Political Quotes

“we are in a predicament in Congress right now, and that is finishing the appropriations bills. The appropriations process goes from fiscal year to fiscal year, that is, October 1 to October 1. So in just another week we are hitting the new fiscal year. So tomorrow, what we are going to do is pass what is referred to as a CR; it stands for a ``continuing resolution.'' We are now sort of arguing and trying to decide whether continuing spending for the next few weeks should be at the level it was this current fiscal year or whether it should be increased somewhat in terms of spending to accommodate inflation. The problem is that there are a lot of people in Congress, in the House and in the Senate, that want to spend more money. So what has happened in this Congress, in this government, is spending has been going up faster than inflation. I brought this chart and made up this chart quickly, and we can see how the spending line tremendously has increased over the past 5 or 6 years in terms of spending. Spending has some consequences in terms of its effect on the economy. The Republican Policy Committee met with Art Laffer, who I consider a very good economist in this country. We met last week. One of my questions to Art was, What is worse as far as its negative effect on economic growth, would it be increasing the debt or having tax increases? He said, in his opinion, they are both about the same kind of negative effect.”