Political Quotes

“I hear the gentleman. I presume he refers to the Ryan budget as the plan to do that. Of course, the Ryan budget does not balance the budget in a quarter of a century. The gentleman knows that. The Ryan budget, of course, undermines the security of Medicare for people. The majority leader mentions Federal employees. The fact of the matter is--and this is my position, Mr. Speaker, and is the subject I wanted to talk about--we need to get America on a fiscally sustainable, credible path. That is the single most important objective that this Congress ought to be addressing. Very frankly, it was addressed in a plan called the Simpson-Bowles plan. Perfectly? No. Would we all agree on every aspect? No, but it was a plan that said we have to have a balanced approach to doing this. We had to deal with entitlements; we had to deal with revenues, and we are now collecting 14.8 percent of revenues. That's lower than at any point in time in the last 70 years. We have underpriced our product; and if we were a business, we would have been bankrupt a long time ago. We have deep pockets, and we can keep borrowing so that we can keep spending without putting in a PAYGO discipline that we had in the nineties that helped balance the budget 4 years in a row--the only administration in the lifetime of anybody hearing, seeing, or knowing that we are here, but that has been done. It was done because we paid for what we bought. Mr.…”