Political Quotes

“I absolutely believe that we need to pay for that tax cut over the 10-year plan that we try to come up with to get us to a place that we can agree on being the objective in 2022 or 2023 as to where we want to be as a country in terms of fiscal sustainability, a credible plan that will get us from here to there, including taking cognizance of the cost of that tax cut. Yes, I am saying that over the longer term we ought to pay for it. Right now the economy is struggling. The reason I think none of us want to raise taxes on the average working men and women in this country is because the economy is still struggling. We're going to have that issue in terms of the payroll tax. We did the payroll tax deduction, which is controversial and there hasn't been a lot of the discussion, in order to get some additional revenues, 2 percent cut in the FICA tax--actually, a third of the cut, a third of the FICA tax so that we can get additional moneys into the pockets of the consumers so they can continue to buy. The economy has been better than it certainly was. We have grown, but not to the extent that we need to. That is why our view is that for those working Americans we ought to continue that level, but not because we think that we ought to just put that on the credit card and forget about it. It's got to be part of these fiscal cliff negotiations. And your point is making sure we pay for things.”