Political Quotes

“let me first compliment the majority leader. I think he said it accurately; that is, we need to find a compromise between where we are, so we can move forward with increasing the debt limit, and a credible plan to reduce the deficit. I have heard many of my colleagues talk about that. But I want to point out that Leader Reid's proposal that we will be voting cloture on in a few moments is a compromise. It includes two major provisions that the Republicans have been asking about that, quite frankly, many Democrats disagree with. First, there will be a dollar for dollar reduction in spending for the increase in the debt ceiling. Let me tell you, there is no relationship between the debt ceiling and spending. The debt ceiling represents funds that have already been committed that we have an obligation to pay. We all understand what would happen if we violated the debt ceiling. It would affect the credit of America, its standing internationally, the dollar's global significance, it would affect our creditworthiness in America, increase the cost of government borrowing, increase the spending for all taxpayers in this country. It would have effects in my own State of Maryland. We have been told that the Maryland bond rating is very much tied to the Federal bond rating, and it could very well cause a downgrade for Maryland taxpayers, increase costs for mortgages, for credit cards. Every family would be affected.…”