Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, we need some good common sense on how Congress regains control over spending, and I brought this chart this morning to sort of portray what the almost crisis is as Congress, over the last 30 or 40 years, has lost control of spending. Spending for most of the Federal budget of $1.6 trillion almost is now, if you will, on automatic pilot. The blue part of this pie chart represents the welfare entitlement programs. That means the money is automatically there. It does not go through the annual appropriation process, so as we look at the interest that is increasing, last year the gross interest was over $300 billion. If you include the interest paid on Social Security and the other trust funds, that means that we have now on automatic pilot 65 percent of the spending of the Federal Government. The question is, how do we get a President that has found it to his advantage not to cut spending and to demagog the issue to change some of the welfare entitlement programs in the U.S. Congress? This legislation frankly is the last one I am going to support that does not try to move us in the direction of eventually getting onto a glide path to a balanced budget. I mean, everybody has heard the arguments of how terrible it is to pass on today's debts to our kids and grandkids. That is immoral.”