Political Quotes

“today I am going to discuss what Congress is doing in the last several weeks and the next several months, and that is appropriating money. A week or so ago, most of the people in the United States were completing their tax bills. This is sort of a tutorial on what happens to the tax dollars of American taxpayers and what happens to the FICA tax, the payroll deduction tax, taken out of American workers. I start with a pie chart, if you will, Mr. Speaker, and this pie chart represents how we are spending the $2.4 trillion that we are budgeting for this coming year. We see the biggest piece of pie is Social Security at 21 percent. The previous speakers were talking about defense. Defense and national security, they are probably the prime objectives of the Federal Government compared to what State governments do, and yet we have diminished the share of total Federal spending of defense since World War II down to 20 percent of the total expenditures of Federal Government. I want to especially pay attention to the 14 percent that says interest. The interest of the Federal Government now is $240 billion a year. That is the interest that we are paying on the national debt. It is an interest rate that is almost at record lows. Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Fed, said today in testimony that interest rates probably are going to increase. We know what interest rates are today, a little over 4 percent for the prime.…”