Political Quotes

“I think that the people of Hawaii are still wide awake and listening to this debate. Mr. Speaker, I am going to comment tonight not only on Social Security but what I consider a huge challenge for this country, and that is going deeper into debt and increasing the spending of the Federal Government and sacrificing the increased burdens of that increasing debt in addition to the kind of high taxes that it takes to accommodate this kind of spending and this kind of servicing of the debt. The first chart I have is a pie chart that I wanted to sort of show how the Federal Government is spending $2.4 trillion. And we see the largest piece of this pie is Social Security, spending 21 percent of all Federal spending; and that is going up. In 1983 we had the Greenspan Commission that gathered together because Social Security was going broke, and what they decided is to dramatically increase taxes, payroll taxes, our FICA taxes, for Social Security and at the same time reduce benefits. And that is the challenge for Social Security, that is the challenge for Medicare, that is certainly the challenge for Medicaid, the three major programs where Members of Congress have continued to make promises over and above far beyond our ability to pay for them in the future.”