Political Quotes

“In fact, if the gentleman will yield, that is what was decided: The only way we can increase the deficit is by increasing by congressional action the debt ceiling. So the idea was to make it difficult, and for us to have to think through, do we really want to increase the debt on our kids and our grandkids, to make them pay back what we think should be our standard of living now? Just how fast this has grown, when the gentleman from Maryland and I, we came into Congress the same year in 1993, and at that time the Federal debt was $4 trillion. Today, the Federal debt is $6.2 trillion, almost a 50 percent increase. Ten years from now, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the way we are going by covering some of these overexpenditures with increased borrowing, it will increase by 50 percent again, and the debt will be $9 trillion. What do we do? How do we hold the line? We start out by being honest with the public, with the American people, on what this debt really is, and that it has a very negative effect on their lives, because here is government taking this money out of circulation.”