"I just would not want to make a decision today with a pretty fragile population."
"I think people are going to have to ask themselves the question: which populations do they want to drop?"
"I believe we all agree that it is important to come together now, as the Chairman said, to develop and enact a sensible plan to reduce that debt in a steady and a predictable fashion."
"Enacting measures that would slow down job growth would not only impose additional and unnecessary economic pain on American families, it will harm the goal of deficit reduction."
"That is why the House Republican plan to make additional, deep, and immediate cuts in various investments in order to hit an arbitrary number is such a mistake."
"the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, testified just very recently that slashing the budget that way would, quote, Translate into a couple hundred thousand jobs, so it is not trivial, unq..."
"the bipartisan fiscal commission that was charged with reducing our deficits specifically warned against that action right now."
"I agree that we need to come together on a bipartisan basis now, to come up with a plan that shows we are going to reduce the deficits and debt in a predictable, sustained manner."
"I do think it is risky to do anything that could weaken the economy during this very fragile time."
"I want to accept the premise, absolutely accept the premise that, in order to get the deficit and debt down, we have got to reduce spending."
"When President Obama was sworn in he inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit."
"We have frittered away our time without addressing the problem."