Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for his comments. It is a discussion the country is having. It's a discussion we need to have, and we need to have it honestly with one another. The gentleman knows my position: it's not taxes or spending; it's if you buy something, pay for it. We haven't done that. That's what creates debt. Taxing doesn't create debt; spending doesn't create debt if you pay for it. Spending creates debt only if you don't pay for it. The revenues--taxes--are what you pay for things that you buy. We are buying things and we're not paying for them, and your children and mine are being put in debt as a result. So this debate is really about: What are we going to pay for? How much do we want to do? And if we want to do it, we need to pay for it. The gentleman knows my side very much believes that we had two tax cuts in '01 and '03; we didn't pay for it. We had two wars, both of which I supported, as the gentleman knows; we didn't pay for it. We passed a prescription drug bill; we didn't pay for it. We are hopefully going to pass a disaster relief bill that hopefully we're not going to pay for in the short term, but that we will pay for and have a scenario to pay for in the longer term because we know owe that to our children and to our grandchildren. I'll just make a point. The gentleman always talks about tax and spending is the problem. The problem is we vote to buy things--whatever those things are--and we haven't voted to pay for them.…”