Political Quotes

“just some comments on the debt. You know, we have made a decision in the U.S. Congress to require that the Senate vote, that the House vote, that the President sign, any time that we increase the debt ceiling. Right now we have a debt ceiling of $4.9 trillion. That was done 2 years ago, when this administration came into office. Now, that is good, no more charts. That debt ceiling was increased 2 years ago in 1993 to $4.9 trillion. Today--today our debt, subject to the limit, is $4.77 trillion. We are going to hit the cap of $4.9 trillion in September or October. So this House is going to have to decide, do we want to vote to increase the debt limit again. Several of us, Congressman Chris Shays, myself, about 20 others, are saying look, if we are going to vote to increase the debt limit, should we not have something solid to get us on a glide path to assure that we are going to have a balanced budget sometime in the next 4 to 7 years? And I think the answer is yes. So I think we need to send a strong signal to the President of the United States, look, unless we are on that glide path, unless we have got a law, a reconciliation bill, a balanced budget amendment, or something that can somehow guarantee to the American people that we are not going to pick their pockets any more, we are not going to vote to increase the debt limit.”