course of the next several weeks in the debate that is ahead, I will probably be here several more times to discuss various aspects of this resolution as well as some of the amendments which are going to be offered. But today I thought I would just make some initial comments regarding what I consider to be the need, the necessity really, for this amendment, both why we need a balanced budget, why we need to have a balanced budget amendment, and why we need to do it now. First of all, I think it should be clear to all Americans why we need a balanced budget, although it certainly has not been the case that the Congress or the President, over the last many, many years, has responded to the public's demands. The first reason is simple. We have gone literally a generation without balancing the budget. Just a few minutes ago, all of these budgets were presented to us, reflecting the many years in which we have failed to balance the budget. This is as close to balancing the budget as we have come today, piling these documents on top of each other and making sure they do not fall over, but that is as close to balancing the budget as we have been in a quarter of a century. These years of deficits have to come to an end. We need a balanced budget also because a failure to balance the budget has hurt the economy.”