Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the crisis America is facing. We are facing two crises. We are facing a significant debt crisis, and we are facing a political leadership crisis. We need to deal with both. We need to be sure all things are on the table and all people are at the table trying to find sensible, pragmatic solutions to be able to move our country forward and stabilize our economy so we can grow our economy. Now, I am going to talk first about the debt crisis. Then I am going to talk about what we need to do to act like Americans. I am for a more frugal government. We have been voting on cuts in discretionary spending. I supported the ban on discretionary spending earmarks. You were a reformer in that area, and I joined with you in that area, Mr. President. I also voted for $41 billion in cuts in the continuing resolution. In April I voted for $78 billion more in cuts. I wanted to avoid a tea party shutdown and work for this more frugal government. But now we have to lift the debt ceiling, and in order to do that we need to have a path forward dealing with both the deficit and debt. In order to do that, we need to, just as we cut the earmarks on discretionary spending, cut the tax break earmarks, those tax break earmarks that have gone to the well connected but who are disconnected from how we can help our economy grow. I never thought a budget deal would be easy, but I believed we could agree on a few key principles. Well, we have not.…”