Political Quotes

“I appreciate many of the concerns of the previous speaker; but I think everybody should be very aware that for the 8 years under the previous administration, there was not one year that we reduced the debt held by the public as defined by law. Not one year. We have increased spending every year two and three and sometimes almost four times the rate of inflation, so a decision has to be made. Do you want to start cutting down spending, or do you want to increase taxes? If we increase taxes, what we do is we put our business at a greater economic disadvantage, competitive disadvantage with businesses that we are trying to compete with in other countries. I agree with the previous speaker that there is a danger of going deeper and deeper into debt. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I ask people to guess what percentage of our marketable debt is now held by foreign interests. The answer is 45 percent. I just finished a meeting with the Canadian Parliament. The Canadian Parliament now for the last several years has paid down their total debt, not just paid down part of it but paid down so that their net debt has been decreasing. At the same time over the last 10 years in the United States our debt has been continuing to increase. Let me just say that the language in this legislation that opens the door in conference committee to increase the debt limit might be acceptable. I would be adamantly against it if it set the debt limit in this bill.”