Political Quotes

“I am not sure I have a whole 2 minutes, but the Blue Dogs are probably not average for your conference, for your caucus. You are probably more conservative than the average of the total Democrats in the House. Probably this group is about average for the conservative ideas of the Republicans. But we have 20 Republicans that are very concerned about some issues that maybe increase spending in particular areas. So if we are going to end up accomplishing anything, we have to maybe work together. If the rest of your conference thought the Blue Dog budget was going to pass, my guess is they would not have voted for it. So maybe we need to sneak up on this side and sometimes give you enough votes to pass that Blue Dog budget if we can agree on, ahead of time, with this side of the aisle on what is the reasonable budget. But we do not like taxes because taxes sort of depress economic expansion. But on the other side of that story, we have to have enough intestinal fortitude, we have to have enough guts, to say that if we are going to spend the money today, we should pay for it. What we have to do also is live up to coming up with legislation that is going to deal with Social Security, to keep Social Security solvent.”