Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman. I can't help but observe, however, that this President inherited the deepest recession that you and I have experienced in our lifetime and, as a result, we had to respond to that. We responded to it vigorously. Unfortunately, it made the debt worse, but what it also did was grow our economy better and faster than any other economy on Earth. We now have an economy that is growing, creating jobs, 58 months solid. We have increased, however, the debt by about 70 percent--too much. I will tell my friend, he may not know this. That is a percentage of GDP that--under Ronald Reagan, who could have vetoed every spending bill, the debt increased by 189 percent, almost three times as much. Now, in real dollar figures, it is easy to say that, like saying $7.25 is much higher than the minimum wage of 1968, when actually it is reduced to 46 percent of its purchasing power. So the numbers, per se, but as a percentage of our wealth, as a country, this President has increased the debt, having to respond to the deepest recession since the Depression, almost about a third of what Ronald Reagan saw in his Presidency, the increase of our debt as a percentage of the GDP. {time} 1215 I would tell my friend, Mr. Speaker, that we ought to come together, work together to make sure that this country is on and remains on a fiscally sustainable path, and I look forward to working with him toward that end.…”