Political Quotes

“I thank my friend, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, Chris Van Hollen from Maryland, for yielding. I, unfortunately, have not been able to listen to all of the debate, but I've listened to enough of it. This week we're playing let's pretend. We're playing the game of let's pretend that if we solve the process, we'll solve the problem. There's an excellent article that I think everybody ought to read. Stan Collender, who is a real expert on the budget process and who has been involved in this budget process for a long, long period of time, quotes in an article that he wrote--that I hope most of you read--in Roll Call. He quotes Rudy Penner. Rudy Penner was the Director of CBO-- not a partisan individual, in my view--that I've had the opportunity of dealing with for some period of time. And his quote is: A process, no matter how well designed, cannot make difficult problems easy. I think my friend, Paul Ryan, would agree with that. It's not the process that's the problem. The problem is we don't have the courage to make decisions which are clearly necessary for us to make, and no amount of jiggering around the edges is going to change that. Now, as all of you know, I'm a strong supporter of a Bowles-Simpson approach to bringing our country to a fiscally sustainable path. Unlike many of you, I believe that revenues have to be part of that process and cuts have to be part of that process and restraints of entitlements have to be part of that process.…”