Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I certainly share the deep concern expressed by my colleague from Utah over the growing size of the Federal debt. It is a serious problem. I encourage him to look at the chart that Senator Alexander has produced, which shows where the problem is. The problem is on the mandatory side of the budget, not the discretionary side of the budget, which, due to efforts we have made, has been held relatively flat for several years. But the mandatory spending side of the budget is soaring. There is no doubt about that. For example, many of us, when the administration presented its budget, rejected the gimmicks that were included, for example, in the transportation budget to shift some $7 billion from discretionary to mandatory spending. That was unwarranted. We did not do that. But if ever there were an emergency, it is the threat posed to public health by the Zika virus. About 2 weeks ago, Senator Johnny Isakson and I went to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA, and heard briefings from the top experts in the world about the threat posed by the Zika virus. The fact is that the news keeps getting worse and worse. Zika has now been linked for certain to a severe kind of birth defect, making pregnant women particularly at risk. It has also been linked to a disease known as Guillain-Barre syndrome, which can cause paralysis and even death.…”