Political Quotes

“I welcome the continuation of this discussion about an incredibly important proposal. We gather here today to determine whether we should add one more amendment to the 27 amendments to the Constitution that have been enacted since the last part of the 18th century when our country was formed. I was reviewing something that a former chairman of our committee said in the 104th Congress, and I refer to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois, Henry Hyde, who said in effect that he realized that the Republican Congress when he was there would not be able to balance the budget without using retiree funds in the Social Security trust fund. I think I'm being assured in this debate that that will not happen in the present time. Here's what Henry Hyde said: ``If you exclude receipts from the revenue that are received by the Social Security System from computing the total revenues of the government, if you take it out of the equation, then the cuts that are necessary to reach a balanced budget become draconian. They become 22 to 30 percent, and you know that we cannot and will not cut programs that we want to subsist and continue by 22 to 30 percent. {time} 1010 ``You have to compute Social Security receipts in determining the income of this government so that the cuts you make to balance the budget are liveable and not impossible.'' Henry Hyde was right then and his statement is correct now.…”