Political Quotes

“I am pleased, as the gentleman knows, to hear that you want to stop the spiraling deficits that confront our country. I will repeat again because the gentleman keeps mentioning this, and I have enough experience to know what has happened: In the 30 years that I've been here, of course we've had some few years of the Obama administration, but we had Mr. Reagan's administration, Mr. Bush I's administration, Mr. Bush II's administration, and we ran up--and I know the gentleman knows these figures--over $6 trillion of deficit during that period of time. However, in the 8 years that Mr. Clinton was President of the United States, we had a $62.9 billion surplus. Now, the gentleman makes the point that spending is out of control. The fact is, as the gentleman clearly knows, when you were in charge of the House and the Presidency and the Senate, you increased spending by more than was increased during the Clinton administration by a percentage on an annual basis. So I'm glad to hear that your side now, without fail, talks about spending being out of control. Very frankly, I have the feeling, if your side were spending 5 cents, you would think that we would need to cut an additional 5 cents in revenues so that we could not pay the bills, because that's why we ran up $6 trillion in deficits: you did not pay for what you bought.…”