Political Quotes

“I know the gentleman doesn't like to relitigate history, but when he says spending got out of control over the last two decades, I may agree with him on the last decade we went deeply into debt, but certainly the decade preceding that my friend surely remembers that we ran 4 years of surplus and a net surplus over 8 years during the Clinton administration. A $62.9 billion net surplus after 8 years. And we had 4 years of surplus. Two of those were actual surpluses--and we counted Social Security's revenues, which obviously were borrowed money from the Social Security trust fund. So we swapped Social Security money for IOUs. But 2 of those years of actual balance. So I would agree with him on the last decade, but I would not agree with him on the decade before that because, frankly, working from both sides of the aisle and an exploding economy, we created those deficits essentially together. I want to say to my friend that in that context, yes, the American people want to see us use their money wisely. We all agree on that. They need to know how we intend to use their money. And if they don't have appropriation bills on the floor--because the gentleman talks about the fact that the Senate hasn't passed a budget in a thousand days. It has had no effect, none, zero on what we are doing. Why? Because all the budget does, as the gentleman well knows, is not allocate money.…”